Gossip

I'd like to you take a moment to track the progression of how journalists like to muck around with the political process without being accountable to anybody but their editorial boards.

Yesterday I was happy to go to bat for John McCain, thanks to the New York Times incredibly crass hit job. Well, today the Managing Editor of the Seattle Post Intelligencer has this to say about the NY Times' hatchet job:

Admitting that Keller was in a better position to vet the sourcing and facts than I am as, basically, a reader, let's assume that every source is solid and every fact attributed in the story to an anonymous source is true. You're still dealing with a possible appearance of impropriety, eight years ago, that is certainly unproven and probably unprovable.

Where is the solid evidence of this lobbyist improperly influencing (or bedding) McCain? I didn't see it in the half-dozen times I read the story. In paragraphs fifty-eight through sixty-one of the sixty-five-paragraph story, the Times points out two matters in which McCain took actions favorable to the lobbyist's clients -- that were also clearly consistent with his previously stated positions.

That's pretty thin beer.

And the "it must be so because it's in The New York Times" argument will never hold much water after Judith Miller and Ahmed Chalabi got done perforating it.

2008 started "off" to say the least, for The New York Times. First it was the hiring of Bill Krystol as an Op/Ed columnist. Then it was their craptacular endorsement of both Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

Yet, if we're going to cast aspersions, let's not forget the embarrassment and disgrace Judith Miller's aiding and abetting of the Bush Administration brought to the paper's credibility not so long ago.

So it's just amazing that they'll come out with a hit job against John McCain. In an allegedly "investigative" report of John McCain's ethics, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk is a thinly vield gossip piece about whether he was lobbied hard, really really hard, by a woman called Vicki Iseman.

I am of two minds about this. Let me start with the deep and ponderous one first :

Look, anybody who has been married ought to never take anybody else's private life as a barometer of their professional shortcomings. Especially when you have someone like Hillary Clinton in the running.

Ben Smith back in the days of The Politicker

I hope Ben Smith is making a lot of money. We miss him terribly over at The Daily Gotham, because we really had a conversation going on our blogs about the mess that is New York politics. With his replacement? Not so much fun as good old Ben.

Which is why I wonder if he's really cozy and happy over at his new digs. Ben is supposed to be the lefty voice over at Politico.com; yet with his current acid keyboard he's earning the badge of the Democrat's worst frenemy, especially if that Democrat happens to be John Edwards.

He's the guy who first wrote about Edwards' $400 haircuts. He is now throwing Edwards under not only the bus, but the SUV and the private jet as well.

((( C'mon Ben, dude. As if anybody would be able to run a presidential campaign on Northwest fucking Airlines. Commercial airlines are snakes on a plane, dude. Snakes on a moddafruggin' plane! )))

So it is no wonder that a certain a-list blogger wants to kick his ass.

Literally.

Which A-list blogger told me non-chalantly that "he's go it coming".

I couldn't resist writing that title because there is so much left unsaid of the power of social networks.

So Lindsay proudly posted that image, celebrating her sell to Time.com --a photograph they found of Amanda via Flickr. Flickr, by the way, has become a social networking site disguised as photo storage company.

Anyhow, she took that photograph of Amanda while she and I and a whole gaggle of political and entertainment bloggers were in Amsterdam. We were part of the Bloggers in Amsterdam group, paid by Holland.com and sponsored by BlogAds.

Many women in the Feminist Bloggers Network know each other now for more than a couple of years. Women tend to operate social networks and powerlines a bit differently than men, and so our presence in mainstream media has not been as forceful as the handful of male-run blogs the mainstream journos tend to call "The Blogs".

Well, we not be as prominent in the public eye as some of us would like to be, but make no mistake --we're everywhere.

Want proof? MAJeff, the last quote in that Time.com article happens to be a FBN member who's been on a blogging (but not commenting) sabbatical; and used to be a key player in our blog.

Just saying.

Check out my photo of Amanda and me in Amsterdam after the jump ...

The Immigration Rallies
By 2015, the largest ethnic group in the country will be Latinos. The rallies are the beginning because, come 2008, we Latinos will be swinging the vote. The GOP knows it --that's why they appointed a chicano as their chairman.

Muhammad Yunus
He won a Noble Peace Prize for proving that poverty not only leads to violence but that the poverty of women, and the violence inherent in that poverty, affects whole nations.

Al Gore
Barack Obama
Cecilia Fire Thunder
Jennifer Hudson
John Edwards
Katie Couric
Keith Ellison
Nancy Pelosi and the new Democratic majority
Seminole / Hard Rock Cafe acquisition

And the "So good it's bad, bad, bad" Award goes to...

Stephen Colbert coined the phrase but the art of truthiness was perfected by Sacha Baron Cohen in his movie Borat.

He is so good he is bad. Badass cool. Brothercool cool. Borat has turned Cohen into the sexiest Orthodox Jew in Hollywood.

Separated at Hate?

I grew up in a family obsessed with religion. My mom and dad practiced everything : catholicism, santeria, espiritismo. Yet they made sure we went to a catholic school with strong theology and catechism curricula and, if possible, went once a week to church.

Twelve years of that my friends; which is why I am now an atheist --and I don't digress.

You see, conservative catholic Puerto Rican culture primes its 'devotees' into being blindingly anti-semitic.

Jews killed Jesus after all.

And the more connected that culture is to the "madre patria" or Spain, the more ... let's say ... ahem ... obliviously hateful it is.

For example, when I was a kid I was called la judía because I liked to hoard my allowance and be the bank when playing Monopoly. Yes people, having a fascination with finances made me a Jew.

Judy Farber has a fantastic list of assumptions about Jews that she's come across all her life. She is so dead on it's scary. I too believed Jews only did it through a sheet or that Jews made for better hagglers ... 'cause, you know, that money thing.

You'd think that Little Annie Terrorist's body of work is sufficiently unique that she need not plagiarize the work of others; but you'd be wrong. The republican party mouthpiece is a plagiarist, reports the right-wing New York Post.

July 2, 2006 -- Conservative scribe Ann Coulter cribbed liberally in her latest book, "Godless," according to a plagiarism expert.

John Barrie, the creator of a leading plagiarism-recognition system, claimed he found at least three instances of what he calls "textbook plagiarism" in the leggy blond pundit's "Godless: the Church of Liberalism" after he ran the book's text through the company's digital iThenticate program.

He also says he discovered verbatim lifts in Coulter's weekly column, which is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers, including the Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Sun-Sentinel and Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle.

UPDATE | 9 June 2006
It is amazing what money will do. While there are more then 15 prominent sites running the Brangelina photos --the embargo is over after all-- I was insulted and berated by one of the lawyers of the company that serves the IP to my hosting company.

There are proper procedures that IP and hosting companies have to go through when there is a C&D. A C&D is not necessarily an order for a take down. Can you imagine if everybody could invoke the DCMA on an email everytime they didn't like something written about them?

I have been informally adviced that it is illegal to not follow certain steps and procedures and so I am weighing my options. Especially since I did not use the image to write about gossip but to criticize corporate tactics meant to curtail fair use and freedom of speech.

I am writing a longer piece on this issue especially the need for cultural creatives and progressives to invest in rock hard IT businesses. Back in the days art collectives like The Thing [ www.thing.net ] where dial-up networks themselves, 20 YEARS AGO, because they knew of the danger of being shut down for unpopular art.

To save democracy we are going to have to build a new infrastructure capable of sustaining it. That means, investing in businesses that will fight for fair use and freedom of speech instead of cower to the bottom line.

I get an AIM from Lynn and her husband saying to call them immediately. I freaked out given her recent health woes; but they reassured me it had all to do with the Brangelina photo.

The lawyers for TimeWarner AOL and Getty Images invoked the Digital Millenium Copyright Act sent a Cease and Desist letter to AboveNet, a company that services hosting companies.

With no questions asked, AboveNet immediately contacted Simpli.biz, the company that holds our servers. They ordered a "DCMA TAKEDOWN". It means, it does not matter if TimeWarnerAOL is lying about the infringement of copyright allegations. They would force Simpli to force me to take down the image within 24 hours or risk losing their IP and their business by having it blacklisted. And they can force them to do so because this kind of harrassment is protected under the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act.

It really does not matter if I claim Fair Use. If I did not comply within 24 hours they would blacklist the hosting company and all IPs they held. What that means is that, once they blacklisted the IP, they would in effect put Simpli.biz out of business.

So what exists in place with the DCMA is a legally allowed harrassment system in place. If you are writing a blog that a big media company like TimeWarnerAOL finds to their dislike, they can use the DCMA to take you down, no questions asked. And the cost to fight to get back online makes it almost impossible for anybody to fight these kinds of battles.

So I asked Lynn what to do. She knows that ten years ago a similar thing happened to my kids' father with his Barbie spoof, The Distorted Barbie. It was the first in a string of actions that would culminate in Mattel v. Walking Mountain Productions [PDF].

This is what came out of our conversation :

My friend Joy Garnett, who is the the source of culturekitchen's guerrilla man logo, has also become an expert on fair use. She sent me this bit posted at the FairUseNetwork mailing list:

The fair use doctrine permits anyone to use copyrighted works, without the owners' permission, in ways that are fundamentally equitable and fair. Common examples of fair use are criticism, commentary, news reporting, research, scholarship, and multiple copies for classroom use.

[...]

News reporting = blogging.

TimeWarnerAOL owns People Mag. They happen to be one of the biggest lobbyists behind the DCMA (after the RIAA). They also declared with their new "anti-spam" policy how the stand against net neutrality : they want to create different paying levels of access to email, rss, web, ftp, you name it. The want as many tolls they can lay and control along the information superhighway as they can.

Which is why it puts into a whole different context these comments from the people of Hello! and Getty Images :

[via Shiloh Not Ready For Close-Up, Gets It Anyway - Yahoo! News]:

"It's a complete mystery," Hello!'s Herd told Reuters. "And we are very concerned at this breach of copyright.

"It is very difficult to control the Web and this proves how rampantly out of control it is. We have absolutely no idea how the picture was leaked."

A spokesperson for People magazine, meanwhile, had other ideas.

"Somebody from Hello! must have leaked it," the unnamed rep told BBC News. "I don't know how it got there."

However it did, it makes for a particularly pricey stealing of thunder.

As for Getty Images, which Pitt and Jolie announced earlier this week would market the photos, they claim the picture could be seen more as a teaser, enticing the celeb-savvy public into seeing the rest of the shots.

"Our legal team are looking into it and we will take it from there," spokeswoman Alison Crombie told Reuters. "But I really don't think it will devalue the pictures as everyone is dying to see the full set."

The C&D's are after the jump.