As I sit here, not sleeping, not finishing my project proposal so I can get my damned master's and stop adding to my pile of student-loan debt, I wonder why I do this, why I'm so damned hooked on journalism that I'd kill my grandmother (had she not already rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible) for a byline or, a concept that makes me shudder with excitement, a "scoop." Why I despise the local paper as mostly hacks and fume that it won't just send the publisher, editor and a chorus line over the entice me to deign to join the staff.
So that one day I might stand amongst the wreckage in Bandu Aceh or Bagdad or Birmingham, Ala., with my lack of knowledge about the intriguing indigeonous culture and tell the folks back home in red state heaven all about the unwashed and the unlucky and the wall of water? To flap my gums or my fingers about the latest crisis this administration non intelligencium has concocted to convince rednecks and racists and robber barons that by golly, food stamps is going under, the British Virgin Islands may be chaste, but they have nukes we hear? Or that Geo. W. Bush killed every Vietnamese person over the age of 12 during the Vietnam Conflict but has been too damned humble to admit it? To turn from the death of 150,000 in a ameliorable natural disaster to provide wall-to-wall coverage of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's breakup?
Gosh, I want to be a player, to get to talk to powerful people who despise me and pretend I'm their friend like that stupid ass in the Dodge commercial. To whore myself for 240 thousand dollars by knocking my own teeth out and giving Rod Paige a gum job on my radio program. To put an attorney general under 41 and the AP boss who presided over the co-op's transformation from news wire service to scandalmongers in charge of vetting the small error in the midst of a lackluster and zeal-less "scoop" (of what ... shit?) on a story that's been beaten to death and repeatedly proven to at least a preponderance of the evidence, if not beyond a reasonable doubt. That's sure to improve the news and turn around its steady march into entertainment, obsolescence and irrelevance.
But no one has a taste for truth anymore. No one wants to be told what happened back then, or what happened in Ohio last year. John Kerry talked about the thousands who were disenfranchised in that state ... then said he didn't dispute the results. Christ, that's like saying the Constitution doesn't limit liberty but that you won't oppose slavery. Widely respected reporters at national newspapers write balanced stories pitting the president's version of Social Security's status against the agency and congress and independent numbers, identifying the latter as "the president's critics" because someone not on board mentioned the data. Judith Miller still has a job. Osama bin Laden lives and is free. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is a done deal. Donald "not the army you would like to have" Rumsfeld is still Secretary of Defense.
I don't believe journalists are not capable of affecting these things; I just think we have chosen not to, that even many of the best of us stare at the juggernaught of lies and cower lest we lose our jobs, our reputations, our faith in ourselves, our happiness. And now we're part of the problem.
Sadly, after almost 75 grand plus nine years and counting of moving toward this goal of being a great journalist, of speaking truth to power and empowering democracy, of having a career in one of the few things I've genuinely loved doing, I don't have any reason ... save a tottering momentum and the glistening hope that somehow I can change things, if just a little, for the better, if I keep trying, if I keep moving.
But sometimes momentum is all I have.

Inspiration: Jon Carroll on SFGate.com

Time to make stepladders out of some bones

The Rude Pundit
The Rude Pundit hits the nail on the proverbial head here. Too many times oppositions have tried to imitate or emulate the powerful in an attempt to draw support. But coming alongside is not the path to victory&emdash;you gotta get the hell out in front of people and lead, say clearly "Here is where I stand, here is what I'm for, here is how I want to help you," stop trying to be liked and start trying to be right.
Another thing it's clearly time to do is to stop surrendering the initiative and the very language of debate to the other side. We must fearlessly call the powerful when they try to smear and elide over facts with spin, we must stop trying to play the balancing game and start recognizing that a lie and a lie a thousand time worse than the first are NOT equal. Hiding behind the disingenuous stance that both sides lie only lets those willing to tell the biggest lie rape you.

Boing Boing: ClearChannel stations gave away boob-jobs for Xmas

Boing Boing: ClearChannel stations gave away boob-jobs for Xmas
yet another example of the right-wing and of course its corporate minions finding a way to profit off sex, prurience and objectifying women.

But then again what you expect from a political persuasion and include such wonderful people as, say, Newt Gingrich?