The rareified land of op-ed is the latest section of the big-city daily to see upheaval. A few weeks back, outgoing NYT ombudsman Dan Okrent and professorial columnist Paul Krugman waged an
all-out snarkfest over the accuracy of Krugman's statistical references. As Okrent intimates, should op-ed columnists be subject to the same fact-checking standards as reporters? And how much should the views of one columnist be taken to represent the views of the paper? The
Los Angeles Times is shaking up its model by
allowing editorial board members to openly dissent from op-ed columns, effectively turning philosophical pronouncements into policy debates. But the most interesting thing to come out of the redesign, to be launched next week, is
wikitorials, the op-ed that Anyone Can Edit. Disaster in the making, or the new face of journalistic opinion?
posted by Saucy Intruder
on Jun 14, 2005 -
40 comments
Ted Turner is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore: "the government [is] not doing its job. The role of the government ought to be like the role of a referee in boxing, keeping the big guys from killing the little guys."
posted by limitedpie
on Jul 26, 2004 -
22 comments
Lesser EvilsThe chief ethical challenge of a war on terror is relatively simple -- to discharge duties to those who have violated their duties to us. Even terrorists, unfortunately, have human rights. We have to respect these because we are fighting a war whose essential prize is preserving the identity of democratic society and preventing it from becoming what terrorists believe it to be. Terrorists seek to provoke us into stripping off the mask of law in order to reveal the black heart of coercion that they believe lurks behind our promises of freedom. We have to show ourselves and the populations whose loyalties we seek that the rule of law is not a mask or an illusion. It is our true nature.
posted by y2karl
on May 2, 2004 -
41 comments
Americans pay lip service to diversity says David Brooks in The Atlantic. Though we talk about the melting pot, we tend to group ourselves with similar people. Do you really care enough about diversity to actively seek it out? Is metafilter a virtual example of this phenomenon?
posted by rainbaby
on Aug 14, 2003 -
61 comments
"Our nation can no more survive as half democracy and half oligarchy than it could survive 'half slave and half free'" (
alternative non-PDF link). "Understanding the real interests and deep opinions of the American people is the first thing. And what are those? That a Social Security card is not a private portfolio statement but a membership ticket in a society where we all contribute to a common treasury so that none need face the indignities of poverty in old age without that help. That tax evasion is not a form of conserving investment capital but a brazen abandonment of responsibility to the country. That income inequality is not a sign of freedom-of-opportunity at work, because if it persists and grows, then unless you believe that some people are naturally born to ride and some to wear saddles, it's a sign that opportunity is less than equal. That self-interest is a great motivator for production and progress, but is amoral unless contained within the framework of community. That the rich have the right to buy more cars than anyone else, more homes, vacations, gadgets and gizmos, but they do not have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else."
Bill Moyers
"tends the flame of democracy."
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on Jun 11, 2003 -
75 comments
The Feudal States of America? Timely article from Thom Hartmann called
The Real War - On American Democracy.
"Those of us who still believe in republican democracy would have "We, The People" make the decisions through representatives we've elected without the feudal influence of corporate money. We realize that "big government" is, indeed, a menace when it's no longer responsive to its own people, as happened in Germany and Russia in the last century - and is happening today in America under the neoconservatives."
posted by thedailygrowl
on Apr 12, 2003 -
32 comments
Do us all a favor and shut up. You're for the war? Wrote an essay about it? Good, good. Good for you. Guess what? Shut up about it. Thanks. Oh, you're against the war? Fantastic. Wrote a poem about it? Find the nearest closet and tell it to the coats. Yea, that's right. Shut it.
posted by raaka
on Feb 19, 2003 -
88 comments
A refreshing read With all the bad news and fear in the air lately, I found this article to be hopeful. I hope that merits a post.
posted by sparky
on Feb 18, 2003 -
34 comments
An Editorial from Jane's, 9/11: in search of context and meaning "Fiction, non-fiction, news, news analysis and opinion... And unfortunately we continually mix and merge these groupings, using them in similar ways and often believing them to contain similar weight and importance." "We now tend to respond to the news rather than attempting to get behind it and create policy."
posted by semmi
on Sep 15, 2002 -
7 comments
High Finance Run Amok [latimes free reg req] is a Kevin Phillips editorial on the "financialization" of the US economy. "As the financial sector, in short, became too important to fail, the Fed and the Treasury abandoned market economics to embrace socialization of credit risk. No other sector of the U.S. economy, save possibly defense, received such governmental assistance."
posted by electro
on Jun 24, 2002 -
13 comments
Our enemies the Saudis. In a must-read editorial, Michael Barone makes a scathing attack on U.S. support of Saudi Arabia. Does anyone else cringe when they hear G.W. Bush speak on how much he wants to protect freedom and fight totalitarianism?
posted by bobo123
on May 27, 2002 -
12 comments
A Good Summary, albeit in the form of a NYPost Editorial, as to why Israel should ignore 95% of the criticism it gets regarding it's current policy towards negotiating withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza. President Bush: are you listening?
posted by ParisParamus
on Mar 18, 2002 -
33 comments
The death of creationism? William Saletan is claiming that creationism is dead, because Intelligent Design isn't as reactionary as the old creationism, even though scientists still treat it as a threat. I think creationism in any brand is still a threat, regardless of how reactionary it is. What do you think?
posted by stoneegg21
on Feb 18, 2002 -
79 comments
Is a technology of ecstasy worth the risk? My favourite critic
Barbara Ehrenreich writes a real thought-provoker for Forbes.
"We don't need ecstasy, of course. For that matter, we don't need plain old genitally driven orgasms either; humans can get along just fine and even reproduce without them. But we are, for unknown evolutionary reasons, wired for ecstatic experience--never mind that our current social arrangements do not encourage it. Since ancient techniques of ecstasy like the danced ritual are no longer easily applicable, why not develop new ones, more congenial to an overpopulated and urbanized world?" Well, why not? Aldous Huxley's Soma is
way overdue anyway.
posted by theplayethic
on Jan 31, 2002 -
18 comments
Mideast vs West. From a conservative-libertarian point of view, what's wrong in the Muslim world, what caused 9-11, and how to fix it. Even if you don't agree with the author's conclusions (maybe
especially if you don't agree with the author's conclusions) the piece is worth reading, as an exceptionally clear and forceful articulation of these ideas.
Link found on Arts & Letters Daily.
posted by Slithy_Tove
on Jan 26, 2002 -
19 comments
Sprawl is Good Defense "It's a pretty good rule of military thumb that the greater the concentration of value, the more attractive the target... To keep things safe, you need to spread things out." The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian should begin moving their collections out of NYC and Washington,D.C. Now. Talented, intelligent people and people with irreplaceable skills should go next. Re-locate to the Great Plains.
posted by Faze
on Dec 14, 2001 -
11 comments
How did FoxNews get it before I did? Somehow I did not get word of this in a dozen e-mail messages:
Ode to America from Romanian news editor Cornel Nistorescu.
It doesn't really say anything that we don't know already, but I guess it's special to hear it from someone on the outside, i.e. the much-loved
1973 essay from Canadian Gordon Sinclair.
posted by Tubes
on Oct 19, 2001 -
3 comments
It is The Religion A very strong case made for Why They Hate Us...and it is not so much our world-wide policies. This piece along with the earlier piece I had posted by Paul Berman (American Prospect) are fine appraisals of why Islam "fears" the West and what they ideally want. Sullivan avoides the (for me) overly simplistic single causes that so many seem convinced of and offers instead a much larger view. Via NY Times, free reg. req'd.
posted by Postroad
on Oct 7, 2001 -
37 comments
"Placing The Blame For Attacks On Muslims Is Wrong" This editorial appeared yesterday in the Ventura County Star, it was written by Roufeda Ebrahim of Ventura, a Muslim. The 18-year-old graduate of St. Bonaventure High School is a freshman at Ventura College, where she is studying journalism and English.
posted by tpoh.org
on Sep 25, 2001 -
18 comments
So tragically wrong... Proof that the FBI didn't have a clue. From a year ago: "Even the American cells of violent Middle East political movements as Hamas and Hezbollah, [then FBI Director Louis] Freeh declared, are devoted exclusively to "fundraising and low-level intelligence gathering." Salon writer Bruce Shapiro even goes so far as to call the National Commission on Terrorism's finding that "The threat from terrorists is so high, the potential for massive casualties is so real, that an independent panel is pushing the government to take immediate, drastic action" as a con job.
posted by theNonsuch
on Sep 15, 2001 -
18 comments
The Tragedy in Cartoons. One of the more interesting effects of a national tragedy is that it always somehow causes the nation's editorial cartoonists to suffer massive, collective brain damage. Across the country, they rush to their easels and whip up cheesy, embarrassing caricatures of Uncle Sam crying. Or the Founding Fathers crying. Or - in this case - a comparison to Pearl Harbor. Or - if your local cartoonist is feeling particularly creative - the always crowd-pleasing
weeping Statue of Liberty. As Cagle notes, "Fully half the nation's cartoonists drew the same cartoon on the same day." Including Cagle himself. A tragedy in cartoons indeed. Some psychiatrist really ought to study this phenomenon.
posted by aaron
on Sep 14, 2001 -
20 comments
Ur-Editorial about the attacks, (
from adequacy.org- I'm not familiar with them- linked via a plastic.com comment). Shades of the Metafilter
self-parody; I found it a handy template for every editorial opportunist from Michael Moore to Ann Coulter- perhaps we can just reference this instead of linking yet more lame, shameful editorials from all parts of the political spectrum?
posted by hincandenza
on Sep 13, 2001 -
4 comments
The Economist calls for the legalization of drugs in this editorial. Plus these
articles [per A&LD]. We are always led to believe that only fringe (read criminal and self-interested) elements favor this course...does anyone know any other "mainstream" groups/people with the nerve to publicly state their support? Or better yet, an online list of same.
posted by rushmc
on Jul 28, 2001 -
20 comments
Why Dodge Ball Is Good For You... You roll your eyes at the ceiling and hoot like Limbaugh: Ah, the terrors of life in a prosperous, powerful, peacetime society! In a nation rich enough to be morally incoherent and given to media vapors, language inclines to hysteria. Murder ball? Killer ball? Really? People with no experience to teach them otherwise are dumb enough, self-indulgent enough, to equate recess with the intifada.
posted by racer271
on May 18, 2001 -
14 comments
"Red vs. Blue" gets a whole lot worse On Slate.com, Mark Strauss makes a (I hope) sarcastic argument for the secession of the North from the South... or the South from the North, based on perceived intractable divisions between Northern states and Southern states.
Basically, his whole thesis is "Those Southern Yahoos like NASCAR and pro wrestling; so we should get rid of them and have an entire society modeled on the way my freelance journalism and fiction-writing friends here in New York think."
On this post, my tongue is in my cheek about as far as Strauss' is. Tell me if I'm overreacting on this one.
posted by GriffX
on Mar 13, 2001 -
22 comments
