Although the girl’s permanent disappearance was and is a tragedy.

Be careful what you wish for, though. You want an entity like the Bush administration to be in charge of breaking up newspapers? Local news is the worst, except for rare exceptions. It was not always so.

What is most disappointing is that basic cable has shown itself, thus far, incapable of a journalistic function. HBO is the home of some excellent work in documentaries, and having that possibility, along with PBS, and now ShowTime and Cinamax, which is owned by HBO, is what encourages enterprising documentarians, some of whom are journalists, to make documentaries, that and the DVD market. One difference about the Iraq invasion and occupation from our experience in VietNam has been the number of important documentaries that have been made about the former, while it has been going on. That, and a number of extraordinary books having been published by the men and women who have had to fight it.

Don’t take this as an argument defending the Washington Post or the New York Times; the journalistic heroes in the mainstream papers across the nation, or in the mainstream media, have been few, compared to the goats and the sheep, and may all actual goats and sheep forgive me for that comparison.

However, in the not so mainstream, there have been quite a few. Heroes and heroines, I mean. It also seems to me that one of the great contributions of the progressive blogisphere, 1.0 or 2.0, has been as compulsive readers with as compulsive a need to tell others about what is out there. We have left a history on our various blogs of the fact that it was possible to know that Bush & Co was lying, that there was plenty wrong with their arguments about WMD, that they were dead certain to invade Iraq, both before and after Bush went to the UN, and so much more. There wasn’t nearly as good reporting about VietNam, until quite late in the war, and editorially, it was still about the dirty fucking hippies being un-American.

All of the above is why, as I have tried to argue here to disappointing results, not in the sense that people refuse to agree with me, in the sense that almost no one engages my actual arguments, the example of NPR and PBS is so important, in both it’s good and bad aspects. You have to have some kind of model to point to, model not in the sense of perfection, in the sense of a workable alternative.

I’m planing to do a series on the history of PBS and NPR, along with the two Endowments, for the Arts and Humanities, and some of their sterling achievements , past and present, so that those of you who are so proud that you don’t bother to look or listen to anything on public or private broadcasting, and apparently, no longer read newspapers, magazines, and precious little of the blogisphere, might be able to base your future arguments on something akin to actual knowledge.

OTOH, I certainly think that government regulation of media concentration is something we should all be fighting for, along with Net Neutrality.

Added thought: It might be well to start something like the Lexicon, which was Lambert’s brilliant inspiration, something akin to a virtual library which keeps track of the reporting, in newspapers and in books and periodicals, which stand out as shining examples of coverage of the Bush administration, and all that it has entailed.

I can think of any number of Howler posts that would fit under that heading, except a system of categorization would be needed, which would end up being, in essence, a model of the Village. Not a bad thing, but labor intensive. Of a higher order than using the lexicon terms.

This is a snarky post full of rhetorical questions, so I’m not making any policy recommendations. Bush should never do anything, at any time, on a breakup, or anything else. Though I can see the obvious potential for handing out franchises to supporters starting 2009, it seems to me that if the peices are small enough (whatever media market limitations there were before the Conservative Ascendancy began in the 1970s) some form of rough justice will be achieved.

I’m sorry, I don’t recall the NPR/PBS argument. Alas, repeat, repeat, repeat is the blogospherical equivalent of real estate’s location, location, location…..

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

I was unnerved as soon as I heard that they were doing this. All I could think of is that we would be attacked again.

Again, my hardware store sold out of seeds early this year, and so did others (I am told). I’m guessing that means people up here in Zone 5b are expecting hard times. And that’s an interesting data point. In fact, it’s news. And it doesn’t have to rely on Garbage In. If we had a way to integrate those data points across, say, 5000 C list blogs… We might be making our own news (assuming that the C listers could be brought to realize the value of, however intermittently and individually, feeding the data points into the larger systems). Good, clean, local….

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Well, not completely. WaPo is and has been for some time an increasingly bad joke for both journalism and editorial stance, no argument from me, but to consider a revisit of the Chandra Levy case as somehow related to 9/11 or to some pending October ’08 surprise seems to me a stretch.

The Levy murder was big news in DC because it was local, sensational because it was tied to a congressman through illicit sex and of course the magic word intern fueled the flames, but this was also a legitimate story of a young life lost and the exploitation of female innocence by a powerful man, a parallel tale of arrogance and deceit and corruption exposed. It was also big news out here in the SF Bay Area and especially in Modesto where Gary Condit was the US Representative. The Modesto Bee, a right-leaning local paper that had always supported him, called him out as a hypocrite and a liar and demanded his resignation.

I’m not unhappy to see it revisited, although I am not yet impressed that these two reporters are as hard on their own paper as they should be. They have pounded Condit for his lies and abuse, well deserved, have pointed out the many ineptitudes of the local police as they went about their investigation, and have skirted about but none the less addressed how the media frenzy drove the path of the investigation in ways that were not helpful. This series could be better, could be worse, but for me it is not wholly unwelcome or wasteful - for what it is.

Did I mention I have never liked Gary Condit? Smug, phony glad-hander and a DINO if ever there was one. Getting old, can’t remember - did I tell the story of how I gave Condit the shaft once, a small point of personal privilege, a minor common citizen triumph over the entitlement expectations of the ruling class to be sure but one that none the less won me accolades from all those around? Hate to repeat stories already told, so if that sounds familiar please spare me the embarrassment; if not, well, you may be amused.

… to run a billion-part series on:

1. How Steno Sue Schmit teabagged Ken Starr during Whitewater, and

2. Iraq coverage in the run-up to the war.

So, I’d argue that in terms of oppurtunity cost, the chance to revisit other stories of a national character, this series, in fact, completely wasteful.

If you told us about Condit, I don’t remember, so feel free to tell it again!

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

If this had been a Democrat in office the last 7 1/2 years with the same dismal outcomes the whole paper would be doom and gloom endless recitation of every misstep, with banner headlines calling for his/her head on a pike. As for the “How we were a tool for the VRWC and knowingly spread their lies” series, don’t hold your breath.

Guess it is a measure of how sad things have become that I can find any comfort at all in this bit of mild introspection. Another little Bambi of positive attitude crushed under the Godzilla’s heels of reason and common sense. Sigh.

Now there’s a series concept for you!

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

they were shiny clean when he was finished.

Where’s the brain bleach? Quick! Fu—-

[ ] Very tepidly voting for Obama [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.