November 30, 2005
A day after a chunk of the Supreme Court's marble edifice just above the "Equal Justice Under Law" on the entablature came tumbling down, and on the same day the Library of Congress was evacuated due to a suspicious odor, we learn the following:
The Wikipedia can really be full of nonsense. A very clever yet false and character-defaming biography of John Seigenthaler, Sr. was in fact so false and malicious as to call into question Wikipedia's credibility. Seems we still might need encyclopedias.
Who cares? Boundaries between fact and fiction seemed increasingly blurred. For example, nutter and moron Bill O'Reilly told the "Today Show" this morning that: These pin-heads running around going, “Get out of Iraq now” don’t know what they are talking about. These are the same people before Hitler invaded in WWII that were saying, “He’s not such a bad guy.” They don’t get it. Seems O'Reilly doesn't get much of history. What O'Reilly says is an outrageous lie, a deliberate mistruth, and underscores wanton ignorance of history. One anticipates his future reiteration of the infamous Vietnam War phrase: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."
Who cares? Well, what about Seigenthaler's reputation? Read what Seigenthaler has to say:
At age 78, I thought I was beyond surprise or hurt at anything negative said about me. I was wrong. One sentence in the biography was true. I was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s. I also was his pallbearer. It was mind-boggling when my son, John Seigenthaler, journalist with NBC News, phoned later to say he found the same scurrilous text on Reference.com and Answers.com.
Incredible! Especially considering what the fake Wikipedia entry had to say: "John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven." And: "John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984," Wikipedia said. "He started one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly thereafter." Astounding!
And just as we thought newspapers were dying out, it seems they are not: circulation has been actually increasing, because Internet clicks have not been counted along with paid print circulation, writes Jennifer Saba: "We have for years allowed ourselves to be held hostage to one metric only," says Jay R. Smith, chairman of the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) and president of Cox Newspapers Inc. "Newspapers have for the last couple of years been finding whole new pockets of audiences for which they get no credit." Does this mean future generations will get access to real facts instead of fiction? Of course there are many challenges ahead, including getting the under-30 set to actually read anything of substance. Considering though, that online newspaper readership was up 11% in October, maybe that's a good thing. But what if the under-30 set is reading Wikipedia? What if they mistake fiction for fact? Here's a trivial yet telling example: go search for that piece of marble that fell off the Supreme Court's edifice. Who cares? Well, you will find this dentil erroneously referred to as dental in some sources. True, there are not many opportunities to refer to Greek-revival architecture and architectural details in modern reportage, but you get the point. Then you must pity poor Seigenthaler, who phoned Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. He asked:
"Do you ... have any way to know who wrote that?"
"No, we don't," he said. Representatives of the other two websites said their computers are programmed to copy data verbatim from Wikipedia, never checking whether it is false or factual.
Little wonder our hallowed edifices of justice are crumbling and our greatest library odoriferous, for they are being abused by pretenders to learning. Truth does matter, facts do have their place, and especially in times of war when lies abound, the wheat must be separated from the chaff.
Tags:
john seigenthaler, newspaper circulation, wikipedia
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Posted on 11/30/2005
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November 28, 2005
Few things send shudders down the spines of New Yorkers as the threat of a transit strike. Only the threat of a Sanitation strike can compare, and then probably only in summer, when piles of garbage on the streets create a big stink. But a cold-weather transit strike beginning ten days before Christmas—now that generates headlines. The city has a contingency plan, which fortunately seems to have more teeth than its hurricane evacuation plan:
• Banning cars without passengers from entering Manhattan.
• Creating car pool-staging areas in the Shea and Yankee stadium parking lots, among other areas.
• Allowing yellow cabs to pick up additional street hails with paying customers already onboard.
• Prohibiting truck deliveries to Manhattan during peak commuting hours.
• Urging authorities who run the ferries, PATH trains and commuter railroads to increase service.
• Reserving stretches of key Manhattan thoroughfares - including Fifth and Madison Aves. - for emergency vehicles, cabs, livery cars and buses.
• Bridge and tunnel lane reversals, increasing the number of Manhattan-bound lanes in the morning rush and outbound lanes in the evening.
• Promote bicycling to work and arranging for secure lockup areas for bikes.
Of course, some of these off-the-shelf plans are recycled from the 2002 strike contingency plans, and some are new. When confronted with a threat, the first thing you do is dust off your old plans. But bike to work in mid-December? Hmmmm...how many brave souls will dare (unless it is warm)?
Given that the MTA has touted its silly holiday fare discounts so far in advance, it would seem both sides have much at stake. And with mixed signals about the beginning of the big holiday retail shopathon, one wonders what a transit strike would do to retailers.
But for now, it's all pure speculation.
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photo: City Hall demonstration in support of subway strike. New York City. 1966. NYU Bobst Library collection.
Tags:
bike lanes, contingency plans, mta, transit strike
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Posted on 11/28/2005
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November 18, 2005
Not since Frank Norris' The Octopus has the railroad loomed so large on the national stage, and of course like most things unrelated to Britney Spears or Tom Cruise gets only limited newspaper coverage. Rail travel might seem quaint these days, but to millions of commuters in the New York City metropolitan area, in the Northeast Corridor region, and in California is indeed a big thing.
The puny secretary of transportation, Norman Mineta, like most Bush appointees, has an agenda: to parcel out Amtrak piecemeal to the highest bidder. He came to New York yesterday, of course by airplane (gotta patronize your buddies). Shockingly enough, Mineta already has had a major U.S. airport named after him for several years: in San Jose, California. While San Jose is a convenient enough backwater (the airport, that is; the city's population is now larger than San Francisco's, which has a huge airport), you might wonder what on earth Mineta has accomplished to have this airport named after himself.
Answer: not much. In contrast, Lady Liberty stood valiantly in our harbor for 115 years before Newark considered naming its airport after her. But I digress.
Anyhow, Mineta has a brilliant scheme: let the federal government (cough) upgrade the tracks, and then the states can take them over. Brilliant! That way the privately-held monopolies like Conrail can still use the tracks at a greatly reduced rate and live off government (read: state government) subsidies.
Ever take Amtrak Upstate? Your train frequently sits idle for 5, 10, 15, 20, even 45 minutes. Why? Because Conrail generally has the right-of-way. Time is money, and freight has precedence over people. It will only get worse under a multistate consortium, and if we consider the failed privatization of British Rail as an indicator, rail travel in the Northeast will become yet slower, more confusing and even dangerous.
As I posted yesterday, it would indeed be ironic if the new Moynihan Pennsylvania Station gets a chopped-up passenger railroad, reduced to a shadow of its former self, while the airlines got all the corporate welfare billions of tax dollars could buy. That's why Mineta flew. His spokesman's disingenous statement He did not take Amtrak, his spokesman, Robert Johnson, said, because he "did not have four or five hours on either end of his schedule to travel by train is typical Bush-speak, obscuring the fact that most Acela travelers find it infinitely more relaxing and tranquil than taxiing to Delay Central a/k/a LaGuardia airport. Notice I did not mention Amtrak is more environmentally-friendly? Or the price of jet fuel? Energy crisis? What, me worry?
Fortunately, Senator Schumer is awake: "The administration is trying to save Amtrak like the Big Bad Wolf is trying to save Little Red Riding Hood," Mr. Schumer said. "Don't be fooled. The administration wants to kill Amtrak, not save it."
Tags:
amtrak, frank norris, mineta, moynihan station, public resources, railroad, schumer
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Posted on 11/18/2005
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November 17, 2005
As predicted, after crushing his Democratic opponent, Bloomberg moved quickly to reinvigorate the static Lower Manhattan Development Corporation Board, adding six members. The lethargic governor Pataki responded an hour later—working at light speed compared with his normally glacial pace—and added two of his own cronies to the LMDC board. Merely on the subject of boards, both Pataki and Bush have shown amazing ineptitude in this arena. The firing of David Gunn from Amtrak last week by a rump board which hasn't even got a quorum did not go unnoticed, not even in Republican circles. Senator Schumer, who has led the criticism of Gunn's possibly-illegal firing, has an interesting letter on that subject in today's New York Times. It seems Pataki, newly returned from the cornfields of Iowa and beaches of Puerto Rico and obviously taken by surprise, wanted to pack a punch, so he appointed fiesty James Kallstrom to serve on the board; although a powerful former top F.B.I. official in New York, Kallstrom will have some clever and formidable colleagues on the board. True, the LMDC is ultimately a state agency, as we are reminded by Messrs. Rutenberg and Dunlap in today's Metro Section, "wholly owned by the Empire State Development Coporation, and ultimately subject to the governor's control." But the governor is increasing off in the wilds with his begging bowl, testing the waters (rather icy) for a possible 2008 run, and Bloomberg obviously has the cash, the power, the advisors, the will and the stamina to grab the bull by the horns. Thus quoteth Newsday: "Memo to Governor Pataki: You can come back home. Now that the elections are over, endangered Republican candidates throughout the state no longer need to avoid being seen with you," said Blake Zeff, a spokesman for the state Democratic Party.
Perhaps something will actually sprout faster from that deep, scarred hole in the ground south of Church Street now that 50% of the LMDC's board is new. Meanwhile, Amtrak's inexorable decline continues. How ironic if a new multibillion-dollar World Trade Center has light rail and subway service at its doorstep, but the new Moynihan Pennsylvania Station gets a chopped-up passenger railroad, reduced to a shadow of its former self, while the airlines got all the corporate welfare billions of tax dollars could buy.
Tags:
amtrak, bloomberg, james kallstrom, lmdc, pataki, schumer
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Posted on 11/17/2005
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November 17, 2005
Bernard Kerik, former police and correction commissioner, appears to be a criminal himself. In Builder's Lawyer Says Kerik Had to Know Cost, crime reporter William Rashbaum reports how NJ officials said Kerik had tried to help a mob-connected company while it paid for renovations to his apartment, and that a lawyer for the builder who did the work said Mr. Kerik should have known the labor and materials he received were worth tens of thousands of dollars more than he paid. Well, anyone who is more conscious than Terry Schiavo was in her dying days would know that, right? Rashbaum continues, The renovated apartment in the Riverdale section of the Bronx has been described in published reports as "a gem," with marble baths, a large rotunda entry and a renovated kitchen with a granite countertop and new appliances.
We all know about Kerik's only-in-America rags-to-riches story, how he lifted himself up by his bootstraps—yawn—to become the biggest city's big brass. We all know why he did not become the Homeland Security major daimyo: because of his ethics problems. (Although ethics problems have been a major qualification of others at Homeland Security...see "Iraq" for example.) Now we all know that he really is a crook.
For his part, the court filing renewed questions about the propriety of affixing Mr. Kerik's name to a New York City jail. Not just any jail, either, but the infamous lower Manhattan detention complex known as The Tombs. Rashbaum: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in response to a reporter's question yesterday, said it was too soon to determine whether the jail should be renamed, because Mr. Kerik has been neither charged nor convicted.
For anyone who regularly walks by this hallowed ground, it is perhaps fitting that Kerik's name (on the creepy standard orange-and-blue signage of the ironically named Correction Department) remain in place until Kerik himself is corrected, i.e. processed in the very complex named after him.
Maybe in his second term Bloomberg could also rename the department the Department of Jails, since I've never heard of anyone emerging from Riker's Island "corrected".
Tags:
bernard kerik, bloomberg, correction department, mayor, rikers island
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Posted on 11/17/2005
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November 15, 2005
Could politics get any weirder? Infamous pathological liar, bank thief, turncoat and now fortuitously both interim oil minister and one of several deputy prime ministers of Iraq Ahmed Chalabi breezed into NYC before his visits with the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal in Washington. In the perhaps most surreal moment of this bizarre visit to America to justify his espionage on behalf of Iran and his double-crossing Washington's most notorious double-crossers, he ate last Friday with none other than Arianna Huffington herself, who blogs about this extraordinary dinner at TriBeCa's cavernous Megu, itself a lavish palace of cold fish. Arianna writes: "Ultimately," he said, "we have no friendships -- only interests.". How true: Which is just as well since his neocon bud Paul Wolfowitz is off saving the world at the World Bank, Cheney and Bush are trying to save what's left of their co-presidency, and Judy Miller is no longer at the New York Times.
Arianna did not rate the tasting menu or the decorative wall made out porcelain sake vases and rice bowls.
Tags:
chalabi, cold fish, megu, sushi
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Posted on 11/15/2005
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November 09, 2005
Bloomberg scored a crushing victory against his weak opponent for numerous reasons, and tremendous setbacks nationwide for the Republicans—from California to New Jersey to Virginia—further reinforce that Bloomberg was simply the best Democrat in the mayoral race. While former governor Howard Dean points out that voters nationwide are unhappy with Republican politicians, Bloomberg remains America's biggest exception. In this heavily Democratic city, despite the ethical and oligarchical implications of spending an obscene amount of own's own money on the race (just as governor-elect Jon Corzine did in New Jersey), voter comments indicate the people are rather happy with his governing style and results. Or were they simply completely unimpressed with Ferrer?
Interesting will be what agenda gets pushed in the second term, and the Times' Jim Rutenberg offers a great laundry list of big-ticket items: ground zero and Governors Island development; housing growth for lower and middle income residents; wresting control of the city's budget away from the demons in Albany; reducing traffic congestion; and perhaps again talk of introducing tolls on the East River bridges and/or in Midtown (similar to those in central London). Why else would so many prominent Democrats support Bloomberg? Not because they feared being "locked out" in a second term, but because he is beholden to none and actually pursues a progressive agenda. Not to mention that he is the city's most high-profile supporter of the arts, promoting our rich cultural life, a key factor which ought not to be overlooked in these troubling times. Or that he shrunk a morbidly obese Board of Education, engineering its extreme makeover into a svelte Department of Education (via Joel Klein) into a somewhat responsive bureaucracy that now actually achieves quantifiable results. The voters—those who voted—probably realized that they can now call 311 for just about any reason to make demands of their government or to just get free information, and that alone perhaps got this wired IT billionaire a second term and tired Ferrer a stunning defeat.
Tags:
albany, bloomberg, corzine, education, election, ferrer, newsday, voters
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Posted on 11/9/2005
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November 07, 2005
When 18 of the top 20 newspapers report circulation losses, it seems time to assess alternate sources of trouble. It can't just be the Internet or blogs, no matter how erudite. For example, why did the San Francisco Chronicle decline so steeply, by over 16.5%? Bad management? Lousy writers? Boring articles? That seems to be part of it. As one of Ringelmatz's colleagues pointed out some months ago: "There's just nothing worth reading in it." And the price can't be keeping readers away; numerous major dailies still cost only 25 cents every day (except Sunday). The Sunday New York Post is down over 6%; it can't just be Murdoch Jr.'s mismanagement or more readers examining the Post online, can it? True confession: Ringelmatz refuses to pay for the Post for ideological reasons (Murdoch has enough money and prints too much gratuitous right-wing slobbering) but does read it online.
But let's keep in mind: these figures indicate only how many people are buying the newspaper, not how many are reading the paper. What if you leave a copy at Starbucks and six other people read it? What about all those online readers who register with fake names? In short, there is no real way to determine just how many people or exactly who actually reads the newspaper. And don't believe the audited circulation of free newspapers; you can look all over the place and see free papers dumped here and there.
But the bigger issue here--the one that has every editorial department quite nervous--is how do the dailies stop losing so much advertising money to Google?
Tags:
circulation, editorial, google, murdoch, new york post, newspaper
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Posted on 11/7/2005
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