Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Recommended Reading

I don't always agree with every word of the opinion columns to which I link, and sometimes not even to most of the words. But I can't find a single point of argument to this article by Adam Cohen. It's about "judicial activism."

• Posted at 11:03 PM · LINK

DeLaying Tactics

With the rise of the Internet and 24/7 cable news, reporting in this country is getting more immediate. Something happens at 1:00 and it's unthinkable that we all don't hear about it before, say, 1:01. More than ever, this makes me admire the guts and wisdom of Garry Trudeau, who has to address topical events in Doonesbury, a newspaper strip that is written and drawn a minimum of 10-15 days before publication. (The Sunday pages have to be done even farther ahead than that.) A lot can happen in those 10-15 days, and strips have occasionally been yanked or altered because of unexpected events...but not as often as one might expect. For the most part, he's been pretty good with his projections.

Last June, he had a sequence going about George Tenet taking the blame for CIA errors when Tenet resigned. A few lines of dialogue had to be changed at the last second but Trudeau wasn't really wrong. Tenet's downfall just occurred a little sooner than expected. This week, Doonesbury is holding a "Tom DeLay Deathwatch," based on the premise that the House Majority Leader can't possibly retain his job for long...I guess. I mean, Trudeau may have already drawn strips in which it's revealed that this Deathwatch was premature on the part of the press, but I don't think that's where he's going with it. I think he's operating on the premise that DeLay's going down.

Is he right? We'll see. What I find interesting here is that of the many pundits one can read in the daily newspaper, Trudeau is the one who's in the most trouble when his predictions don't pan out. He has to work a week or so ahead of everyone else, and with the knowledge that if he's wrong, he may have to throw out a lot of work and dig himself out of a deep hole. In politics, a lot of things that seem certain turn out to not be so certain.

I thought about that today when things took an unexpected turn in the John Bolton confirmation hearings. Columnists and reporters of all political persuasions have said that the Bolton nomination is a lock to be voted out of committee, which will presumably mean he gets in. The few who've hedged their bets have suggested that if there is a defection in Republican ranks, it would come from either Lincoln Chafee or Chuck Hagel. But today, both indicated they would vote for Bolton, and it was Senator George Voinovich of Ohio who caused the vote to be postponed to allow for more investigations. No one — but no one — saw that coming ten minutes before it occurred.

• Posted at 8:49 PM · LINK

Useless Breaking News

Here's what's currently up at over on the Fox News site...

• Posted at 9:07 AM · LINK

Paperback Rider

When a performance artist makes a deal to play some auditorium or other venue, there is often a document called a Contract Rider. This is the section of the contract that itemizes special conditions the artist has — how the stage must be arranged, how the publicity must be handled, how the dressing room must be configured and stocked, etc. The folks over at The Smoking Gun have assembled a fascinating online library of these, and it's amusing to see that this band demands a certain wine and that act expects cherry-flavored LifeSavers and so on.

Well, they've just added a most interesting Contract Rider to their collection: It's for the 1965 tour of the U.S. by The Beatles. Things were a lot simpler in those days. Tickets were also $4.00-$6.00.

• Posted at 8:53 AM · LINK