Our Future: How to celebrate Labor Day? Support the Empoyee Free Choice Act

about.com: How GM derailed public transportation to sell more cars

The Brad Blog: Over 16,000 votes "unaccounted for" in Palm Beach county primary election 'recount'. "Severe repercussions, dire consequences for Novemeber elections and all elections" says Broward County election supervisor candidate.

Calculated Risk: Gustav takes aim at NOLA, oil prices

Philosoraptor: McCain's actual choice for V.P.

The Opinion Mill's Sunday Bookchat: Harold Moore and Joe Galloway return to Vietnam to lay old ghosts to rest -- and deplore the creation of new ones in Iraq. Sidney Blumenthal on the self-destruction of the GOP. Plus: How American workers are getting squeezed, how a unique ecosystem is being threatened, and how publishing thinks small.

The Jewel of Medina is an as yet unpublished book about The Prophet Mohammed and his child bride, Aisha. Several commenters and reviewers have indicated its quality as a novel might not be very good. But Random House paid a $100,000 advance for the book, had arranged for foreign publication, Book of the Month Club selection, and Quality Paperback Book Club selection. It's not like Random House deals exclusively in high fiction; they publish Danielle Steele romance novels, for crying out loud.

Random House pulled out of publishing the book last minute, when they somehow got the idea that bad Islamic terrorists might retaliate against the publisher for the book's content. In the meantime, at least one book prize committee has announced that they will not consider any Random House submissions until this book is published, due to the cowardice exhibited in pulling the title:

...we can not pretend that this type of cowardice will disappear without serious remonstrance. Until The Jewel of Medina is actually published, The Langum Charitable Trust will not consider submissions of any books, for any of our prizes, from Random House or any of its affiliates. We do this reluctantly, since our most recent prize in American historical fiction went to a Random House title.

Salman Rushdie, the most famous author to deal with threats and censorship due to his book's content vis-a-vis Islam, is supporting publication of the book on free-speech, rather than literary, grounds.

The Atlantic says they haven't seen "evidence that he read The Jewel of Medina or liked the excerpts." But Rushdie is currently in the Random House stable of authors (although they didn't publish Satanic Verses):

“I am very disappointed to hear that my publishers, Random House, have cancelled another author's novel, apparently because of their concerns about possible Islamic reprisals,” Rushdie said. “This is censorship by fear and it sets a very bad precedent indeed.”

CQPolitics: You don't forget that your mother sued your ex-wife--unless your mind is going.

uggabugga: WaPo B.S.

GOPnot4me: Nebraska rethugs follow the playbook.

American Torture: Physicians, Psychologists and "The Dark Side"

The Opinion Mill's Sunday Bookchat asks: Will the credibility of a major publishing house be the last casualty of the Bush administration? Will a list of books make you a better citizen? Will Hanif Kureishi finally get the recognition he deserves? Will Ron Suskind be the reporter who finally gets the impeachment ball rolling?

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: moose & squirrel, one good move, Walled-In Pond, The Whole American Hog

I generally don't worry too much about how my posts go over with right wing folks. Obviously, Crooks & Liars is a political opinion site (it says so right in our commenting policy) and therefore, I'm going to give my opinion. Most of the time, John and I aren't too far off from each other in the way that we view things and I usually check with John on which posts I am doing so he knows that I'm representing his site as he would want. And I try to be careful. I don't always get things right, but for the most part, I think even if you don't agree with me, you can see where I'm coming from.

So that makes the email John got this morning in response to the post I did about The Chris Matthews Show discussing shakeups in the McCain campaign staff amusing. It seems that Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters.org (the site dedicated to "exposing & combating liberal media bias") thought that my characterization of the Chris Matthews panel glossing over McCain's campaign difficulties was "too partisan" to be acceptable publishing material for C&L.

Moi? Too partisan? (I'll ignore for the moment that Sheppard works for that hack Brent Bozell--who actually filed a suit on a Buffy TVS episode--and I work for John Amato--let's line up their statements side by side and see who has been utterly and completely wrong more often. Quick hint, Noel: It ain't John.) How about the hubris it takes for a right wing blogger to tell John Amato what he should and should not publish on his site and who should or shouldn't be a front pager? Shall we look at the kind of work Mr. Sheppard thinks is appropriately publishable for the internets? (Warning: every link gives Newsbusters a hit)

Brokaw Proposes McCain-Bashing Democrat TV Ad

Washington Post Op-ed: 'Phil Gramm Is Right'

Ben Stein: Media Are Whipping Us Into Economic Despair

Clean Air Causes Global Warming, Global Warming Causes Smog

Liberal Hypocrisy: Jackson's Nuttiness Funny If About Cheney

Is Wikipedia Promoting Global Warming Hysteria?

You know the old saying about people in glass houses, Noel? Maybe you should put down that rock now, because that crystal condo in which you reside looks a little fragile.

image by Driftglass

Dear New York Times,

Word has it that the Times’ publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., decided last fall that it was time to add another Republican columnist to the paper’s op-ed page, and the decision early on was to find a “lightning-rod conservative.” For reasons that I’ve never entirely understood, you picked the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol.

Now, it’s always difficult for any large institution to admit a mistake, especially on the heels of some high-profile embarrassments. I understand that. This is especially true when someone in a position of authority makes a poor employment decision, hiring the wrong person for an important job. (I suspect it’s tempting to adopt the president’s approach, and pretend that the unqualified hire is doing a heckuva job, no matter how humiliating the person’s on-the-job performance.)

But there comes a point at which the paper’s reputation matters more than the embarrassment that would come from admitting a mistake.

If Kristol were just a conservative hatchet-man, his columns would simply be predictable. After nearly five months of columns, however, the problem is more jarring — his work is that of an awful columnist, a weak writer, and a boring political observer. This isn’t about ideology; it’s about talent, or in this case, the lack thereof.

Take today’s column, for example. Without a hint of satire, Bill Kristol devoted his entire 800-word column in the nation’s most important newspaper to scrutinizing Passover press releases.

He is, in other words, making the New York Times look silly.

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The Washington Post, for reasons that defy comprehension, published a 1,700-word thought piece yesterday on women in America being dumb, shallow, and generally kind of pathetic. The author, Charlotte Allen, made her spectacularly dumb case with the kind of nonsense one might expect from a misogynistic child — women are bad drivers, they have physically smaller brains, they’re awful at math, they have bad taste in entertainment, etc.

The problem, it seems to me, is not Allen. Her foolish attack on women is easy to dismiss as petty nonsense, best suited for a He-Man Woman-Hater’s Club blog. Instead, the fault lies with Washington Post editors who thought Allen’s anti-feminist hit-job deserved to be published on the front page of the paper’s Outlook section.

The WaPo’s Outlook editor took a moment to respond to criticism.

“If it insulted people, that was not the intent,” Outlook editor John Pomfret told me this morning, calling the piece “tongue-in-cheek.” […]

Pomfret said that being an opinion article, he’s not surprised readers reacted to it strongly. But added: “Perhaps it wasn’t packaged well enough to make it clear that it was tongue-in-cheek.”

I found it hard to believe Pomfret would publish such tripe. I find it even harder to believe this is his explanation for such poor judgment.

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Susie Bright: The end of a publishing era as "Best American Erotica 2008" will be the last in the series. What this says about publishing, reading, and those of us who write anything at all, is sad, sad.

Too Sense: Andrew Young needs Jesus.

Les Enrages: an open letter to Tom Donahue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Shakespeare's Sister: Bush's Freedom Agenda (involves cocktail weenies, of course).

CJSD blog: Twelve ways to pick a candidate, even when Huckabee has completely lost his "figure."

(Mike's playing music on a boat with the Phantom Blues Band and is temporarily away from internet; he'll be back soon.)

Click on image for full strip

Joan Walsh at Salon:

Last week we told you that Salon was running two "Opus" cartoons, featuring spiritual seeker Lola Granola's stint as a "radical Islamist," that many newspapers, including the Washington Post, declined to publish. This week, Salon is running Berkeley Breathed's original, unedited version of the Lola Granola finale, and it's slightly different from the one approved for distribution to newspapers by the Washington Post Company.[..]

As I noted last week, Editor & Publisher and others reported that some newspapers had concerns about running a cartoon that might somehow be construed as insensitive to Muslims. I'd like to insert a line here about Salon's courage in running these two strips, but I didn't see anything that made me think twice about them -- except the news that others wouldn't publish them. We're proud to have Breathed as a contributor, and sad about what this episode says about newspaper publishing today.

Awhile back I wrote a post called “Patriotism v. Nationalism,” which was followed up by “Patriotism v. Paranoia,” “Patriotism v. Francis Fukuyama,” “Patriotism v. Hate Speech,” and probably some other posts. Anyway, in the first post I repeated some quotes about patriotism and nationalism I found in Bartlett’s. Here are some of them, again:

The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war. — Sidney J. Harris

Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill and calling for larger spurs and brighter beaks. I fear that nationalism is one of England’s many spurious gifts to the world. — Richard Aldington

“Responsibility” seems to be a common theme:

What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility … a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. — Adlai Stevenson

I contend that the primary difference between patriots and nationalists is that patriots value responsibility, while nationalists value loyalty. So you know that when you read this, you are reading the words of a nationalist, not a patriot.

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Dinesh D'Souza is living high on the hog in SD...:

Since Dartmouth, the conservative fray has been quite remunerative for D'Souza. Six years ago, he and his wife bought their home in Fairbanks Ranch. The nearly 8000-square-foot house has six bedrooms, seven and a half baths, and a four-car garage, where they keep their maroon 1992 Jaguar XJS. A circular drive fronts the French country stone house...read on

for someone who pens right wing---extremist views:

Like his hero Joe McCarthy, he has no sense of shame. He is a childish thinker and writer tackling subjects about which he knows little to make arguments that reek of political extremism. His book is a national disgrace, a sorry example of a publishing culture more concerned with the sensational than the sensible...read on

They certainly take care of their own, don't they?