Running down the press:
Post: ‘IDIOT SI SIBS PROVE ‘GUIDO’ MAYOR RIGHT: COPS’
Attention, immigrants: If you can prove that you understand this headline, you pass the New York City citizenship test. If you need help, here’s Kyle Murphy‘s lede:
Times: ‘As Iraq Surplus Rises, Little Goes Into Rebuilding’
Based on a GAO report spurred by indefatigable Michigan senator Carl Levin, James Glanz and Campbell Robertson write:
The unspent windfall, which covers surpluses from oil sales since 2005, appears likely to reinforce growing debate about the approximately $48 billion in American taxpayer money devoted to rebuilding Iraq since the American-led invasion.
As if that weren’t enough:
Over all, the report from the Government Accountability Office estimates, Iraqi oil revenue from 2005 through the end of this year will amount to at least $156 billion. And in an odd financial twist, a large amount of the surplus money is sitting in an American bank in New York — nearly $10 billion at the end of 2007, with more expected this year, when the accountability office estimates a skyrocketing surplus.
Too bad the Times is so hidebound, parochial, and old-school newspaperish that it won’t include a link to the National Priorities Project’s Cost of War page, which breaks down the tab to U.S. taxpayers at $341.4 million a day and the running total, as I write, as $543,045,201,657. Oops, make that $543,045,394,187.
Those damn Iraqis. We oughta just invade their country.
Daily News: ‘Doped-up teen kills couple in Queens wreck: cops’
Bullshit.
The lede sez:
Actually, the kid wasn’t “doped-up” enough, but the story doesn’t reveal that until the 11th graf:
But early yesterday, Jacob Chubashvili snuck off with the keys to Mosehl’s Mercedes and sped off on a joyride, cops said.
Marijuana caused this tragedy? If he’d smoked another blunt, he probably wouldn’t have been able to even get into the car.
Times: ‘Town in China Returns to Normal a Day After a Bold Attack’
Yeah, “normal.” Edward Wong‘s folo on Monday’s violence in far-western China ignores recent and ongoing history. The U.S. press swallows the propaganda of China’s rulers and calls this “terrorism,” but that depends on how you look at it.
China’s government is pushing its dominant Han Chinese into historically Uighur territory. So this is like calling the American Indians “terrorists” when the U.S. government encouraged white settlers to push West in the first three centuries of our country’s existence. Terror is terror; it’s frightening and disgusting. “Terrorist” depends on your point of reference.
There are millions of Uighurs, so what’s “normal” for this huge occupied area? The world’s most self-prestigious paper needed to background this piece at least a little for its readers’ sake. And when the Times doesn’t do this, then most of the rest of the lapdog U.S. press, which take their cue from the Times, doesn’t bother to do it either, which is why we need to keep ragging on the paper to do its job. And the paper could have done it by checking other mainstream-journo sources and throwing in a paragraph.
For instance, see Terry McCarthy‘s 1997 story on Time mag’s website and from one paragraph you may understand why there was such a brutal attack yesterday in you-never-heard-of-before Kashgar:
For some great right-now photos of China’s Far West turbulence, go to The Opposite End of China.
Times: ‘Texas Executes Mexican Despite Objections’
You don’t have to be a foe of the death penalty to throw this context into the story — which the Times didn’t:
Of the top five bloodthirsty countries in the world, the U.S. is fifth and last. And that’s the end of the good news from the humaneness perspective. The four other countries are (in order of state-sanctioned bloodthirstiness) China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.
Note that, of the top five, the U.S. is the only Western country, the only one close to being a democracy, the only “Christian nation,” and the country with the most Toyota-sales-event TV ads.
Post: ‘ ‘THRAX DOC’S KIDS FACED FBI’S HEAT’
There was really no reason to abbreviate “anthrax,” but somehow it’s just right for this hed.
Chuck Bennett‘s ripped-from-a-’40s-teletype lede:
Times: ‘Where the Race Now Begins at Kindergarten’
Winnie Hu reports on a really sad story for really small kids who belong to a really tiny percentage of New York’s population that can afford non-parochial private schooling:
Thank God the city’s public schools are in great shape, as my colleague Nat Hentoff points out.
“Whacked” is such a cool word. It’s sure to outlive the fading era of the Italian-American gangsters.
That’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly word business.
Times: ‘Guantánamo Bay Judge Admits Possible Error’
“I may well have instructed the members erroneously,” said the judge, Capt. Keith J. Allred of the Navy, during one of several sessions called outside the hearing of the six-member panel of senior military officers who are considering war-crimes charges against the driver, Salim Hamdan.
Wait a minute. You mean the “international law of war” is even supposed to be “applied”? Have you checked with George W. Bush‘s handlers? Or with Alberto Gonzales?
Post: ‘PAPERS BARE SOARES’ LOVEFEST WITH SPITZER’
Misleading use of the word “lovefest,” which has come to mean only one thing in the Spitzer sex lexicon — unless the ex-governor has a previously unrevealed kink involving “kid gloves”:
Slate: ‘When “Skinny” Means “Black”: The weirdest new criticism of Obama’
Tim Noah‘s piece isn’t a P.C. piece; it’s about a Wall Street Journal may-or-may-not-have-been-a hit piece:
Even though Noah neglected to mention Fat Albert or Biggie Smalls, it’s still interesting.
Times: ‘Accusations of Sex Abuse Trail Doctor’
Leslie Kaufman gingerly backs into this explosive tale of celebrity pediatrician Melvin D. Levine‘s having faced years of sexual-abuse allegations. You have to wait until the middle of the sixth graf to read this:
There have been, however, other complaints dating back 20 years.
Yes, we can’t imagine highly respected people such as doctors or priests behaving in such a criminal way and then being defended by their defenders.