BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Eye, eye, Principal Skinner!
The New York Times runs a horrifying story inside today on
Biloxi, Mississippi, where digital
cameras record every move
made by students and teachers.
Sam Dillon reports that in-school
surveillance is becoming increasingly widespread, but that it is
rarely used as extensively as it is in Biloxi, which can afford it
because it is flush with casino revenues.
Dillon's account is rife with
outrages. Yet, somehow, I found the most chilling comment was from
Allison Buchanan, a PTA president at one of Biloxi's elementary
schools, who thinks the spycams are a great idea.
"In my two years on the PTA, I've
not heard one parent say anything bad about the cameras," she
says.
Oppression usually comes with the
willing consent of the oppressed.
A literary lion roars.
Harold Bloom may be an elitist blowhard, but that shouldn't stop you
from reading his hugely
entertaining rant in
today's Boston Globe against Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and a
bunch of poets you've probably never heard of.
The unreported truth.
Globe columnist Steve Bailey has
the goods on state
treasurer Tim Cahill, and proves himself to be an astute media critic
as well.
Noting that Cahill's abysmal record
as Norfolk County treasurer was there for the reporting during last
year's campaign, Bailey writes, "Like the rest of the media pack, I
was focused on the sexier governor's race. Cahill got a pass, and was
elected on the strength of a cute TV ad featuring his 10-year-old
daughter."
Brudnoy's latest challenge.
Sad news today about talk-radio legend David Brudnoy, who's battled
AIDS since the 1980s and who announced yesterday that he has an
aggressive form of skin cancer (Globe coverage
here;
Herald coverage here).
I had a chance to interview Brudnoy
yesterday afternoon; that interview will appear in tomorrow's
Phoenix. "I'm kind of the poster child for defying the odds,"
he told me. Here's hoping that David can defy the odds one more time.
posted at 9:30 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
