US stuck with factory-installed options
Tim Carney is as insightful a journalist as you’ll find in Washington, D.C., seeing connections where others allow conventional wisdom to draw conclusions for them. He wrote a book about the link between big government and big business, writing about how large, corporate behemoths welcome excess government regulation because their smaller competitors can’t afford it.
As GM announces that bits and pieces are being sold off, Carney finds one piece that’s safe: General Motors, buoyed by taxpayer funds, will keep their lobbying operation open. (I suppose this is another loophole in the Obama “no lobbyists working for the administration” rule.)
Congratulations, average American – you finally have a lobbyist working for you!
Congratulations, you just bought an American car (company)
Let’s not pretend the federal government’s massive bankruptcy bailout of General Motors is a big deal. Politicians have been always behaved like car salesmen – but as AOL’s Daily Finance points out, many times GM did not, which is why the company is melting like the Wicked Witch of the West in a rainstorm.
Yes, I understand the irony of quoting an AOL article about flawed business models, but it outlines very neatly the mistakes GM made in its corporate focus over the last few decades. As Toyota and foreign cars gained market share, GM essentially gave up trying to make money off cars and focused on making money off car loans. Instead of focusing on what made them successful, they ignored their bread and butter to chase profits in a department which they were less adept at – a surefire recipe for business failure. (It’s also the type of thinking that resulted in New Coke.)
It also serves as a cautionary tale. As reports surface that Chrysler, GM, and possibly Citigroup will all be government-owned, the question must be asked: how is an entity $11 trillion in debt in any position to help out a business which is suffering from years of flawed financial management? And even if they are a bunch of used car salesmen, what do they know about actually making the cars?
Sunday Funnies: Notable Quotables
In honor of finding The Shawshank Redemption at Target for $6.50 today, here are the 100 best movie lines in 200 seconds. It is worth noting the value of simplicity; the most immortal lines of our culture take a mere two seconds each, on average.
Lenovation
Tonight, Jay Leno says good-bye to the Tonight Show. It will be the end of an era, but not for the same reason his predecessor’s final show was. Johnny Carson’s final bow in 1992 meant that a popular, recognizable personality was leaving the public eye; despite being consistently top-rated Leno was never so loved. He may, however, revolutionize prime time the way Carson revolutionized late night.
When it premiers this fall, Leno’s 10:00 p.m., five-nights-a-week talk show will be markedly different from its competition. And that may be a good thing. NBC Universal head honcho Jeff Zucker said recently that television networks like NBC are buoyed by their cable properties – and that the demand for cheap programming and instant hits means that shows that take time to find an audience, like Seinfeld, wouldn’t make it today.
Networks must, as Zucker said, change the way they do business for many reasons. Original dramas on cable have become more successful over the past ten years (look at The Shield, The Sopranos, Monk, and Sex and the City) and have the advantage of a revenue stream beyond advertising. Since you pay for cable already, FX doesn’t mind if you TiVo an episode of Sons of Anarchy and fast forward through the commercials. But your clicker is killing NBC, which relies almost solely on advertising to generate revenue, when you skip through the proud sponsors of The Office. Shows aired either live or on tape delay – sports, news, and, of course, talk shows – offer the best advertising opportunities.
Enter Leno in prime time, and NBC has a better venue for advertising. And, since it airs five nights a week, viewers don’t really have to choose between Leno and NCIS – they can watch NCIS one night of the week, CSI another, and Leno when there isn’t an alternative. As he was on the Tonight Show, Leno will be television’s fallback position.
The stakes at 10:00 are a lot lower for Leno than they were when he stepped behind Johnny’s desk. He’s a known commodity, he doesn’t have a very high bar to exceed, and he has no direct competition. But if it works, it could mean a big win for NBC – and, like his predecessor, Leno may inspire copycats.
Dealergate: Obama’s First Scandal
A historic nomination to the Supreme Court is this week’s story; next week look for questions on “Dealergate.” A preliminary review of the 789 Chrysler dealerships that were ordered to close has demonstrated that their owners overwhelmingly gave to Republican candidates in 2008 (about $450,000) – and the ones who gave to Democrats largely gave to John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign raised just $450 from the dealerships which are closing down.
Where did this story come from? Not on CNN, or MSNBC, or even on Fox News – but from the blogosphere. You may know them as the folks who are often derided by the established media for “not being real journalists.”
This story hasn’t really hit the mainstream news outlets yet, but it should soon. A sample of nearly 800 business owners is as large or larger than samples taken for many opinion polls, which means the initial findings certainly warrant more research.
Having a group of 789 business owners who give to Republicans at a 90-95% clip who happen to have their businesses taken away by a Democrat-controlled government could be a mere statistical anomaly. But it could be more. Some questions I would like to see answered: What was the donor activity of for dealer owners that stayed open? Where were the dealerships that are closing in relationship to the 2008 electoral map – and in relation to key 2010 races?
Aside from being the Obama Administration’s first major scandal, Dealergate offers study in modern media. The story was uncovered by citizen journalists – bloggers who did nothing more than examine public documents with fresh eyes and a criticical viewpoint likely unshared by their paid counterparts in the mainstream media. Now it’s up to the media establishment to prove their worth by seizing upon an interesting lead and doing the research to determine what the full story is.
Sotomayor and identity politics
The confirmation battle over Sonia Sotomayor is already heating up – but it’s the left that has been turning up the thermostat.
Before any major criticism of Sotomayor can be levied, her proponents are already playing defense – and some are categorically dismissing any naysayers as racists and/or sexists. The National Organization for Women even announced their campaign to support Sotomayor hours before President Obama announced her nomination. Democrats and their allies on the left are all but baiting Republicans to launch an all-out war.
While there is planty to criticize Sotomayor about – and those criticisms should be levied – it might actually be tactically smart to allow the confirmation to be affirmed with some window dressing opposition. Unlike Harriet Miers, President Bush’s failed nominee, Sotomayor will not face opposition from her own party (barring some shocking revelation that likely would have precluded her nomination in the first place). Given the nature of the Senate, her nomination is almost guaranteed – though that fact is not the reason to give Sotomayor a pass.
Remember that Miers’s nomination by Bush was a replacement of Sandra Day O’Connor – and given the identity politics which often surround high court noninees, Bush felt compelled to nominate a woman. Miers was a disaster, derided by both left and right as an intellectual lightwieght and, more importantly, criticized by conservatives for her lack of strict constructionist bona fides.
Sotomayor is certainly “qualified” to serve on the Supreme Court, but in nominating a Hispanic woman, Obama lessens the pressure on future presidents to look for certain attributes and instead allows them to focus on qualifications. The idea that certain constituencies should be highly visible is an idea that goes back as far as politics and has a long tradition in America – in fact, it’s the reason that a small state (Delaware) was set up to be the first to ratify the Constitution. And each pick that cecks off those boxes (especially qualified picks like Sotomayor) calm the effect of identity politics that factor into these decisions. For instance: if in four or eight years, a Republican president has to pick a nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that President will be under less pressure to appoint a woman. Not that this hypothetical President couldn’t or wouldn’t appoint a woman, but it would be a lesser priority – and anything that strips identity politics from the processes of government is, on some level, a positive thing.
Of course, there’s another cynical reason that a Sotomayor approval might be politically helpful for Republicans. One or two opinions that reflect the same thinking as her support for New Haven, Connecticut’s racial preferences in doling out (and taking away) promotions for firefighters may serve be an albatross for Obama’s reelection campaign.
Now, now, the Canadian Government has apologized for Bryan Adams on several occasions
Hi there! If you’re coming to this page from this blog, would you be so kind as to tell an ignorant American the context of the link? I don’t need an entire translation, but the basic premise of the post might be interesting. If you leave it in the comments section, I’ll be sure to check it out. Thanks!
Happy Memorial Day – which, in addition to celebrating those who died for our freedom, marks the official (i.e. non-astronomical) kickoff of summer. Welcome to the Summer of 2009.
Of course, that means it’s also the 40th anniversary of the Summer of ’69, that season which was forever memorialized by Bryan Adams’s 1980s pop classic. And what has changed in 40 years, besides the fact that Guitar Center is probably a better place to get your first real six-string than a five-and-dime?
The folks at Billshrink answer that on their blog, where they compare 1960s prices with today’s – but, unlike the typical “bread-only-cost-a-nickel-in-19XX” comparisons that many people use, Billshrink actually alters the 1969 price tags to reflect 2009 dollars.
This offers a particularly useful perspective on the real costs of products today versus decades past – and it’s actually good news. If you went into a record store in 1969 to buy the Beatles’ Abbey Road Album, it would cost you $17.34 in today’s money. Today, you can buy most albums online for less than $10. Converse Chuck Taylors may seem pricey at $45 in 2009, but they actually cost the equivalent of $46 four decades ago.
Of course, your first real six string may end up being more expensive: a Gibson Les Paul goes for about $3,500, a grand more than you would have paid back then.
All the news that’s fit to crib
Maureen Dowd lifting language from a blog post for use in her column is proof that, as it has been for decades, the New York Times is the defining example of print journalism in America. After all, this news comes less than two weeks after reporters at various papers were exposed for relying too heavily on Wikipedia to write obituaries for composer Maurice Jarre. With the mainstream media becomes reliant on digital sources, what’s to stop the media consumer from doing the same?
Consider a short, oversimplified summary of the development of our modern media:
Media evolved as a way to let us know what the most important events of they day are; the people who owned the printing press would learn as much as they could and summarize it for the masses. Then, to get as much information as possible, the press owners hired reporters who cultivated sources, from whom they collected information and distilled the most important parts – which was, again, summarized for the masses.
In this model, the journalist is an extremely important link in the chain of information. There’s far too much news out there tucked away in the nooks and crannies of politics, government, sports teams, companies, movie studios, or anything other institution for the average citizen to find it all on his or her own. Unfortunately for the journalist, this model is no longer the case.
Today, most reporters get their news from RSS feeds. I make this point often whenever I’m asked to talk about either public relations or building a digital strategy for an organization (since nowadays, the two really go hand-in-hand). Therefore, if you are in PR – in other words, if you want to be a reporter’s source – you have to make sure your organization distributes information over RSS feeds. In essence, RSS feeds are the new “sources.”
And since you can go around the web signing up for just about any RSS feed you want, you have access to those sources as well. And instead of reading about President Obama’s next Supreme Court nominee in your local paper, you can instantly see what The National Review, Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, Human Events, and a host of other media outlets from all over the political spectrum have to say about him.
All of this makes the reporter or the columnist much less useful than he or she used to be – especially when he or she is sloppy and cribs almost directly from his or her source.
Of course, this isn’t the end of journalism – the information has to come from somewhere, after all. But it does mean that a journalist has to work harder and report information that his or her readers wouldn’t be able to find otherwise. Like many other industries, the media must find new ways to generate value.
When picking battles, avoid opponents who know 47 ways to kill a man
The latest chapter in Sgt. Schulz, ahem, Speaker Pelosi’s war of words with the CIA (good luck with that) has her accusing the CIA of lying not only to her, but to Congress as well. Republicans are calling for further action, and rightfully so. Shouldn’t alleged torture be at least as important as Roger Clemens’s workout regimen?
Jim Eltringham 