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Two good pieces from WaPo. First, Howard Kurtz on media hype and then Chris Cilizza on five myths from the election. The Washington Post continues to be the grown-up part of the media. Pickerhead can only explain his Sunday NY Times subscription as a form of ancestor worship (Roger Simon’s words). The Post is definitely a better read.
Howard Kurtz notices the media has gone gaga.
Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled “Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story.” Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama’s campaign.
Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue — “Obama’s American Dream” — filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.
Are the media capable of merchandizing the moment, packaging a president-elect for profit? Yes, they are.
What’s troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing. The endless campaign is over, and there’s nothing wrong with the country pulling together, however briefly, behind its new leader. But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.
“The Obamas’ New Life!” blares People’s cover, with a shot of the family. “New home, new friends, new puppy!” Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: “I Think I’m a Pretty Cool Dad.” The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle “is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — combined!” for the fashion world.
Whew! Are journalists fostering the notion that Obama is invincible, the leader of what the New York Times dubbed “Generation O”?
Each writer, each publication, seems to reach for more eye-popping superlatives. …
Chris Cilizza writes on five 2008 election myths.
The 2008 presidential election ended less than two weeks ago, but the mythmaking machine has already begun to churn. President-elect Barack Obama transformed the face of the electorate! The Republican Party will be a miserable minority in Congress for the next century! Cats and dogs are now living together! Below we explode the five biggest myths that have already sprung up around the election that was. …
Since we were reporting on media fools, Ed Morrissey has the details of how the “warmest October on record” turned out to be September.
The main statistical facility for global-warming activists compounded error with folly and have undermined their credibility entirely. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies announced that last month was the warmest October on record, surprising meteorologists who had seen colder temperatures and unseasonal snowstorms and wondered where all the heat originated:
GISS’s computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-skeptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running. …
Mr. Morrissey also notices that, Gasp!, lobbyists have key positions in The One’s transition team.
To put the old song on its ear, everything new is old again. Remember when Barack Obama said this?
To rousing applause, Barack Obama formally announced this afternoon that the Democratic National Committee will follow his lead and begin refusing donations from registered lobbyists and special-interest political action committees.
“They do not fund my campaign,” the presumptive Democratic nominee told a small-town southwest Virginia crowd, after delivering a standard refrain that blames drug and insurance interests for blocking universal health care. “They will not fund our party. And they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I’m President of the United States.”
They may not have funded his campaign, although that’s highly questionable, but the Washington Post reports that they’ll be running his government. …
This is fun. BBC News painted their name on a forty foot shipping container. They also fitted it with a GPS system. All of this to start a year long illustration of global trade as they follow it around the world. The first stop for the container was the Chivas distiller in Scotland for a shipment bound for Shanghai, China. Along the way, the box went thru the Suez Canal and BBC did a piece on that too. From time to time we’ll check in on the BOX.
WSJ Interviews Malcolm Gladwell on his new book.
In the thoroughly engaging “Outliers,” author Malcolm Gladwell asserts that success seems to stem as much from context as from personal attributes. Read the review of “Outliers.”
In “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell’s third book, he casts his eye on people who have excelled in their fields — and then analyzes how their lives have been as influenced by serendipity as much as their own talents. His publisher, Little, Brown, has ordered up a large first print run of 640,000 copies. (See review on W10.) Mr. Gladwell, whose two earlier titles, “The Tipping Point” and “Blink,” were national best sellers, asks his readers to question individual success stories. “People don’t rise from nothing,” he writes. “They are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.” The 45-year-old Mr. Gladwell, who lives in New York City, reflects on his new book as well as how he frames his ideas.
Scrappleface says Obama resigned from Senate so he could write a new memoir.
Claiming that the hectic pace of his work in the U.S. Senate has taken its toll, Barack Obama announced today he would resign his senate seat effective Sunday, and take a couple of months off to relax and finish a tell-all memoir. …