Facebook Appears To Really Want To Be Evil

So here's the umpteenth case of Facebook trying to violate the privacy of their customers, getting called on it, and then backpedaling. Amazingly, their Chief PRIVACY Officer, surely in on all these deals, wants to run for Attorney General of California. Yeah, good luck with that.

The New York Times has a good profile of the whole sordid story, as well as a hat tip to The Consumerist, the blog that broke the story.

Looking forward to two years from now, when Facebook is as much of a ghost town as Friendster.

Link-Baiting And How To Do It

I write a lot about the media's penchant for conflict and meaningless issues. I don't think that can be better expressed by the attempt to whip up controversy over an American President appearing on a stage with a flag. I mean, it doesn't get more petty than that.

What's funny is that Mike Allen of the Politico flagged this (pardon the pun) as something that "cable's gonna go cuckoo over." Of course, when he says that, he's basically setting the agenda, because cable news producers read Mike Allen's "Playbook" column daily to get story ideas. Cable actually passed on this one - too stupid for CABLE - but Politico dug it because it was a conflict-inducing non-story. Which is their mission statement - to provide a useful conveyance for the disseminating of B.S. spin.

TNR has posted an internal Politico memo "revealing the organization's formula for 'must-read' coverage." Reading through CAPS-laden passages like these, I couldn't help imagining them read by Alec Baldwin's character in Glengarry Glen Ross:

"We are not the AP or the New York Times" ... If we ONLY do what those two great organizations do, WE WILL NOT SURVIVE AND WE WON'T HAVE JOBS." [...]

"Speed kills. Velocity - SPEED + POWER (good sources, smart thinking) - will make you a winner."

And like Mamet's salesmen trying to talk their marks into investing in swampland, it seems the Politico is little more than a con. See, the Politico memo has a lot of instructions for reporters, including a list of questions Politico employees should ask themselves about prospective stories. Things like "Would this be a 'most-emailed' story?" and "Will a blogger be inspired to post on this story?" But it omits any mention of striving to ensure accuracy or quality. No questions like "Do I have the story right?" or "Am I being spun by my sources?" or "Is this story important?" (And certainly no "Does it really matter how much someone paid for a haircut?")

Maybe those questions aren't included because they aren't relevent to Politico's extraordinary mission statement, presented at the top of the memo:

THE MISSION: Politico journalism drives conversation in official Washington, making us ESSENTIAL READING for anyone who is or wants to be a player, and a KEY OUTLET for anyone who is trying to shape a political or government debate.

That's it. That's the whole mission. Nothing about informing people, or finding the truth. Instead, Politico sees its mission as being a "key outlet" for the "players" trying to shape political debates. With that as the Politico's mission, it seems unlikely they even care whether they're being spun, or getting the story right.

It's really quite unbelievable. It's like Karl Rove invented a news outlet and made sure the cable universe paid attention to it, so his smears could be once-removed.

You can see this mindset at work in Politico's latest story about Barack Obama's tour of the country (no link because that's what they want), which they intimate is Obama "pitting Washington Insiders against Real People," which is a fallback position for Presidents who have received critical coverage. In other words, Obama just hates us cuz he ain't us. Or, as Josh Marshall put it, "Citizens increasingly out of touch with Beltway Media."

Now this makes me mad, and I want to write about how foolish it is and how warped the mindset. But that would basically be playiing into Politico's hands. They don't want to inform, they don't want to be accurate. They want to generate "buzz." They want to make me angry. And they want a link.

A mass-boycott from the progressive blogosphere, if only for a day, would be nice.

State Department House Blogger

We're hardly talking about our relationship to the world these days, what with us being so mired in economic meltdown. But especially with the globalized nature of our world, re-engagement and an end to discredited and tired Bush policies is vitally important. In her inaugural blog post as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton discusses some of these challenges.

Over the past 30 years, I've had the privilege of traveling to a very different Asia. Today, Asia is on the cutting edge of so many of the world's innovations and trends. In making my first trip as Secretary of State to Asia, I hope to signal that we need strong partners across the Pacific, just as we need strong partners across the Atlantic. I have become fond of saying that America is as much a transpacific power as it is a transatlantic one.

The Obama Administration believes that the futures of the United States, countries in Asia and around the world are increasingly inextricably linked. As you may know, I spoke from the Asia Society in New York City on Friday afternoon where I outlined the opportunities that I see for stronger bilateral, regional, and global cooperation and ongoing collaboration to deal with the economic crisis, to strengthen our alliances, to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and to build on efforts to face challenges like climate change, clean energy, pandemic healthcare crises and so much more.

As I've said before, America cannot solve the problems of the world alone, and the world cannot solve them without America. A Chinese aphorism says, "When you are in a common boat, you need to cross the river peacefully together." The wisdom of that aphorism must guide us today.

Secretary Clinton hasn't always offered the best policy remedies, but this perspective of re-engagement is important. Not a lot of Americans are going to be watching these developments, yet they will make us a stronger country in the long run.

Crying To Keep From Laughing

The Pajamas Media imbroglio is so karmically just that I have to agree with James Wolcott when he says, "Were there a men's cologne on the market called Schadenfreude, I'd be judiciously dabbing some on right now, savoring its woody musk."

Let us part the beaded curtains of time. It was only a few years ago, November of 2005 to be tiresomely precise, that Pajamas Media held a launch event at Rockefeller Center's Rainbow Room heralding the arrival of a superstar group blog on steroids that would wipe out the old traditional media like so many thatched huts. The keynote speaker for the opening festivities was Judith Miller and a bevy of online semi-demi-celebrities were there for the free eats and photo ops. Such heady times those were, spiked with romantic fantasies of riches in store for those visionary enough to hitch their wagons to the Yahoo of blogs, copiloted by those crazy dreamers Roger L. Simon and Charles Johnson. Those of us unswayed and unimpressed with this bagpipe brigade of B-listers were accused of being threatened, even jealous, of these saucy upstarts with a sound all their own. In a gonzo fantasia written by Protein Wisdom's Jeff Goldstein, I was gooily portrayed as a mincing, porcine sis [some scrolling is required] who was 86'd by hotel security after crashing the festivities in warblogger drag. Too busy having fun at the expense of Pam Geller's thumb fiesta, I took no offence at Goldstein's labored gags (or the acclaim they received from his confederates), letting karma to take its natural course.

And wah-la, as Kaye Gibbons' Ellen Foster would say.

Ass. Kick. Curb.

I'm sorry, but it's just brilliant to watch these triumphalists fold back on themselves, with all the petty insults and jealousies bubbling to the surface. Roger Simon, unable to get advertisers to pay for the ramblings of Pam Geller and Glenn Reynolds, now thinks he can get viewers to pay $15 to $37 bucks A MONTH for them to watch the above talk to one another.

Dear (Sucker),

As you know, last September Pajamas Media began a new initiative in Internet television called Pajamas TV. When we started with our RNC coverage from Minneapolis, we noted that we would be in a Beta Phase through the first quarter of 2009. In the last few months we have strengthened the PJTV lineup with shows covering Media Bias, Education Bias, Middle East Update, Sharia and Jihad, Powerline Report, Ask Dr. Helen, Hugh News, Poliwood, Conservatism 2.0, Economy and Finance, National Security, and others.

As the end of the first quarter approaches and we near the production phase of Pajamas TV, we will continue to build our emphasis in this area. As a result we have decided to wind down the Pajamas Media Blogger and advertising network effective March 31, 2009. The PJM portal and the XPressBlogs will continue as is.

Since our ad relationship continues for the time being, you should note that in order to be paid for the 1st quarter of 2009, you must leave the current Pajamas ads up until 12:01AM April 1. We will be sending you information in mid-March on removing the ads. As of April 1, 2009, you will be free to arrange syndication or re-sale deals.

We thank you very much for participating during the formative years of Pajamas Media and we look forward to working with you in other ways. One of those is, of course, Pajamas TV. If you have any ideas in that regard, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Our best wishes in the new year and again our deepest gratitude for your participation in Pajamas Media.

Sincerely,

Roger L. Simon
CEO, Pajamas Media

Money line: "PJM’s new hope is PJTV, a pay video site. Where you can pay to watch Glenn and Helen Reynolds. This is not unlike asking people to pay to be punched in the face."

Seeing certifiably crazy people react to the news that they won't be getting their wingnut welfare checks anymore is just pure blogger bliss. But even more hilarious is how Simon tried to set it right:

Actually that part of our business has been losing money from the beginning, so the people getting their quarterly checks from PJM were getting a form of stipend from us in the hopes that advertisers would start to cotton to blogs and we could possibly make a profit. Didn’t happen. No wonder those people are kicking and screaming now that they are off the dole. I might too. [What's their beef? I thought most of them were free marketeer libertarians or something.-ed. Go figure.]

Good people skills.

This demise was inevitable, but it's beyond fun seeing these self-important maniacs take out the claws on each other in the process. Which continues to the end:

50. Sissy Willis:
Good night, sweet prince. Don’t let the bitter ones get you down.

Yes, good night, sweet prince. Good night.

Behold the Insane

If you start out on just the level of conservatives out in the world you get some pretty insane people. Then when you move into the subset of conservative politicians and activists, the insanity stretches even further. Once you hit conservative BLOGGERS, you're in some other kind of dimension. Look at this thing from the folks at RedState.



I guess this is supposed to be for their online field organization, but to me it looks like some sort of crest for LARPing, which as Bradrocket says is something of an unfair characterization of LARPers. Either way, there is a way for these folks to get uniforms and deadly weapons and have all sorts of fun running around and destroying the enemy. It's called the military. Somebody get them directions to the nearest recruiting office.

John Cole gets in on this fun as well.

The key to electoral success for the GOP is not an elite strike force of blithering idiots spamming everyone’s email with bullshit about Obama’s birth certificate. The nation doesn’t need a trillion twitters about William Ayers, they need a Republican party that isn’t batshit insane. Spending all this time pretending the only problem is insufficient text message spam is going to get you nowhere, because the reason we elected a bunch of Democrats the last couple of years is because the Republicans and their ideas suck.

A few days earlier, this new RedState front-pager made a complete fool of himself with the lugubriously over-the-top rhetoric:

RedState is not the corner malt-shop, some nickel and dime agitprop echo chamber. RedState is the biggest mover and shaker in the right-blog universe, and the Directors and Contributors here are one high-profile, professional bunch of political thinkers and operators. It is no exaggeration to say that things said and done on RedState affect votes and debates in Congress.

It is no exaggeration to say RedState controls the agenda of this and many other small countries, and one word typed out on their powdered-sugar-stained laptops can cause the mountains to fall and rain to actually reverse course and go back up into the heavens. Do not taunt RedState. Avert your eyes, people. Avert.

California Blogosphere Loses A Giant - But There's a Happy Ending

Major congratulations to California Progress Report publisher Frank Russo, who will become the new chief of staff to progressive Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner.

This will be my third trip working under the Capitol dome in Sacramento—having worked in the 70’s fresh out of law school as Administrative Assistant to an Assemblymember and in the 80’s as Legal Counsel to the Speaker of the Assembly where I reviewed the work of the Judiciary and Public Safety Committees among other matters.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be working with Nancy Skinner and what a delight it has been to begin searching for staff and set up both the Sacramento and district offices with her. Technically she is not yet an Assemblymember and I am not yet hired, but the work has begun full throttle. With the voters’ approval, she will be in the Assembly for a short six years under term limits and wants to hit the ground running.

For selfish reasons, this is bittersweet. For anyone trying to cover the byzantine twists and turns in Sacramento, Frank has been an invaluable resource. He's been one of the few journalists to cover the committee hearings, the press conferences, and the major legislation with anything approaching immediacy, delivering news and information you simply can't get anywhere else. He also achieved a milestone, becoming the first blogger to earn a press credential from a state legislature that vets their reporters. The state's political media has already withered to the bone, and Russo's departure shrinks that pool even more. However, there is a happy ending here.

I also have the good fortune to announce that a California nonprofit organization will be shepherding the California Progress Report from being published, edited, and written by me to a consortium of different organizations who see the value of having a daily reporting of California state news and opinion in this age of the decline of the established media. We will have more details about that coming out during the week.

That's very reassuring, and I hope whoever takes over has the tenacity and credibility of Russo. For now, I will just wish him the best in the future, and offer my sincere thanks for the fine job he has done building the California Progress Report over the past few years.