Saturday Morning Tabs and Takes
- Via Politico, Rich Lowry opines on Who Donald Trump Should — and Shouldn’t — Pick for Vice President. The list is fairly unsurprising. What strikes me is the way in which Lowry is treating the Trump presidency as utterly normal in this piece.
- Via Front Office Sports: Sports Illustrated’s Publisher Guts Staff. Future Unclear. I had noted some rumblings about SI earlier in the week, but have to confess that the real Sports Illustrated died many years ago. This is just an echo of its past finally fading into oblivion. What are they going to tell me next, that Newsweek is folding for good?
- Via NBC News: Venezuelan immigrants boost right-wing candidates across the Americas, U.S. This is not surprising (and includes the US). Shockingly, Latin American immigrants end up not being a monolith who are all coming to the US to vote for Democrats.
- From Dan Fromkin: My proposed additions to the New York Times style guide to improve its political coverage. I could quibble with some, but he makes some strong points.
- Via Politico yet another example of how where the lines are drawn is so central to our politics: Louisiana Legislature spurns Johnson, enacts new House map he opposed. I will casually note that even modest proportional representation would alleviate this issue and shift the attention from lines on the map to voters themselves as being paramount. (And yes, expanding the House would be a help, but still not the solution the PR would be). Also worth noting is that ranked-choice voting does not alleviate the problems of single-seat districts privileging line-drawing over actual voter preference.
- Via The Guardian: S&P 500 hits new record high amid signs of easing US economic gloom.
I used to subscribe to SI back in the day along with a lot of other magazines including Newsweek. Now I’m down to 2: National Geographic and Texas Monthly. I am quite surprised at the success of Texas Monthly, regularly being about 150-200 pages, including a lot of high end ads and a number of long form articles. We also get cheap ad-supported mags like Real Simple and Allrecipes.
I hope they outlast the turmoil in the magazine business. I just don’t enjoy online reading as much.
It’s good that the S&P is up, as is the economy generally. But the S&P is at a record high only because they don’t correct for inflation. Kevin Drum has a chart.
SI’s ceasing as a magazine is just a matter of time.
Back in the 80’s, when living stateside, I subscribed to SI, US News and World Report, Chess Life, The New Republic, and The National Review. The last three I still get. I used to purchase TV Guide every week in the super market . In addition I read Stars and Stripes and whoever was the local newspaper- San Diego Union Tribune, Washington Post, Orlando Sentinel, or Chicago Sun-Times. I also admit to occasionally buying Playboy but their recipes* all started looking alike after a while.
*- A very old joke by the baseball writer Bill James. James was commenting after some Chicago Cubs ballgirl posed for Penthouse or Better Homes and Gardens.
@Bill Jempty: I subscribed to TNR a couple of years ago, but never got a print copy, so I didn’t renew.
When Venezuala sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing market oriented solutions lacking a regulatory framework. They’re bringing right wing ideologies. They’re fascists. And some, I assume, are good people.
Seriously though, I would expect that a lot of the people fleeing a failing left wing dictatorship(?) can skew further to the right than the people who stay. I expect the poor, the oppressed minorities, and a hard right middle class. And that hard right middle class is going to be organizing online, and punching above their weight influence-wise in their new countries.
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I don’t follow Venezuela enough to know if it is a dictatorship or a struggling democracy with an authoritarian leader and not enough institutional guardrails. Are the elections real elections? Dunno.
I love Froomkin’s style guide suggestions, especially the idea that “falsehood” should only be used to break up the monotony when you say “lie” a lot. A couple weeks ago I mentioned James Bennet’s long (long, long, long) kvetch in The Economist over being fired as NYT’s editorial page editor. It came down to having spent a career providing the voice from nowhere and being upset that the kids (new hires) were on his lawn revolting against it. I’ve seen a couple of things saying the staffers at the Times are trying to change things. NYT does seem less eager to dive down every RW rabbit hole, like Hunter’s laptop, but if the kids are revolting, I’d sure like to see more evidence of it. I struggle with NYT. They’re so good at so many things, but fail in so many instances, especially normalizing Trump.
Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland and other deep dives into the history of Republicanism, has started writing columns for The American Prospect under the title The Infernal Triangle. The infernal triangle being, “Authoritarian Republicans, ineffectual Democrats, and a clueless media”. He quotes Jeff Sharlet , arguing with an NYT reporter about how to do journalism,
“Imagination of a place in the center”. That, I think, nicely captures the NYT’s voice from nowhere, a completely made up place where NYT sits above the fray.
There are two companies involved in Sports Illustrated. The first company pays the writers and editors and models, handles printers and/or servers, sells advertising. The second company owns the name. The former’s expense statement starts with paying the latter $15 million per year for the use of the name.
Some billionaire with a boyhood crush on the magazine will eventually step forward and fund a replacement for the first company. Which will pay the second company $15 million per year for the use of the name.
Rich Lowry says Pompeo would be “a pick in the Dick Cheney mode”. He says it as if that would be a good thing.
I don’t think Lowry is fully informed about Trump’s opinion of the Cheney family.
Steven: “What strikes me is the way in which Lowry is treating the Trump presidency as utterly normal in this piece.”
Some of the writers might b$tch, but in the end that rage is comfortable with everything which Trump has or will do.
With maybe the exception of Tim Scott, none of the folks Lowry names will help Trump expand his appeal beyond the GOP base in the general election. His characterization of Huckabee is particularly odious.