I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Sometimes I find myself awash in observations and germs of ideas, unable to grab just one and hang on. So this week, some flotsam and jetsam:
• The New York Times reported Wednesday, April 8, that Twitter facilitated an uprising aimed at the rulers of Moldova, which lies between Romania and the Ukraine.
Twitter!
The same day the Times reported news businesses (including the Times itself) are near decisions on how to make consumers pay for their Web offerings. Also, Apple upset the music download business.
Yet most daily newspapers have neither technology nor media beats.
• As President Obama pronounces “Taliban,” it comes out “Tally-bahn.” He may be correct but every time he says it I hear Harry Belafonte asking the boss to “tally me bananas.”
• The Albuquerque Journal’s Op Ed piece by streetcar advocate J.W. Madison April 6 was rebutted April 8 by the Rio Grande Foundation, a local libertarian outfit. The tit-for-tat was useful. Sadly, the editors won’t generalize that approach across the opinion pages; they’re wedded to a formula — one leftist tit per eight or ten rightist tats.
• Language always mutates, true, but some losses must be mourned. “Unique” — one of a kind — has been drifting for years toward “extraordinary,” as my American Heritage Dictionary recognized in a “usage note” back in 2000.
Now it’s gone; the sign came when that brilliant New York Times columnist, Gail Collins, modified unique incorrectly, with “very” or something similar.
Unique was a jewel of a word, like unicorn. RIP.
• Speaking of American, journalists often confuse “less” and “fewer.” And they trip over the spelling of homonyms “site,” “sight” and cite.” Nor do spell check programs help.
• Libertarians talk straight if not always wisely. William Niskanen writes that New Deal legislation encouraging labor to organize, establishing a federal minimum wage and banning child labor “increased the real price of labor services … and were an important contributor to the substantial increase in the unemployment rate during the Great Depression.”
The economic reasoning is just what CATO’s wealthy contributors pay for, but let’s say he’s right. Our course, then, is to destroy what’s left of the unions, erase the minimum wage and send kids back to the sweatshops. For the greater good.
• The political right should nominate Bernie Madoff, the crook, for sainthood. Moral stories take our eyes off systems.
• Speaking of morality (and with New Mexico’s own Manny Aragon in mind), it narrows us. That’s because it’s either-or. You are good or bad, with me or against me, loyal or traitorous, free marketer or socialist. Thus, morality makes cogitating and compassion unnecessary.
For perspective, see Kate Nelson’s splendid reconsideration of Manny here last October 16.
• Thomas Ricks concluded in “The Gamble” that the outcome of our Iraq adventure will be determined by events to come. Pondering that, I figure he fears a renewed Sunni-Shiite war — a horrible prospect. Or, he’s thinking Iraq’s new Shiite rulers will consolidate control and partner with their Shiite brothers in Iran — worse, much worse.
• Radio and TV hosts routinely open remote interviews with newsmakers this way: “Thank you, Sen. Jones, for being with us.” To my fevered brain, the typical response — “Thanks for having me” — is cannibalistic. I picture the guest on a dinner plate. What’s wrong with “My pleasure” or “Pleased to be here?”
• My beef with journalism is its superficiality, the failure to tie the stuff of news — events, situations — to the stuff of human nature. But that’s setting the bar too high; anybody who rises to such heights lands beyond journalism in Stendhal territory.
