Practice what you preach, City Paper...

In this week's Washington City Paper, Erik Wemple calls out the Washington Post on a "clip job." He cites internal Post e-mails regarding a March 17 Post story on "flash point" killings--one that closely echoes a previous New York Times story on the same topic. Wemple quotes a WP staffer as e-mailing, "i, too, liked the very well done casual-killing story. i would have liked it a whole lot better, though, if i hadn't read it in the NYT a couple weeks ago."

This would be funny enough, if the City Paper had not published, in the very same section and on the very same page, a clip job of its own. This week's City Paper story by Ryan Grim on the overblown crystal meth epidemic--and the Post's inaccurate coverage of said "epidemic"--is a virtual book report on an article that appeared in Slate last week. And it also appeared in the "Dept. of Media" section, mere inches from the story about the Post's NYT envy.

Hey, takes one to know one.

Hey, I can see my house getting robbed from here

Police Service Area 305
2005 Crime statistics
Homicide 6
Sex Abuse 5
Robbery 149
ADW 92
Burglary 143
Theft 225
Theft From Auto 410
Stolen Auto 193
Arson 0
Total 1223

Cool, you can check out the crime stats for your neighborhood here! Thank you, Washington Post, for making everyone's sleep a little less easy. As the press is supposed to do, I suppose.

Don't even know where to begin with this one

Britney: Anti-choice poster child? (Alternet)

"Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston"

Seriously. Off. Track. Is how things are going, Mr. President.

Bush-bashing is such a cheap way to fill a blog these days. It's so easy, it almost (almost) doesn't seem fair, and so many people are doing it, there's not much new to say.

But seriously--did you hear this press conference yesterday?

QUESTION: It was: Will there come a day -- and I'm not asking you when; I'm not asking for a timetable -- will there come a day when there will be no more American forces in Iraq?

BUSH: That, of course, is an objective. And that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq.

Whaaa? Did he say "quagmire" out loud, or was that just some little echo I heard in the background? How the hell do you admit that you've committed the U.S. to lord knows how many more years of occupation, plus that you are definitely passing the buck to someone else, and even try to spin this as wisdom and responsibility? It just--I just---mmph--

Mission [to be] accomplished

Just a couple of years after declaring victory for American forces in Iraq, President Bush predicts victory for American forces in Iraq (WP).

There's really nothing inconsistent about these two statements...

...had their chronological order been reversed.

Corned beef and cabbage waits for no man

As an Irish-American and lapsed vegetarian, I have to back the decision of numerous Catholic bishops to grant a special St. Patrick's Day exemption from the rules banning meat on Fridays during Lent. (WP)

The echo chamber, quantified

"More coverage...less reporting," says Howard Kurtz, is the upshot of a new study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism that shows steep drops in the overall number of reporters and the number of straight news outlets.

The irony of a blog post about this story is not lost on me.

Which is why I felt compelled to add a little original content, in the form of that last comment about how the irony is not lost on me. *chuckle*

From a sinking ship

Interior Secretary Gale Norton announces her resignation today. (Denver Post)

We may not have representation, but we do have jumbo slice

My friend Derek reports on the results of a call he recently placed to his senator's office on a matter of public policy:

"When I called my senator, he asked what I wanted on my Pizza. That's becuase I live in DC and don't have a senator, and I was actually calling the Pizza place. "

The only thing worse than fashion writing...

...is letters to the editor about fashion writing:

Re "Woman Masked, Bagged and, Naturally, Feared" (Fashion Diary, March 1): The fashion world's growing trend of erasing the faces of its female models does seem disturbing, a misogynistic elision in an industry already adept at objectification.

Have designers become so esoteric that they see no other implications in their "obscuring garments" except a subservience to creative vision?

Vandhana Rao
Williamsburg, Va., March 2, 2006 (NYT)

Previously: Fashion writing is so weird

From 'Bucks to 'Bou

My choice of coffee vendor is largely dependent on convenience, so now that my office has moved a few blocks down the street, I get my morning fix at Caribou Coffee instead of Starbucks. And instead of ordering a "double tall soy mocha, no whip" I'm now getting a "small soy mocha, and moose it!"

Yes, that's right, if you want an extra shot in your drink, you're technically supposed to ask them to "moose it," and such a drink, when delivered at the bar, will be described by the barista as having been "moosed."

Starbucks has done a pretty good job at getting people around the world to used made-up-Italian words to describe drink sizes. These words roll trippingly on the tongue. I'm not so sure about moose it. It may be a little too cute. But I still love it. I also love how at Caribou, they give you a couple of chocolate covered espresso beans with your drink. I think I will be able to live with this shift.

We are all like little hummingbirds. Very lazy hummingbirds.

This whole debate over whether soda consumption is connected to obesity is hilarious to me. (WP) Do we really need to spend millions of dollars on decades of scientific study to determine whether shoveling sugar water down your throat could possibly make you put on weight? And do the beverage industry reps really keep a straight face as they claim that this idea is "laughable?"

Like seriously. "Why is my ass getting so big?...I mean, I do eat a couple of sticks of butter before bed each night, but the jury's still out on whether that's really connected to my problem. Maybe I should commission a study on this."

Hollywood? Liberal? No way.

Did anyone else catch a glimpse of Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) in the audience at the Oscars last night?

Astroturf alert of the day

Check this out: the coal industry actually has to reassure people that what they have heard on TV is true. C'mon, guys, these are Americans we're talking about here. What do you have to hide that you can't hide just by lying to our faces?

LearnAboutCoal.org: Nice Ads...But are they True?

When one of the adorable young scamps in those TV commercials directed me to LearnAboutCoal.org, I was not at all surprised to learn the site is a project of Americans for Balanced Energy Choices. The organization is aptly named, if by "Americans" you mean "people who own and run coal companies, and their friends;" and by "Balanced" you mean "balanced in favor of coal company profits."

Nice ads...but are they true?

I mean, really true, not true in the "I have sent you Clear Skies legislation that mandates a 70-percent cut in air pollution" type way.