Tag: Washington Post

A little reality

In my latest for the Guardian, I take a close-up look at a story in the Washington Post Magazine about a teenage girl with dwarfism who underwent dangerous, painful surgery in order to become taller.

The Post story is an extraordinary achievement. At root, though, it stands as an argument that dwarfism is a difference that ought to be fixed. Our experience in raising a daughter with dwarfism tells us that’s exactly the wrong approach.

Time to reboot

I’m looking at the Washington Post’s Political Browser, its shiny new compilation of what is supposed to be the best political news on the Web. And here is the first thing I see:

12:30 p.m. ET: The debate is now only hours away, which means our televisions and Internet caches are full of suggestions for “What McCain/Obama Needs to Do Tonight…”

Well, The Rundown would like to hear what YOU think they “need to do,” so deposit your suggestions in the comments section below.

Wonder if I could take the credit if I wrote in, “I think McCain should bring up Joe the Plumber.”

Your own lying eyes

I’m going to break one of my rules for blogging by engaging in a little mind-reading. That’s because it seems fairly obvious that the folks at the Washington Post have decided they don’t want to engage in a battle with the McCain-Palin campaign over Sarah Palin’s crystal-clear, public statement linking the war in Iraq to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

How else can we possibly explain Post ombudsman Deborah Howell’s column accepting the line that Palin was actually referring to a terrorist group known as Al Qaeda in Iraq? How else can we understand reporter Anne Kornblut’s contention that there was more than one interpretation that could be given to Palin’s remarks? Why else would the Post run a “clarification” to Kornblut’s article that might as well have been headed “obfuscation”?

By all means, watch the video above, but here’s the key sentence from Palin’s talk to Iraq-bound Alaskan soldiers, including her son Track: “You’ll be there to defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans. You’ll be there because America can never go back to that false sense of security that came before Sept. 11, 2001.”

Is this difficult? There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq on Sept. 11, 2001. Al Qaeda in Iraq did not plan and carry out the attacks. Every one of the terrorists was either Saudi or Egyptian. I mean, come on. Palin’s words were plainly spoken. There is no alternative interpretation.

The U.S. military, after extensive study, found there were no ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The military also believes that Al Qaeda in Iraq is merely a homegrown, Iraqi insurgent movement.

Why is the Washington Post acting as enablers for the McCain-Palin campaign’s transparent attempt to explain away Palin’s ludicrous statement?

More on the so-called liberal media

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that Dana Milbank’s smear of Barack Obama in the Washington Post — a self-regarding quote that’s neither verified or presented in context — is just the latest example of how the so-called liberal media establish their bona fides by beating up on liberal politicians.

The feeding frenzy is under way

The John McCain story has led to the media-ethics feeding frenzy of 2008. We’re going to know a lot more in a few days. Right now, we should just hang on. Still, I can’t resist posting a few tidbits.

The New Republic’s backgrounder, by Gabriel Sherman, is a must-read. It seems possible — even probable — that it was Sherman’s nosing-around that finally led the New York Times into running what it had. Bill Keller sounds really steamed. I’d love to hear a recording of him sarcastically spitting out the phrase “special correspondent.” Except that it was in an e-mail.

I and others have already speculated how miffed Mitt Romney must be that the Times waited until after McCain had all but wrapped up the nomination before dropping its bombshell. Well, Charles Kaiser of Radar now says one of the Times’ tipsters was former congressman Vin Weber, who just so happened to have been an official with the Romney campaign. Weber has denied it, but Kaiser’s not taking it back. So who knows?

Adam Reilly points out that the Boston Globe chose to run the Washington Post’s version rather than the Times’ more incendiary (i.e., sex rumors included played up) story, even though the Globe is owned by the New York Times Co. Interesting. But last night, I noticed that there was a link to the Times story featured prominently on the home page of the Globe’s Boston.com site.

Finally, no offense to Ryan Lizza, but I don’t think I’m going to get around to reading his New Yorker article on whether McCain can remake the Republican Party. Talk about bad timing.

File photo of Cindy and John McCain (cc) by Chris Dunn and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

What’s new is old again

Clint Hendler tries to be kind in his assessment of washingtonpost.com’s primary-night video coverage. But in the end, he observes at CJR.org, it was just TV. That the Grahams can now offer a fourth cable news channel via the Web is nice, but it’s not exactly the new-media breakthrough we’ve been waiting for. He writes:

Here’s an organization with an impressive roster of journalism pros, people who cover beats day in and day out. Bring all that to bear on an election night, and you can see how it might be the start of something special. At the same time, I could help thinking that this future looked rather old. I was seeing a newspaper ape a newscast.

I caught a few minutes of it on Tuesday. I logged in for Barack Obama’s speech. It was nothing special, and it was jerkier and less in sync than it would have been if I’d watched CNN. According to Hendler, if I’d stuck around I could have heard Jeff Jarvis say “There is no such thing as print journalism any more” for the nine-millionth time.

It might have been better than the cable nets, but it was too hard to watch. Level the technological playing field and I’ll pick the one I like best.

Mapping the candidates

This map on WashingtonPost.com is a hoot. Click on the candidate, and you get lines showing where he or she has been and a brief explanation of the campaign’s geographic strategy. But why so sparse? I’d have loaded in any previously published stories, photos and videos from those locations in order to turn this into something readers would stay with for a while. Still, it’s a good example of graphical journalism.