Not at John Edwards, who’s just a fallible person, but at the press who effectively acted as his beards during his affair.

Take a look at this picture, shot by Robert Scoble from the Washington Post today:

Take a look at the body language of Edwards and Hunter, sitting next to him as the reporters question him (Hamsher calls it “holding court”).

WTF?

Who are the two reporters sitting and talking to them? Either they are the most clueless and disinterested men on the planet – and thus unqualified to be reporters – or they were in the tank for Edwards and covering up his behavior – and thus unqualified to be reporters. Someone help me figure out who they are so I can publicly shame them.

Like I said, I’m uninterested in paying for crap media. How in the Wide World of Sports could a thinking reporter have sat there, looking at the two of them, and not gone “hmmmm…” and done a little digging or maybe asked a question or two?

At a state Senate hearing on California’s efforts to cut emissions and shadowbox global warming, an African-American Sacramento preacher was pushing for participation in this process by minority spokespeople – because they will have the most trouble bearing the higher energy costs associated with going green.

He got an earful from Democratic Sen. Pat Wiggins, D-Santa Rosa…

She’s since apologized, shockingly…

You read about people who have cancer, feel fine, and then get the news. The day before they got the news, they were still ill, they just didn’t know it. They might have had twinges, or some concerns. But until the test results came in, they thought they were fine. I feel similarly about Georgia – it’s the lab result that reminds us that we face a strong, ruthless, imperialistic power in Russia that fully intends to get its place at the superpower table back, by any means necessary.

I read a lot of the commentary over the weekend, and a lot of it makes the question of ’cause’ deeper and murkier than ever. It’s likely that Georgia overreached; it’s equally likely that Russia would have acted sooner or later regardless. The question is whether Russia intends to eat Georgia in one bite now, or just weaken it enough that the Georgian leadership reconsiders the value of a close relationship with the US.

One of the negative consequences of our balancing act on Iran is the fact that we’re dependent on the Russians and Chinese to help keep the situation there metastable – meaning that our freedom of action is severely limited elsewhere.

Sorry for the silence – we had another family road trip this weekend to fetch Littlest Guy from camp.

Here he is, looking all James Dean in front of his Stanford (boo!) dorm…

Afterward, we went over to Berkeley (yay!) for some high-end-dining.

We had a German Frankfurter, and it was just as good as I remembered it from 30 years ago. The libertarian literature was something I didn’t remember, tho…

All in all, a great trip. Good visits with friends, great time with TG and the boys (Middle Guy came along).

…catching up on work and blogging will resume shortly.

I’m sorry for stealing Gerard Vanderleun’s oft-used title for this, but I really can’t think of any other name for the opportunity the Ceiling Cat has placed in my lap today.

See, I was reading Jeff Jarvis’ feed, as I usually, do, and he was commenting favorably on the New Jersey Star Ledger’s video newsroom; he mentioned that there had been some dialog with a blogger, which I thought might be amusing, and so I clicked over and watched it.

The video is embedded below. Go to 5:55 to see the part I’m discussing…

Ledger Live – 08-06-08

All good?

See, today, I’ve been following another story about journalism, but couldn’t think of an angle to make it an interesting blog post until I watched the video.

Townhall apparently busted the Washington Post for a Page 1 story on McCain donations, which turned out to name suspicious donors – who never donated to John McCain. Here’s the Townhall followup:

That means these people Mosk alleged had been somehow forced to make campaign contributions to McCain through a third-party bundler NEVER DONATED MONEY TO MCCAIN. The very lede of Mosk’s front-page story, included in my previous post linked above, was wrong. What’s going on with the Washington Post? How could they have blown this one so badly? And where did the March 12 contribution date come from?

Update: I just remembered Mosk was the same reporter who tried to rustle up a McCain land-swap scandal on shaky facts earlier this year. I wrote about it HERE.

That’s one of the two national newspapers of record. Let’s go back to the video, OK?

“We have been under the mistaken idea that journalism is about getting out into the world, covering school boards, murder trials, digging through government documents. But we hear from a prominent New Jersey blogger that the future of the American newsroom will be people at home, in their pajamas, blogging. Perhaps, say, we can tell you what we had for breakfast, I don’t really know. But we thought that trying to be at the cutting edge in these difficult times that for a little levity we would perhaps remind people that there are real journalists who get out in the world and get you your news.”

Now Carol Ann Campbell may be a better reporter than she is hairstylist – although as someone who’s made legislation happen in my spare time, I’ll suggest they’ve set a low bar for her by using that as the measure of quality for her journalism.

And props – as Jarvis has offered – to the Star-Ledger for doing this exercise at all. Now Jeff has issues with their reactions as journalists to the new business reality:

But what struck me listening to them is that they are not prepared for that independent life. I was looking at this from the perspective of being both a former newspaperman who did find a new life in the academe and elsewhere and from the perspective of now being a journalism educator. It is vital that we prepare journalists for this new and independent life or we will lose their journalism. Preparation, to me, means both training – it’s a great thing that Ledger print people are making video in the Rosenblum Method – and setting up an infrastructure to help them create sustainable journalistic enterprises if at all possible. The first factor is why I’m trying to establish a continuing education program for professionals at CUNY. The second is why I’m holding a summit for new business models for news there. That’s my perspective.

But it’s more than that. The issue isn’t just that Americans don’t want to pay for traditional journalism – it’s that they don’t want to pay for crap traditional journalism, and there is enough crap in the line that the whole pipe is tainted. Rathergate, Gropegate, now Donorgate – look, I’m happy to pay for quality information. Mike Bloomberg made a few billion dollars selling it. But I’ll be damned – and most Americans will be damned too – if we’ll pay for junk when better junk is available for free.

This isn’t (just) about transparent agendas. You can be a good journalist and have an agenda, I’m sure. It’s just that the present generation of journalists seems incapable of following the basic dicta of their craft in favor of transparent posturing. And to be blunt, we bloggers are just as good at posturing and twice as entertaining.

So how about it journalists? Why not – just for grins – try doing real journalism (the stuff you’re claiming to sell us). And why not, editors, have some public consequences – OK stocks might be excessive, but firing and some front-page apologies might not be a bad idea. Eventually you might learn to self-correct.

Until then we’ll be sitting here in our pajamas correcting you.

via talkLeft, we get this love letter to America from outrage blogger Skimble:

If McCain wins, it will be because Americans deserve him, just as we have deserved Bush Junior. If Obama wins, he will be a glorified janitor for the endless piles of shit the GOP left in its wake. Just as Bill Clinton was for Reagan and Bush Senior.

Our complacency will be our downfall, and I no longer care. Let Rush Limbaugh and ExxonMobil have America – it’s becoming a crumbling shithole anyway.

And on that happy note, we end the blog.

Jeralyn at Talkleft sympathizes:

All a Democrat can do is hope November comes quickly and our candidate wins, so we can get on with the business of fixing health care, ending the parade of right-wing ideologues as nominees for federal judgeships, preserve the independence of our Supreme Court, get out of one war (hopefully without getting back into another) and, fingers crossed, start to empty our prisons of non-violent offenders.

But for having those goals, and being excited that the convention is taking place in Denver, I might stop blogging about the election too. I’m not where Skimble is yet, but I certainly understand his thinking.

I don’t. I don’t begin to understand the toxic thinking behind that kind of position, and all I can do is link it to some deep kind of self-hate. I’m unhappy with a lot of things about America – things which I think we need to fix and patch and shore up so it’s an appropriate vessel for our grandchildren. But it’s a grand and glorious vessel even so, and the journey so far – and the journey to come – is going to be an adventure worthy of the best in all of us.

OK, look. Someone in the Obama campaign is responsible for celebrity-wrangling – they have to be, it’s a modern campaign. If there were any republican celebrities, McCain would have someone, too.

But this is freaking embarrassing. Are you folks tone deaf or just stupid?We’ve got George Clooney doing a fundraiser in Switzerland.

Academy award winning actor George Clooney is set to host a fundraiser for Barack Obama in Switzerland next month.

The event, taking place on the evening of September 2 in Geneva, Switzerland will be split into two parts: a reception and a dinner. According to Obama’s National Finance Committee, tickets for the reception where Clooney will speak are going for $1,000, followed by a dinner at the home of NFC member Charles Adams for $10,000 a plate. Space for the dinner is limited to 75 guests.

Look, anyone who can afford to come to that fundraiser could fly to freaking New York to hold it. Except maybe Marc Rich – can’t he now that he’s pardoned? It’s stupid, tone-deaf, and hands cases of ammo to the right-wing bloggers who are hammering home the arigula image – the one that Gallery Guy is probably so fond of.

And now a Democratic GOTV group is pushing overseas voters to register and vote – Democratic, of course. And Gwyneth Paltrow is their lead spokesman. Defamer comments:

And as for Gwyneth? We’re not sure what it is about you that we’re supposed to identify with as being All-American these days. You live abroad (meaning, you’re not just there temporarily for a job). You’re married to a mopey musician (who was born, raised and currently abides in England). You’re raising your kids to be British. You won an Oscar … for playing a Brit. Forgive us if we’re finding it difficult to find the ties between you and baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. Except, of course, for the fact that you named your kid Apple.

Look, there are lots of competent Hollywood political advisers (it’s where campaign staff get put out to pasture – working for movie stars and advising them on their political activities). Some of them have to be more competent than this (the ones that don’t work for Barbara Streisand?).

Using celebrity and celebrities is a good tactic – attention getting. But Obama’s supporters are hammering him hard on one of his greatest weaknesses – can you stop, please?

Back in March, when Maliki was starting to pressure Al-Sadr militarily, I stated that “I Don’t Think Winning Sides In Battle Make Many Offers“. Many of the antiwar commentators slammed me pretty strongly.So, today…”Iraqi militia leader to order followers to lay down their arms : Mahdi army will become social and political group”

The leader of one of the most powerful militias in Iraq, Moqtada al-Sadr, is to order his followers to disarm and transform themselves into a purely social and political organisation, according to a new strategy document published yesterday.

Such a shift would mark a significant step forward for US and Iraqi government attempts to pacify Iraq.

Sadr’s Mahdi army, committed to forcing US troops out of Iraq, has been behind much of the violence since the 2003 invasion. His forces have maintained a ceasefire since May.

According to the document, a copy of which has been obtained by the Wall Street Journal and whose authenticity has been confirmed by a Mahdi army spokesman, Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi, the militia will concentrate in future on education, provision of social services and religion.

It tells Sadr’s followers that “it is not allowed to use arms at all”. Posters have been spotted around Baghdad saying the changes will be announced at Friday prayers.

Sadr’s shift comes after a crackdown by Iraqi forces on the Mahdi army in its Baghdad stronghold, Sadr City, as well as Amarrah and Basra in the south earlier this year.

…that’s the rabidly pro-war Guardian, BTW…

Mountainrunner has a great summary article up on “New Media and Persuasion, Mobilization, and Facilitation” – go read it and see what the grownups are talking about.

From Chris Brogan’s blog, about unhappy Google customer Nick Saber:

Suddenly, Nick can’t access his Gmail account, can’t open Google Talk (our office IM app), can’t open Picasa where his family pictures are, can’t use his Google Docs, and oh by the way, he paid for additional storage. So, this is a paying customer with no access to the Google empire.

If he was doing something wrong/illegal/invalid, they might’ve said so (not thinking that he was). If he had been hacked, wouldn’t that be something vaguely apparent? I dunno, but it seems like that’d be the way.

So, what happens now? What does Nick do? He’s sent a bunch of emails. But now what? Locked out of ALL of Google’s apps, the apps that I praise daily, the apps where Julien Smith and I are writing a book. Should we be doing that? I didn’t see a problem until this. What if we’re the next Nick?

…customer service. It’s the new sales…