BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
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For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Saturday, January 11, 2003
Poisoned Apple. Filmmaker
John Farrell saw my post on Apple's
renewed war with Microsoft
and sent along this
link. It's from a
website/blog called USS
Clueless, by Steven Den
Beste, and it's a long, difficult, but ultimately rewarding trip to
the Heart of Geekness.
Den Beste's depressing conclusion:
things will continue to get worse and worse for Apple, because its
closed architecture and low volume have locked it into an endless
cycle of higher and higher software-development costs relative to its
Wintel cousins. And because of bad decisions Apple has made over the
years, there's really nothing Steve Jobs and company can do to
reverse course.
I still want one of the new
12-inch
G4 PowerBooks,
though.
Farrell and his father, retired
Globe columnist David Farrell, have a website
and blog that you should
check out.
posted at 10:21 AM |
link
Friday, January 10, 2003
Jurkowitz on McDonough. The
Phoenix website has posted a
classic profile of Will McDonough
that Mark Jurkowitz (then of the Phoenix, now of the
Globe) wrote in January 1994. The headline: "Jurassic Jock."
And I think it's the single best piece anyone has ever written about
the two-fisted sportswriting legend.
posted at 2:24 PM |
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Will McDonough's legacy. He
was a crank. He was a legend. He was both. Globe sports
columnist Will McDonough died last night at the age of 67, depriving
Boston of one of its most cantankerous and original voices. The news
is just starting to break, so there's not much out there yet other
than this
Associated Press report. He
died with his boots on, watching ESPN's
SportsCenter.
I would imagine the place to be for
McDonough fans today is Mike Barnicle's 10 a.m.-to-noon show on
WTKK-FM (96.9 FM), where McDonough was a
regular Friday guest. A
couple of years ago McDonough officially retired from the
Globe, although he continued writing his column on a freelance
basis. Talk about having your cake and eating it too: McDonough was
able to work out a
sweet deal, continuing to
draw a paycheck from the Globe while taking potshots at the
Globe's young, liberal newsroom during his stints on the
air.
As recently as last week
McDonough
swung hard at Red Sox
president Larry Lucchino, who's embroiled in a feud with Yankees
owner George Steinbrenner. Steinbrenner appears to hate Lucchino so
much that he's willing to spend even more of his money than usual
(not an easy trick) in order to keep the Red Sox well out of
contention. McDonough endorsed Steinbrenner's characterization of
Lucchino as a "chameleon," adding:
Lucchino has a face for
all occasions, but, unfortunately, very little knowledge of
baseball. He was slotted into the Red Sox job by his good friend,
Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, who wanted to ensure that
he would have Boston's vote in his pocket whenever he needed
it.
The Globe also ran an
excerpt from the McDonough-ghosted
Bill Parcells autobiography
last week to shed light on Parcells's decision to become head coach
of the Dallas Cowboys.
One of the raps on McDonough was
that he talked only to owners and to the biggest of bigshots, such as
Parcells and Red Auerbach. But the flip side was that, more often
than not, they talked only to him, giving him a steady stream of
exclusives. In an era of bland, faceless journalism, McDonough
offered personality and vitriol, making him one of the most
consistently readable columnists in the Globe.
Here's an interview McDonough did a
couple of years ago with Teen
Ink, a website for
teenagers.
And here's an archive of
his
recent Globe columns.
posted at 9:30 AM |
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Thursday, January 09, 2003
J. Bo strikes back on his
baby-eating story. The Weekly Standard's J.
Bottum today responds to
what by his own account were numerous critics -- including Media Log
-- who told him he'd fallen for an urban legend or two in his heinous
post last Friday on alleged baby-eating in China. Here's
what I wrote about it.
Bottum's long response is worth
reading in its entirety, but first, a few observations.
- In essense, Bottum challenges
his critics to prove that it didn't happen. Hasn't he ever
heard the tired-but-true saw that you can't prove a negative?
There really is no documentary evidence that it did happen,
and plenty of reason to be skeptical.
- Bottum asserts that the very
fact that these stories are circulating -- and that Chinese performance
artist Zhu Yu claims to have eaten a stillborn baby -- says
something important about the culture, regardless of whether these
stories are actually true. His conclusion: "The picture of a
culture of death is being created in front of us. Don't look at
the individual pieces as they are held up, one by one. Look at the
puzzle that's being filled in." Actually, I suspect he could have
written a pretty good column about what it means that such
apparently bogus stories are circulating. But that's not what he
wrote last Friday. Is it really necessary to say that the truth
matters?
- The headline on the e-mail
version of my piece -- though not the Web version -- referred to
Bottum's original post as a "blood libel." Bottum notes that the
About.com urban-legends site that I referred to uses the phrase
"blood libel," and then casually adds that "this is where the
Boston Phoenix lifted the 'blood libel' bit."
Lifted? Is Bottum always this careless with language? Hey, J. Bo,
look at my first post again. I not only linked to the About.com
piece, but I also quoted from it, including the "blood libel" bit.
Since when did quoting become "lifting"?
posted at 10:47 AM |
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It's a man's world. You
might read Joan
Vennochi's column in
today's Globe -- in which she argues that Massachusetts is a
particularly inhospitable environment for women politicians -- and
say, "Oh, come on."
But then you turn to the City &
Region section and find this lose-your-breakfast
piece by Stephanie Ebbert
on how male legislators (including House Speaker Tom Finneran) are
making Father Knows Best-style quips about having to check
with the little woman before deciding whether to take a pay
raise.
Next you pick up the Herald,
and are told in a front-page report by David Guarino that
you're
supposed to be outraged
that Jane Swift continued to make gubernatorial appointments until
she was no longer governor. (Okay, it sounds like she made a couple
of bad appointments. Like that's never happened
before.)
And you have to conclude that
Vennochi is right when she says that "Massachusetts is still very
much an Irish-American, Italian-American, patriarchal, Catholic
state. Culturally and politically, man is king here -- to himself and
to many women."
posted at 9:55 AM |
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Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Apple's new war on
Microsoft. Since Steve Jobs's return to Apple in the late 1990s,
the company he co-founded has survived -- even prospered -- under
sort of a Pax Microsoftia. Bill Gates invested some of Microsoft's
spare change in Apple, and Apple made Microsoft's Internet Explorer
the default browser on its Macintoshes.
Far more important, Apple did
everything it could to ensure the success of Microsoft Office, the
Mac version of which costs an obscene $499, or a considerably more
reasonable $199 for new-Mac buyers. Apple's competing product,
AppleWorks, was included free of charge only on Apple's
consumer-market Macs; buyers of Macs aimed at professionals would
have to shell out an additional $79. Moreover, there is no easy,
seamless way of sharing files between the AppleWorks and Office
worlds, as my irritated editors would be the first to tell
you.
Now Jobs has apparently decided to
go to war against Microsoft. Yesterday's
new-product announcements,
at MacWorld in San Francisco, are just the latest sign that David
wants to compete head-to-head with Goliath. Last year, for instance,
Apple unveiled its quirky and effective "Switch"
ads in an attempt to get
Windows users to come over to Apple. Of course, Apple has
always depended on people preferring the Mac operating system
to Windows, but there is a snarky "Windows sucks" tone to the
"Switch" ads that belie the two companies' supposed
alliance.
Also, the Mac enthusiast site Think
Secret reported in October that the
next version of AppleWorks
-- which could be unveiled any day now -- was aiming for
"[f]ull compatibility with Microsoft Office." Since
compatibility is one of the few reasons anyone would shell out for
the cumbersome Office, the ability to share files hassle-free would
amount to a huge disincentive for buying Office.
Thus, the real interest in
yesterday's announcement was not the two new PowerBook laptops, cool
though they may be. It was that Apple will soon replace Internet
Explorer as the default browser with a new browser of its own, called
Safari,
which is supposed to run three times faster than IE -- and that Apple
will also market a $99 presentation program called Keynote
that will compete directly with Microsoft's ubiquitous PowerPoint,
one of Office's components.
Will it work? San Jose Mercury
News technology columnist Dan
Gillmor is skeptical but intrigued,
writing that if Apple really intends to go after Microsoft, "it means
more competition. That's healthier all around."
Apple obviously has a difficult
road. With something like five percent of the market share, it needs
to cater to the needs of customers who live in a Microsoft-dominated
world. Who cares how great Keynote might be, for example, if its
files are incompatible with those of PowerPoint? Yet unless Apple
maintains its edge as a technologically superior alternative, it
really has no reason to exist.
That's why I use Apple products,
but invest in Microsoft. I don't see any reason to rethink either
decision.
posted at 10:24 AM |
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Incomparably critical. Bob
Somerby's excellent Daily
Howler site calls attention
to -- and takes issue with -- my recent item on liberal
and conservative media bias.
Somerby can't believe I said that the liberal media tend to be
moderate to conservative on economic issues, and criticizes my
"rollover attitude."
Oddly enough, he tries to sic Bill
Clinton on me, even though Clinton himself is the very embodiment of
modern liberalism, which isn't all that liberal except on cultural
issues. Clinton managed the economy like an Eisenhower Republican,
and signed a welfare-reform bill that only a conservative could
love.
Somerby approvingly quotes Clinton
as saying, "They have an increasingly right-wing and bellicose
conservative press. And we have an increasingly docile
establishment press." Clinton is right. But his successful
repositioning of liberalism is one of the prime reasons for
that.
Perhaps George W. Bush, by managing
the economy like a right-wing extremist rather than an Eisenhower
Republican, will help change that. He's starting to make Clinton's
cautious centrism look like liberal activism.
posted at 10:23 AM |
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The reading list. The new
issue of the Unitarian Univeralist World contains an essay I
wrote on my
weekend with the American Atheists
-- an expansion and update of a
piece I did for the Phoenix
last year. The World also includes a comprehensive overview by
Wendy
Kaminer on the fate of
civil liberties post-9/11.
posted at 10:23 AM |
link
Tuesday, January 07, 2003
Farewell to David Shribman.
Before David
Shribman came to the
Globe, the paper had no such thing as a nonpartisan political
essayist. In his nearly 10 years here, Shribman has perfected a
certain type of column: gracefully written, insightful, and never
mean-spirited or ideologically driven. Today's
is typical. He takes an
obvious story -- the pack of Democrats getting ready to challenge
President Bush -- and does the atypical, making smart comparisons
between now and 1992, when another pack of Democrats was getting
ready to challenge an earlier President Bush, also at a time of war
and economic uncertainty.
Unfortunately, we won't have a
chance to read Shribman much longer. Soon he'll pack up his
Pulitzer
and leave Washington to take
a new job, as editor of the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He'll be missed.
posted at 9:31 AM |
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Bush at Ground Zero. George
W. Bush continues to be a disaster on policy (another
tax cut for the rich?), but
he remains a master political strategist. Now he's actually given
himself a longshot but realistic chance of winning heavily Democratic
New York in 2004 by scheduling the Republican National Convention in
New York City. He'll be able to drape himself in all
the patriotic symbolism of 9/11,
while the Democrats will be partying with us here
in Boston. Hey, I love the
idea of a national convention in our hometown, but as politics it's
dumb, dumb, dumb.
posted at 9:30 AM |
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Monday, January 06, 2003
The snooze on online
politics. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has
a
new report out today on the
extent to which people go online for political news. And though the
report -- with the scintillating title of "Modest Increase in
Internet Use for Campaign 2002" -- is entirely non-startling, there
is one aspect that jumps out: the most common practice reported was
visiting the websites of large, established media such as the New
York Times, CNN, and local news organizations. How ...
uninteresting.
The Pew survey did report an
increase since 2000 from 19 percent to 32 percent in "online election
news consumers" who "went most often to government and candidate
websites or sites that specialize in politics." But the overall
percentage of people who reported getting any political news
online has increased only modestly since 1998 (from 15 percent to 22
percent). The preferred source of political news for most people
remains television.
A few years ago, it looked as
though politics was going to move to the Internet in a big way. The
paradigmatic example was Politics.com,
which hired Watergate veteran Carl Bernstein to make the rounds on
its behalf during the 2000 campaign. But Politics.com began
downsizing before Election Day, although it still exists in
diminished form -- complete with a
blurb from a piece that I
wrote for the Phoenix three
years ago calling it "the
one essential site." Sorry, but it doesn't look all that essential
these days.
posted at 9:51 AM |
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The GOP's over-the-top attack on
Edwards. Phoenix editor Peter Kadzis passes along
this
link from the Republican National
Committee attacking
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. I hold no brief for
the faux populist from North Carolina, whose icky habit of commenting
on his own regular-guyness was neatly
skewered by TNR &c.
last week. But isn't this a bit much?
posted at 9:50 AM |
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Foozling with the senior
senator. One would think that the last thing we need is another
profile of Ted Kennedy. But Charlie
Pierce's, in Sunday's
Boston Globe Magazine, is a good one. Pierce also offers a new
meaning for "foozling" that I like better than the
old one. And I plan to use
it, after a decent interval has passed.
posted at 9:50 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
