Your corsage won't save you now

Some new Couric-Palin interview material has been released. Here's what Palin has to say about staying up to date on current events. This is unbelievable.

Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?

Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

Couric: What, specifically?

Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.

Couric: Can you name a few?

Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn't a foreign country, where it's kind of suggested, "Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?" Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

Does Christmas come in August now?

It has been quite a month. At least three times so far this August, Santa* has delivered to our door an extra-special morning newspaper.

Rove to Leave White House Post

Embattled Gonzales Resigns

G.O.P. Senator [Larry Craig] Pleaded Guilty After Restroom Arrest [for "lewd conduct"]**

All while most Washingtonians are off dreaming of sugarplums.

*Or, to be more accurate, Ben

**Does anyone else think it's kind of crazy that this took so long to break? This happened in June?

Palfrey names unsaid

DC escort business caters to power elite, madam releases phone records, blah blah blah. Yawn. Unless you've got some kind of technical account of the erotic use of a cigar by a head of state, or homemade heiress night vision porn, I am so over your sex scandal muckraking...

But anyhow, I'm a little torn about ABC News's cherry-picking of which of Palfrey's clientele to expose publicly. (WP) "Brian Ross of ABC confirmed that some fairly important people had used her escort service." Yet ABC has acknowledged the identity of only two (to this blogger's knowledge): Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias, and Harlan Ullman, of the Washington Times and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The rest, producers considered too "anonymous" to publicize.

Well, okay; Palfrey is arguing that the services her firm provided were all legal. If that turns out to be true, it does seem unethical to expose all of these people, possibly ruin their lives, over whatever legal activities in which they may be engaged in their spare time. And there may be no compelling public interest in revealing that the non-public-figure down the street is in Palfrey's black book, no matter what service he or she has received.

But who gets to make that judgement call? Why do any of the public officials implicated deserve a pass? And how do we know that ABC excluded them all based on their lack of importance or name recognition rather than some other, more political factor? (They include "A federal prosecutor, who recently died. A handful of military officers, including the head of an Air Force intelligence squadron. A senior official at the World Bank and other officials at NASA and the International Monetary Fund. Corporate CEOs. And lobbyists, both Democratic and Republican.")

Shock jock codes of conduct

Don Imus is a jackass and deserves everything that's coming to him. Anyone who thinks they can get away with a) racism and b) sexism directed towards c) some of America's top student-athletes d) on a national radio broadcast...has got to be crazy or have a death wish. And the backlash is reassuring.

But this episode got me thinking. Imus and radio hosts like him are basically paid to be offensive, outrageous, and even bigoted. The shock is what brings in the audience. At the same time, they inevitably face suspension or firing when they cross the line and say something that inspires widespread public outrage and the loss of advertiser dollars. They ride a fine line.

Lisa Wanless, Systems Analyst "Cut Imus some slack. The man is under immense pressure to be an asshole every single morning." (The Onion)

How does one know what will be outrageous enough to draw an audience, but not outrageous enough to get cancelled? Do you think that there is any kind of general agreement or code of conduct between shock jocks and their employers about what topics are strictly off limits vs. fair game? From here, the line seems to be drawn on an ad hoc basis.

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.