Clarion Content

Can't understand how the Indy Week put out an entire issue without mentioning the biggest musical act coming to town this week. Oh wait, maybe it's cause they're owned by a Portland company that has no idea what's happening in our town...Either that or maybe Grayson Currin doesn't like'em.

Anyway, it is sold out, so maybe that was the thinking. But, trust us, you want to know about Macklemore. The last time a hip-hop artist so instantaneously struck a chord with our editor, was when yours truly borrowed our friend Natasha's truck to run a lunchtime errand in the mid-90's. Put it in gear, pushed in the tape that was hanging halfway out of the cassette deck and suddenly, Lauren Hill, Wyclef, Pras and the Fugees, were "Killing me Softly."

That is pantheon level. But we have no taste for hyperbole. We are keeping it on the real. The other day, your editor tried to calculate how many days after the tragic, all too early, passing of Adam Yauch, we heard about Macklemore. It seemed less than coincidental that as one passed out of our lives, the other appeared.

This is the most sensitive song we have ever heard a hip-hop artist create about homosexuality. It is a must listen. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's entire album, "The Heist" can be heard here. Amazing, A+ quality, grooves.

Labels: media, music, Pop Culture, thought

The Clarion Content is delighted to be able to participate in a roundtable, "The State of Publishing," this evening presented by Design Kompany & Orangutan Swing at 8pm at Mercury Studio, #407-A Mangum Street, inside the downtown loop, catty-corner from City Hall. Tickets are $10.



The Clarion Content's editor, Aaron Mandel, will be sitting on a panel with some of Durham's most distinguished publishing figures and journalists, including Lisa Sorg, editor of the Independent, and Julie Johnson, our favorite beer and spirits columnist anywhere. Of course, Dipika Kohli will be moderating. There will even be distinguished guest panelists from Ireland via the power of the internet.

If you want to ask the Clarion Content what has changed most about publishing in our purview, what has been most dynamic? The short is answer is the internet.

The internet has given a range and a depth to publishing we never anticipated we would see. Guest panelists from Ireland are barely the tip of the iceberg. Having grown up and been weaned to research on The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, the ability to do topical research on the internet today is stunning.¹


Notes
¹Sure maybe there are no flying cars, but what the Googlierge can find you, it boggles the mind.

Labels: Durham, media, Pop Culture

When the Clarion Content first wrote about Centerfest's rebirth in downtown Durham last month, it was with great delight.

We are still stoked!


LiLa will be playing here Saturday night...get your picture taken at the Clarion Content... photobooth right around the corner, all weekend.

At that time, there were still a few unanswered questions. Fortunately, our friends at the Durham Arts Council took the time to break them down for us...

What are the festival hours?

Festival hours are 10am to 6pm, on Saturday, September 15th, and 11am to 5pm, on Sunday, September 16th. While we are a tiny bit bummed that there are no nighttime festival hours, we understand where the Durham Arts Council is coming from, after a year off, have to walk before you run. Step one was moving the festival back into the heart of the downtown loop. Mission accomplished. Who knows what will be added to the arts celebration next year.

What about admissions charges?

Kids under twelve are FREE. Keeping youth enthusiastic about art and the community are at the core of the Centerfest mission. Readers will recall when we first started writing about the Centerfest rework, that almost universally, long time Durham denizens under thirty, had a story of a Centerfest adventure or moment they loved. Keeping it free for kids is part and parcel of making sure Centerfest is still rolling when it reaches its 50th and 60th anniversary.

The price for adults remains a suggested donation. This year it is five dollars. The Clarion Content reviles the phrase suggested donation. Charge or don't charge. And when you have something of this quality, in its 38th year of bringing it strong for the community, it is okay to charge. Durham isn't scared to pull a fiver out of its pocket, for a festival that brings so much art, culture and music to the table.

What about the music was another answered question. Centerfest answered that one emphatically. A deep roster of local talent will be playing on the five stages organizers have arranged. Headlined by a local musical sensation, the raucous fun and beauty of LiLa, capping off the Saturday night performances at CCB "Major the Bull" Plaza Main Music Stage.

And the word on the street is Centerfest managed to come up with all this musical talent despite the fact that Raleigh's Hopscotch musical festival, run by the Independent Weekly,¹ put a hostile non-compete in all of its bands' contracts, banning them performing elsewhere locally within a month of the festival. For those of you, like the Clarion Content, hoping to see Durham hip-hop sensations, Toon and The Real Laww at Centerfest, this is why you can't. Boo, Hopscotch!

The roster of visual artists is also outstanding, featuring works of fine arts and fine crafts from our dear city, across the state, and around the country. Read about it here.

Kudos to the DAC. Onward and upward.



Notes
¹It is getting pretty far in the distant hazy past, but remember when the Independent Weekly used to be pro-Durham? That was before they bought Raleigh's The Spectator and moved out of their Hillsborough Road offices. The Indy, perhaps chasing the all-might advertising dollars of Wake County, started blowing Durham off, looking askance and down its cultural nose at Durham, just about at the beginning of our cultural renaissance. The New York Times gives Durham more coverage and more favorable coverage than the Indy. As you probably know, last week they were sold to a company out of Portland, Oregon. It felt appropriate, because they had sold out a long time ago.

Labels: Art, Durham, media, music, Pop Culture

Now you know Durham has made it... Not only are our friends at the New York Times regularly writing about Durham and our great food, our fabulous artists and musicians, and generally hyping our cultural scene; but as of today, even the New York Post is getting in on the act. Rupert Murdoch's boys are talking up Durham's terrific food, too.

And for long time observers of the Triangle milieu, here is another signifier. The Post's article which ostensibly covers Raleigh and Chapel Hill as well, starts with Durham. Moreover, it does not even mention the other's cities culinary delights until you continue to page two of the story. It highlights Durham institutions and up-and-comers from Whiskey, to Parker and Otis, to Only Burger and Counter Culture Coffee.

Read the whole article here.

Labels: Durham, food, media, Pop Culture

Clarion Content fave, and perhaps the most insightful pop culture commentator today, Stephen Marche takes on the American dollar in last month's Esquire magazine. Who is Marche, you ask yourself, dear readers? Only the kind of man who can cite Milton Friedman and Kanye West in the same article and have you nodding your head.

As he says in this, his latest blast, "As sound as the dollar," once proverbial, now sounds ironic. And while at first, this might feel unsettling, as Marche concludes, it is ultimately liberating.

Read the whole piece here.

Labels: economics, media, Pop Culture

Seen an interesting question posed in more than one place lately. Why is Jon Huntsman getting so much coverage for a candidate who receiving only one percent in the polls? It does not appear to mimic what has happened in the past for one percent, so-called fringe candidates, like Dennis Kuchinich, Ron Paul and Gary Johnson. Why would former New Mexico Governor Hunstman be getting so much publicity?



Hunstman's positions might overall be considered more mainstream than any of those three, or Rick Santorum or Herman Cain. It could be said that Huntsman's poll numbers are marginal, but not his policies. However, the Clarion Content would argue, wouldn't this make him less interesting, less appealing, less newsworthy as it were, not only is he not polling well, but he does not stand-out for unique and different solutions and ideas. (This media darling candidacy this reminds us of is Lamar Alexander.)



The Clarion Content has actually most frequently heard Jon Huntsman's name out of Democratic or Obama administration associated types. They have been out far and wide proclaiming that Huntsman is the candidate they least want to face. To us here, it sounds like the proverbial Briar Patch. President Obama and his men aren't the least bit scared of the tall, photogenic, Huntsman. Having nominated him to be Obama's ambassador to China, they must know the chinks in his armor, as it were. They are actually hoping that he somehow gains the nomination.



Is it their promotion of Huntsman that is getting him on the telly? This week he was on CNBC’s "The Kudlow Report," on Friday, and on Thursday, he was on Fox News’ "On The Record with Greta Van Susteren," before that on Wednesday, he was CNN’s "John King, USA." He capped it this weekend with Bob Schieffer on the prestigious, "Face the Nation," where he shared the screen with the leading insurgent candidate, Michelle Bachmann.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, media, Politics

The New York Times killed President Obama for his compromise on raising the debt ceiling. While we do not view it in the apocalyptic terms of the NY Times editorialists, we do think it was a bad deal, typical Washington, a messy compromise that solves nothing and postpones addressing the real issues and root causes.

The NY Times sees it even more harshly than that, "

...the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status. ...It is, of course, a political catastrophe for Democrats, who just a few weeks ago seemed to have Republicans on the run over their plan to dismantle Medicare; now Mr. Obama has thrown all that away. And the damage isn’t over: there will be more choke points where Republicans can threaten to create a crisis unless the president surrenders, and they can now act with the confident expectation that he will.

In the long run, however, Democrats won’t be the only losers. What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t."

Labels: 2012 presidential election, media, Politics

The dark forces of political correctness have struck again, once more trumpeting morality over truth. As smarter political commentators than the Clarion Content have noted, these paragons of political correctness set the stage for King George the II and his lackey, the Dick, Cheney. Their willingness to put a moral code above the truth gave King George solid firmament to stand on as he blithely lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, like the PCers he knew what was best for the country, the facts be damned.

Unfortunately, those cardinals of political correctness still haven't learned their lesson. We read this week, in the Huffington Post, where they bludgeoned the President-elect of the American College of Surgeons into resigning, a man who invented the Greenfield Filter, a device that has saved countless lives as a means of preventing blood clots during surgery, a professor emeritus of surgery at the University of Michigan, who has written more than 360 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, 128 book chapters and two textbooks and served on the editorial board of fifteen scientific journals.

His crime? Citing a peer-reviewed scientific study that suggested semen had health and psychological benefits for women.

The sentence in question, "So there's a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there's a better gift for that day than chocolates."

His intention as he told the Detroit Free Press, "The editorial was a review of what I thought was some fascinating new findings related to semen, and the way in which nature is trying to promote a stronger bond between men and women. It impressed me. It seemed as though it was a gift from nature. And so that was the reason for my lighthearted comments..."

The response from the Inquisition on behalf of Political Correctness? You're fired.

What a country!

Labels: media, Politics, Pop Culture, public protest, thought

The Clarion Content is not a fan of seeing United States foreign policy conducted on a strictly pragmatic calculus. We do, however, support a pragmatic understanding of how events on the world stage play out. That is to say, sometimes foreign policy's motives have to be idealist, but interpretations of outcomes and results must be realist.

It is through this lens that we want to note that we strongly agree with George Friedman and Strafor's analysis of events in Egypt in recent weeks.

The week began with an old soldier running Egypt. It ended with different old soldiers running Egypt with even more formal power than Mubarak had. This has caused worldwide shock and awe...We do not want to be killjoys now, since everyone is so excited and happy. But we should point out that, in spite of the crowds, nothing much has really happened yet in Egypt. It doesn’t mean that it won’t, but it hasn’t yet.

An 82-year-old man has been thrown out of office, and his son will not be president. The constitution and parliament are gone and a military junta is in charge. The rest is speculation.

The great majority of the Western media is running around foolishly asserting that there has been a revolution. This wild overclaim only shows the distortion between their hype-skewed lens and events on the ground. The Wikipedia entry on these events, for example, is hyperbolically headed, "Egyptian Revolution of 2011."

Labels: media, Middle East, Politics, public protest

Representative to the United States Congress Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head during a public event in Tucson this morning. Tragic. We never want American politics to be conducted this way. This way lies madness.

Representative Giffords was holding an event outside a grocery store in Tucson, AZ when a man ran up and started shooting. The Pima County sheriff has told MSNBC that five other people were killed and six were wounded, including some members of her staff.

AOL reports, "Giffords has represented Arizona's 8th Congressional district since 2007 and is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition of conservative Democrats. She narrowly defeated tea party-backed Republican Jesse Kelly to win a third House term in November."

Domestic terrorism tends to be wildly underplayed and underreported by America's corporatist media. Bear this in mind as the story unfolds this week.

Labels: media, Politics

The faces have changed, but the game remains the same

Despite what the defenders of the Obama administration want to tell you, dear readers, the chilling post 9.11 security climate is still in effect. It is more than that Homeland Security is checking nutsacks at airport terminals this holiday season. Our quarrel is not only with the balance between safety and privacy, but with the attitude and atmosphere of the state. The mentality of the state's security apparatus has not noticeably changed under the ostensibly liberal Obama.

What the Clarion Content's small "c" conservative editorial board believes this reflects is that President Obama and his policy team do not come at the world from a less regulation where ever possible framework. Obviously. From their point of view, more is more. This means that, although the current administration does not believe in the invading one's privacy for the same draconian reasons as Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo, their p.c. based paternalism yields essentially the same result. Guantanamo is still open. Black prison sites are still likely maintained. Alliances with strong men across Central Asia, irrespective of national and individual citizen's sovereignty, continue. The state makes unwarranted, and frequently undisclosed, compromises of individual American citizen's civil liberties.

Ultimately there is a government mindset, led by the security apparatus, that believes proper enforcement and public safety trump individual rights and the protect and serve mantra of policing. We ran across another story today that underlined this message recently.

A fifty year-old airline pilot has come under fire from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, after posting a behind the scenes tour of security flaws at San Francisco International Airport on YouTube. The pilot, who taped the clips with his cell phone, has been flying for the airlines for more than a decade. He alerted Sacramento's KXTV when he posted the videos saying he wanted the information to be made public.

According ABC7 in San Francisco, the video posting resulted in federal air marshals and sheriff's deputies showing up, menacingly unannounced at the pilot's house. This appearance that the pilot, a deputized federal air marshal, also recorded, was made to personally and aggressively confiscate his federally issued handgun. Rather than handle this paperwork detail administratively in an office environment, security descended on the pilot in his own home, to make a show of force and displeasure.

His attorney, Don Werno, says he believes the TSA was sending a message that "you've angered us by telling the truth and by showing America that there are major security problems despite the fact that we've spent billions of dollars allegedly to improve airline safety."

Once again, enforcement attacks the whistleblower. Obviously, this sort of individual incident is far below the Presidential radar, unless it involves Henry Louis Gates Jr. or another member of the elite with access.

Change? Only who is sitting at the table has changed, the game remains the same.

Labels: 2012 presidential election, constitutional issues, cop stories, corruption, media, Politics

The Clarion Content, among many others, has questioned the accuracy and neutrality of polls from the Rasmussen Reports. They were founded by a former employee of the coronation, errr, campaign, of King George the II. They consistently phrase their polling questions with just a little twist to produce the desired result.

Their defense? They were right on the numbers in 2004 and 2006.

Last night, however, they were outed. According to our friend Nate Silver, over at the 538, "Rasmussen polls quite consistently turned out to overstate the standing of Republicans tonight. Of the roughly 100 polls released by Rasmussen or its subsidiary Pulse Opinion Research in the final 21 days of the campaign, roughly 70 to 75 percent overestimated the performance of Republican candidates, and on average they were biased against Democrats by 3 to 4 points."

Interestingly, it would be our argument that overstating your candidates odds at the polls actually hurts their chances. It would be analagous to the brass continuously telling American troops in Vietnam that the enemy was weak, under-armed, on the verge of starvation and primed for defeat. These lies and exaggerations actually harmed United States soldiers and Marines by leading them to regularly underestimate the enemy. We would argue that the Rasmussen Reports did something of the same for right-wing candidates last night.

Labels: media, Politics, Predictions, thought

Despite foolish claims from those safely ensconced in the ivory towers, the recession is in evidence everywhere. One of the ways the Clarion Content sees the impact of the widespread economic slump is the relentless moves downmarket by the American public. Sales of expensive tickets to sporting events are way down, cheaper movie ticket sales are up. Fancy, far flung tourists destinations are suffering, while it is less so for more humble, local places that folks can roadtrip to with the family.

This morning the Nation's Restaurant News pointed out another area where this downmarket shifting can be seen, convenience store food sales. Because what is even cheaper than fast food breakfast? The convenience store. The NRN reports that convenience store traffic rose 8% and sales jumped 11% in the second quarter of 2010.

Read more here in the Nation's Restaurant News.

Labels: economics, media, Pop Culture

A local North Carolina Congressman is in hot water after being caught on tape grabbing an amateur videographer by the scruff of the neck. Congressman Bob Etheridge, of Lillington, NC, which is just north of Fort Bragg and Fayetteville, and south of Raleigh, was leaving a fundraiser hosted by California Congressperson Nancy Pelosi.

The amateur cameraman is waiting on the street ala the paparazzi and asks, "Do you fully support the Obama agenda?"

This question irritates the Congressman and he demands to know the video cameramen are. He repeats the question several times as they refuse to answer. He attempts to swat the camera out of his face unsuccessfully, then gets even more aggressive. The tape shows Representative Etheridge, a Lillington Democrat, holding the young man by the wrist and grabbing him by the back of the neck.

Did the Congressman get ambushed? Yes. Did he overreact? Yes. This is the logical extension of what happens to public discourse when America plays gotcha politics. We can all get in the sewer together or we can all climb out of the sewer together.

Labels: constitutional issues, media, Politics, technology

This fascinating pair of photos shows just how much the photographer frames the context of a scene. This is something that we, the public, the people, the other, should never forget. President Obama and his wife Michelle were hiking in the woods this weekend outside of Asheville, North Carolina.

The first photo was taken by the official White House photographer. The second by the Associated Press. Context makes all the difference. All credit to Lynn Sweet who writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, we found this insightful post on her blog, which frequently has fascinating presidential tidbits.

Photo One

Just off for a hike in the woods...


Photo Two

With our support staff, security, press people, and other assorted friends...

Labels: media, Politics

The Clarion Content happened across two articles that traipsed down the same path but came from very different views about the right and the left of American politics. (Please don't let label confusion trip you up, the spectrum is as broad as the population is diverse.)

One of the articles was on the BBC News website, the other was on the Washington Post site. Both attempt to trace why and how politicians of the left and right appeal to their constituencies. The BBC article, as one might assume, is written from a view sympathetic to the left. Somewhat more surprisingly the Washington Post is from the right. It is a feature is written by Gerard Alexander an associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia. It is part of a lecture he is delivering called, "Do Liberals Know Best? Intellectual Self-Confidence and the Claim to a Monopoly on Knowledge." He is coming from quite a different perspective than the BBC.

It is interesting though that both news organizations chose now to publish articles on the subject. The parallels within the articles fascinate. For example both use the historian Richard Hofstadter to set the scene for the left's perception of the right. In the BBC article titled, "Why do people vote against their own interests?" Hofstadter is paraphrased describing the mixture used to win on the right,"'the paranoid style' of American politics, in which God, guns and race get mixed into a toxic stew of resentment at anything coming out of Washington."

The BBC wants to explain why the right thinks and behaves the way it does.

Professor Alexander in the Washington Post believes it is the unfair labeling of the right done by the left that has coarsened the debate and diminished the conversation. He, too, cites Hofstadter, "the Manichaean style of thought, the apocalyptic tendencies, the love of mystification, the intolerance of compromise that are observable in the right-wing mind."

Both authors cite the use of the phrase Bolshevik plot to describe the Democrats health care plans. The BBC says

But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help.

In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently running at 87%.

Professor Alexander retorts,

Many Democrats describe their troubles simply as a PR challenge, a combination of conservative misinformation -- as when Obama charges that critics of health-care reform are peddling fake fears of a "Bolshevik plot" -- and the country's failure to grasp great liberal accomplishments.

The parallels of the two pieces don't end there. Both articles cite books by Drew Western and Thomas Frank. The BBC gives them far more play, quoting a Bush-Gore debate excerpt from Western's book that shows the village idiot Bush "aw shucks" style paralleled versus the wooden, wonkish Gore. Bush dumbs down the issue to make his point and in the court of public opinion win the argument.

The BBC buys Franks's proposition about how this works when it says,

The Republicans have learnt how to stoke up resentment against the patronizing liberal elite, all those do-gooders who assume they know what poor people ought to be thinking.

Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

And then it quotes from Frank about the vicious cycle he perceives on the right,

"You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining."

Fascinatingly Professor Alexander makes essentially the same argument in the Washington Post. The only difference? The BBC thinks Frank is correct. The professor thinks Frank is belittling right-wing voters and their reasoning.

"...liberal condescension, exemplified in Thomas Frank's best-selling 2004 book, What's the Matter With Kansas? Frank argued that working-class voters were so distracted by issues such as abortion that they were induced into voting against their own economic interests. Then-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, later chairman of the Democratic National Committee, echoed that theme in his 2004 presidential run, when he said Republicans had succeeded in getting Southern whites to focus on "guns, God and gays" instead of economic redistribution."

Their conclusions, despite their different takes on the narratives offered by the left to discern the right, are startlingly similar. Both authors see wellsprings of populism shooting up in America. Both see virulent anger and a distaste for intellectual elitism. The BBC says,

"the ultimate sin in modern politics is appearing to take the voters for granted.

This is a culture war but it is not simply being driven by differences over abortion, or religion, or patriotism. And it is not simply Red states vs. Blue states any more. It is a war on the entire political culture, on the arrogance of politicians, on their slipperiness and lack of principle, on their endless deal making and compromises.

And when the politicians say to the people protesting: 'But we're doing this for you', that just makes it worse. In fact, that seems to be what makes them angriest of all."

Professor Alexander addresses the issue of race that BBC omits. He almost has to, as the right feels compelled to explain away the en masse shift of the American South from the Democratic column to the Republican. The professor's not very convincing answer is that polls show racism has declined, and Obama won. Those who read the quotes of the Joe Sixpack in the South before the last presidential election will find those arguments a bit hard to swallow.

Professor Alexander cites Jay Leno's man on the street interviews and asks if one really believes that Jay only interviews people from the right, of course not is his conclusion. Yet Alexander says the left dismisses the right as if that were so. He cites everyone from John Stewart to the Daily Kos to the Obama White House as being willing to label the right wing and dismissively ignore their policy proposals. Unfortunately, he is reluctant to admit that the right does the same, claiming rather, "A few conservative voices may say that all liberals are always wrong, but these tend to be relatively marginal figures or media gadflies such as Glenn Beck."

Still he sounds an important warning in his conclusion, one the Clarion Content firmly believes is important to heed,"Perhaps the most important conservative insight being depreciated is the durable warning from free-marketeers that government programs often fail to yield what their architects intend...Even liberals should think twice about the prospect of decisions on innovative surgeries, light bulbs and carbon quotas being directed by legislators grandstanding for the cameras."


Link to the BBC article here. Link to the Washington Post article here.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, economics, media, Politics

The Clarion Content has been hearing some fascinating speculation about who might be the next Republican Presidential candidate. Of course, President Barack Obama has yet to even complete his first year in office, so it is awfully early to ponder. It is only Obama's wafer thin stack of accomplishments that has discussion brewing this soon.

The two most interesting names reflect a trend, one that started long before Obama and Sarah Palin, but a trend that they most definitely epitomize. In the quest for the presidency today, it is far more important to be telegenic than to be substantial. In that same vein, two names that are being thrown around as potential Republican nominees are (former) television commentators, Lou Dobbs, of CNN fame, and Glenn Beck, of the ostensibly fair and balanced Fox News.

Dobbs appeared on former senator and previous candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination, Fred Thompson's radio show. Dobbs was asked, "Have you given any thought for running for President?"

"Yes, is the answer," was his response.

The National Post of Canada reported, "Mr. Dobbs' spokesman, Robert Dillenschneider, said there was no timeline for announcing a decision." However, Dillenschneider did say, "People have always said Lou Dobbs had a bigger, brighter future. But he was very committed to CNN while he was there. He never really thought about running until the day after he left when people started coming to him."

Dobbs carries with him the baggage of all the rhetoric he spewed on the air. His rants against immigration carried with them a particularly dark vitriol and malevolence.

Dobbs has also yet to rule out challenging first term incumbent Democratic Senator Bob Menendez for his New Jersey seat in 2012.

Mr. Beck, who shares Mr. Dobbs hatred of dark skinned foreigners, has yet to make any kind of definitive statement. The New Times reports, "[Beck] says he will promote voter registration drives and sponsor a series of conventions across the country featuring conservative speakers, all leading up to a rally in Washington, D.C. in August."

It also quoted Grover Norquist, who is the president of Americans for Tax Reform, “They [TV personalities like Beck] are spokesmen for a movement that you can see emerging."

The Clarion Content agrees. While it is far from clear that either Glenn Beck or Lou Dobbs have what it takes to seize the Republican Presidential nomination, the rumblings from their camps are symbolic. An ineffective (thus far) President Obama has a small window in which to improve his performance before the speculation about his imminent replacement intensifies significantly.

Labels: media, Politics

The CBS Early Show this week continued to reinforce American culture's sexually exploitative, anti-feminist treatment of homosexuality. It aired footage of former American Idol finalist Adam Lambert kissing his male keyboardist at the American Music Awards with the big moment blurred out. "Oh the horrors," men kissing! Surely, the American public isn't ready to be exposed to that kind of open homosexuality. Unless... Wait for it...

Right. If it is ladies, it is A-okay, as the Early Show blatantly demonstrated when moments after airing the blurred male on male kiss, by Lambert and keyboardist, it showed Madonna and Brittney swapping tongue with nary a bit of discretion. No blurring necessary. The difference is ugly gender stereotyping that treats women as the objects of visual male sexual gratification.

Disney owned Good Morning America took an even more openly anti-gay stance when it canceled Lambert's schedule appearance the day after the American Music Awards.

Labels: media, Politics, Pop Culture

Whether it was strictly a photo-op or something actually came of last month's meeting between President Obama and two former Secretaries of State, Republicans George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Democratic senator and defense wonk Sam Nunn, and William Perry, a former Secretary of Defense about the issue of the control and security of the world's existing supply of nuclear weapons, it was a Presidential bully pulpit moment and we were glad to see it happen. Even if all Obama is able to accomplish this early in his presidency is raising the volume on the subject, we are glad to see he is at least doing that. The Clarion Content believes loose nuclear weapons are probably the single greatest short-term threat to humanity.

Securing these existing nuclear weapons as tightly as possible is an extremely high priority, revitalizing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is a far more specious and far less worthy goal.

Labels: media, nuclear issues

Who gets it first?

It is easy to forget in these days of Obama-mania that ex-dictator George Bush II still has many ardent supporters. Golf analyst David Feherty writing for D Magazine provided a sharp reminder. Feherty, an Irishman by birth, has been living in the Dallas area for twelve years. He has been a big supporter of American troops, visiting Iraq to entertain as well as, working with the "Troops First Foundation," which is raising $15 million for soldiers who return wounded, many of them without limbs. He created his own division -- "F Troop" -- and last year took eight soldiers to South Dakota for pheasant hunting.

The 43rd and worst president ever is moving to the Dallas area. Feherty was writing for D Magazine about the return of the bumbler. King George the II received 62 million votes in 2004. In 2008 more than 61 million people voted for a candidate other than Barack Obama. Many of those folks were vitriolically opposed to Obama or any Democratic candidate. Feherty offered a semi-kidding commentary about how, in his view, most American troops feel about Democratic politicians today,

"From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though. Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there's a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death."

The Clarion Content is quite cognizant that America is still a 50-50 country, starkly divided on many issues, despite the papering over supported by many in the mainstream media. The Clarion Content reads comments like Feherty's and fears the huge backlash that is likely coming if President Obama isn't a massive, and all but immediate, success.

Read more here.

Labels: 2008 presidential election, media, Politics, Predictions, quotes