I Agree with Everything He Says, Except Calling it an "Immodest Proposal" . . .

. . . Hugh Hewitt makes a serious proposal on how General Petraeus' forthcoming report should be revealed to the public.

It's a big moment, and deserves the sort of major attention that Hewitt suggests it receives. The big papers should print it in full, and all the cable outlets and the broadcast networks should show the press conference in full without interruption.

It won't happen as he suggests it should. The media loves to mediate, and presenting General Petraeus unmediated would make it that much harder to push their preferred narrative afterwards.

Maybe by making the suggestion early and publicly, you can shame the media into doing the right thing by the American people, but I seriously doubt it.

(and please, save the name 'immodest proposal' or 'modest proposal' for satire)

Why Editors Suck (and Bloggers Rule)

Daniel Drezner, commenting on his recent Op-Ed published in the LA Times

Read the whole thing, but you should know that I submitted a different byline than the one they used.

The byline reads -- online at least -- as "Daniel W. Drezner is associate professor of international politics at Tufts University's Fletcher School and the author of "All Politics Is Global." He maintains a blog at danieldrezner.com/blog/."

Which is great, but the byline I submitted to them was, "Daniel W. Drezner is associate professor of international politics at Tufts University's Fletcher School and the author of "All Politics Is Global." He has never been invited to Davos, but is not bitter about that fact in the slightest."

I think I'd be less upset if I didn't fear that the deleted sentence was the best line in the piece.

As a blogger he gets to let folks know how he meant for his piece to be taken, and not how the editors chose to present his piece.

Why edit out the insouciant little self-deprecating joke in the bio blurb?

(unanswerable as it was done without good reason, probably some sort of style book they're following, or fear, or stupidity, or whatever)

And it needn't be repeated, but I will anyway, as he writes on his blog, read the whole LAT Op-Ed, it's a good 'un.

(if I had an editor they never would have let me get away with "good 'un" (or all these parenthetical phrases, for that matter))

Also, it bears repeating, it's nice that they chose to include his blog's name in their bio for him, but would it be that much more difficult to make it an actual link on their online edition?

Old People are Gynophobes, Anyway

Is that the subtext of this post?

CBS spinning the disappointing ratings of Katie Couric, claiming that they may be losing the +54 for crowd, but who wants them anyway?

They don't come out and say that old folks won't accept Katie because they still hold old fashioned ideas about the press and expect their anchors to come across all 'voice of god' like, but that is an interpretation that is readily available.

Thing is, all those new 25-54 viewers who didn't watch the news before and tuned in out of curiosity, will most likely tune out over time.

Also, TV's obsession with 'the demo' of viewers 25-54 is based on outmoded assumptions. The assumption is that folks 55+ are set in their ways, and beyond selling them on various prescription medicines, are set in their brand loyalties, uninterested in the latest in tech innovations, and uninterested in entertainment outside of their home. But, now many Boomers are 55+ and they are always going on about their exceptionalism and relatively youthful vigor, these folks aren't the same sexagenarians that advertisers used to shun back in the 60s and 70s. They have money, they have disposable income, often they still have some small children at home, they still chase the latest fashions and technologies, and they still have all the keeping up with the joneses zeal that used to only be the provenance of those in their late twenties through early forties. In other words, they still are a lucrative market to sell crap to.