Friday, June 20, 2003
Quickly - good luck to England in the rugby (and well done on the cricket). And I'll be back tomorrow to blog "The Trial of Tony Blair", live as it shows...
Thursday, June 19, 2003
To show I don't just think they're biased, here's an example of the Beeb doing a round-table providing literary and stylistic comment on Pinter's anti-war poetry - they tackle the literary issues, without feeling a need to tackle anyone else particularly. Odd that Harry Potter can't get the same treatment...
"MARK LAWSON:
Bill Buford, will the poems give pause to war mongers?
BILL BUFORD:
I don't think they will give it a second look. I think that you flatter the poems and, alas Harold Pinter by giving it this much attention. I find this narcissistic. I get impatient with it. I don't know why you read this. Are you reading it for its wit, for its use of language, for its imagery? Are you reading the argument because you expect something to come up that you've not heard before? No. When there is a comparison between Nazi Germany, this becomes for me an hysterical rant. The point of the poems seem to me, that they are merely consolidating the views of the listeners who are agreeing with the author. "
"Sadly" they all think the poems are dire, so it's not a good example of balance, I'm afraid.
"MARK LAWSON:
Bill Buford, will the poems give pause to war mongers?
BILL BUFORD:
I don't think they will give it a second look. I think that you flatter the poems and, alas Harold Pinter by giving it this much attention. I find this narcissistic. I get impatient with it. I don't know why you read this. Are you reading it for its wit, for its use of language, for its imagery? Are you reading the argument because you expect something to come up that you've not heard before? No. When there is a comparison between Nazi Germany, this becomes for me an hysterical rant. The point of the poems seem to me, that they are merely consolidating the views of the listeners who are agreeing with the author. "
"Sadly" they all think the poems are dire, so it's not a good example of balance, I'm afraid.
Amazing. Newsnight has a roundtable discussion on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and one of the commentators has partially condemned the book, and the genre of fantasy, as (approx quotes) "where did George Bush get the "axis of evil" from if not from fantasy - you have ???? and Narnia, and fantasy has to come back to being a battle of good vs evil, and the real world isn't that simple unless you're George Bush".
I've no idea who the speaker is who said it, unfortunately, but it went unchallenged by the host and the other members of the panel. His name's not been given at the end of the show, I'm afraid. Perhaps they'll let us know here.
For those who prefer talk about the books, Paxo's interview with JK Rowling is up in transcript form.
I've no idea who the speaker is who said it, unfortunately, but it went unchallenged by the host and the other members of the panel. His name's not been given at the end of the show, I'm afraid. Perhaps they'll let us know here.
For those who prefer talk about the books, Paxo's interview with JK Rowling is up in transcript form.
The ultimate in distributed web-logging
Channel 4 appears to have taken the big step. They've set up a web input form to submit links and descriptions. Presumably, there's a degree of editorial oversight, but effectively it's an old-style linking blog with submissions from whoever visits the site, with no registration, no need to ever post again, etc.
The latest 30 posts appear on the front-page, and it seems possible to go back in the archives. It's a mixture of news stories and links to organisations, and a number look pretty interesting. It's joining my blog-roll and "favourites"...
The latest 30 posts appear on the front-page, and it seems possible to go back in the archives. It's a mixture of news stories and links to organisations, and a number look pretty interesting. It's joining my blog-roll and "favourites"...
And that's a promise
Friday afternoon Meryl Yourish will be reporting the Hulk's reactions to The Hulk.
Whereas on Saturday afternoon (US time), I'll be live-blogging Channel 4's Tony Blair On Trial
"We were told Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but no such weapons have been found. Did the Prime Minister send troops to war under false pretences? Or is it a matter of time before these weapons are found? Tonight, advocates from both sides of the debate will question key witnesses in a courtroom setting as they put Tony Blair on Trial."
Whereas on Saturday afternoon (US time), I'll be live-blogging Channel 4's Tony Blair On Trial
"We were told Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but no such weapons have been found. Did the Prime Minister send troops to war under false pretences? Or is it a matter of time before these weapons are found? Tonight, advocates from both sides of the debate will question key witnesses in a courtroom setting as they put Tony Blair on Trial."
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Instapundit claims "JOHN PILGER said that we were killing the children of Iraq via sanctions. Now that the war is over, the evidence suggests that he was a liar or a fool. And so were a lot of others".
However, he clearly misses that this proves Pilger right all along - war was wrong, as if sanctions weren't killing Iraqi civilians, they were plainly the right way to deal with the threat: one of the main planks of a moral case for action falls away. Or something like that - give Pilger a week....
However, he clearly misses that this proves Pilger right all along - war was wrong, as if sanctions weren't killing Iraqi civilians, they were plainly the right way to deal with the threat: one of the main planks of a moral case for action falls away. Or something like that - give Pilger a week....
The most exploitative way to review a book ever?
Slate takes up the challenge with a pictoral review of Lapdancer, charting the decline of the strip-tease...
The Carnival of the Vanities is up, with it's usual multi-blog fun.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Opening lines
The Indy has been running a great little competition, for the best 50 word opening for an (unwritten) novel. A more inspiring version of the Bulwer-Lytton contest.
Compare and contrast:
The best - "It started with a kick-about. Seven of us. Two weeks later, it was 20 or 30. Two months later, the youngest had lost his family and we'd lost our opportunities. It's madness. When you put the beginning and the end next to each other and forget everything in-between. It's insanity."
Vs last year's worst (the Bulwer-Lytton winner) - "On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained. "
Personally, I prefered another of the "best" entries: "Last night I dreamt it was the best and worst of times again. The cannibal was back in Manderley. The cannibal was me."
Compare and contrast:
The best - "It started with a kick-about. Seven of us. Two weeks later, it was 20 or 30. Two months later, the youngest had lost his family and we'd lost our opportunities. It's madness. When you put the beginning and the end next to each other and forget everything in-between. It's insanity."
Vs last year's worst (the Bulwer-Lytton winner) - "On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained. "
Personally, I prefered another of the "best" entries: "Last night I dreamt it was the best and worst of times again. The cannibal was back in Manderley. The cannibal was me."
Another big question
Lileks knows how to shop:
"I’m not saying that one should choose one’s adult beverages on the basis of their luminescent translucence, but the Smirnoff “Ice” malt beverages - purchased because the store was out of my wife’s favorite, the Stoli Citrona - look quite nice on the top shelf of the fridge. They’re backlit. They glow. It’s the sort of vision you associate with the fridges of venture capitalists in an 80s movie, the sort of thing that suggests Kim Basinger will be over shortly for a night of strewing fruit on the kitchen floor."
"I’m not saying that one should choose one’s adult beverages on the basis of their luminescent translucence, but the Smirnoff “Ice” malt beverages - purchased because the store was out of my wife’s favorite, the Stoli Citrona - look quite nice on the top shelf of the fridge. They’re backlit. They glow. It’s the sort of vision you associate with the fridges of venture capitalists in an 80s movie, the sort of thing that suggests Kim Basinger will be over shortly for a night of strewing fruit on the kitchen floor."
Monday, June 16, 2003
Things are going downhill in my plan to play a "Lord of the Rings" drinking game. Current rules involve every time a ring's on screen. Which might work, if each film wasn't heading as long as the forthcoming: "three-hour, 43-minute extended cut of last year's No. 2 box-office hit The Lord of the Rings:The Two Towers" Still, it's got some cool stuff on it, by all accounts. Just gotta front up to the commitment needed...
Via Andrea Harris
Via Andrea Harris
The New Zealand press's most eccentric commentator pulled a blinder with this passage (whereas the rest of the article's junk...). Rugby, the game for Tolkein fans...
"As for the English pack they are the stuff of nightmares. They're battle-hardened Vikings - all scars, snarls and, in Lawrence Dallaglio's case, snorts. And their captain Martin Johnson has that perpetual sneer on his face - as if he's just found out that every Kiwi has married their sister. His running battle with referee Stuart Dickinson also proved that he hated everybody, not just Kiwis.
The rest of the pack were simply giant gargoyles - raw-boned, cauliflower-eared monoliths that intimidated and unsettled. When they ran on to the field, it was like watching a tribe of white orcs on steroids. Forget their hardness - has there ever been an uglier forward pack? Small children who stayed up late to watch this test will be wetting their beds for weeks. But, boy, I'd love to have them playing for us. "
"As for the English pack they are the stuff of nightmares. They're battle-hardened Vikings - all scars, snarls and, in Lawrence Dallaglio's case, snorts. And their captain Martin Johnson has that perpetual sneer on his face - as if he's just found out that every Kiwi has married their sister. His running battle with referee Stuart Dickinson also proved that he hated everybody, not just Kiwis.
The rest of the pack were simply giant gargoyles - raw-boned, cauliflower-eared monoliths that intimidated and unsettled. When they ran on to the field, it was like watching a tribe of white orcs on steroids. Forget their hardness - has there ever been an uglier forward pack? Small children who stayed up late to watch this test will be wetting their beds for weeks. But, boy, I'd love to have them playing for us. "
Cooking up a PR storm
From over here, it's hard to summon the knowledge, or the interest, to be fully up on the details of the Martha Stewart case: either it's run of the mill insider trading, or it's a dubious conviction using a law, that, whilst iniquitous, is pretty much a domestic concern*. But the FT has an interesting take on the issue with the suggestion that the main problem in Stewart's defense, was that it didn't pay enough attention to the press:
"In [a recent case where a judge upheld effectively a "media adviser-client privilege"], the client's lawyers hired a PR firm because they feared that "unbalanced and often inaccurate press reports created a clear risk that prosecutors and regulators would feel public pressure to bring some kind of charge". The judge highlights the importance of public opinion in determining who is indicted and for what; prosecutors commonly try to "colour public opinion", he said, "in the most extreme cases to the detriment of [the defendant's] ability to obtain a fair trial". The rest of us should have the tools we need to fight back against the potential abuse of government power, he argued - if necessary in the media.
Somehow, Martha Stewart and her lawyers failed to grasp that simple legal truth: that the best media win. To pretend otherwise ought to be punishable as a form of legal malpractice, argues James Haggerty, author of the perfect handbook for this age of show trials, In the Court of Public Opinion: Winning your Case with Public Relations.* The book argues a case dear to Mr Haggerty's wallet (he is both a lawyer and a public relations consultant) but that does not make it wrong. According to him, in high-profile cases "public relations is not what you do after you create a legal strategy. Public relations is the legal strategy". All cases are public, he argues - and since barely 10 per cent ever make it to a courtroom, most are fought from beginning to end in the court of public opinion.
Mr Haggerty can claim support for his views in high places: not just from the district judge mentioned above (Lewis Kaplan, one of the cleverest in the business) but also from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote in a 1991 case that "an attorney's duties do not begin inside the courtroom door".
Martha Stewart's lawyers would have done better to heed that advice: they should have staged their own show trial, long before the US attorney strode on to the stage. The government made no secret of its intention to try her in the press - to gain maximum deterrent value from her public shaming. She should have replied in kind, with a PR campaign to brand an image of innocence.
...
[Whilst her post-trial strategy seems to have led the public to see the conviction as unfair,] Ms Stewart ought to have sharpened her PR instruments months ago, while there was still time to separate the prosecutor from his indictment, like the meat from its bone on a shoulder of lamb."
I don't know whether this says good things or bad things about the potential impact of money and politics on justice in America, and it should surely feed into Britain's considerations on reporting restrictions. But it does seem to suggest that the American arrangements, potentially, let people protect themselves from weak prosecutions. If they play their cards right. But that's no substitute for getting rid of bad laws.
* as I understand it, she was convicted for what was said to federal officials investigating the alleged crime, rather than for committing the offense...
"In [a recent case where a judge upheld effectively a "media adviser-client privilege"], the client's lawyers hired a PR firm because they feared that "unbalanced and often inaccurate press reports created a clear risk that prosecutors and regulators would feel public pressure to bring some kind of charge". The judge highlights the importance of public opinion in determining who is indicted and for what; prosecutors commonly try to "colour public opinion", he said, "in the most extreme cases to the detriment of [the defendant's] ability to obtain a fair trial". The rest of us should have the tools we need to fight back against the potential abuse of government power, he argued - if necessary in the media.
Somehow, Martha Stewart and her lawyers failed to grasp that simple legal truth: that the best media win. To pretend otherwise ought to be punishable as a form of legal malpractice, argues James Haggerty, author of the perfect handbook for this age of show trials, In the Court of Public Opinion: Winning your Case with Public Relations.* The book argues a case dear to Mr Haggerty's wallet (he is both a lawyer and a public relations consultant) but that does not make it wrong. According to him, in high-profile cases "public relations is not what you do after you create a legal strategy. Public relations is the legal strategy". All cases are public, he argues - and since barely 10 per cent ever make it to a courtroom, most are fought from beginning to end in the court of public opinion.
Mr Haggerty can claim support for his views in high places: not just from the district judge mentioned above (Lewis Kaplan, one of the cleverest in the business) but also from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote in a 1991 case that "an attorney's duties do not begin inside the courtroom door".
Martha Stewart's lawyers would have done better to heed that advice: they should have staged their own show trial, long before the US attorney strode on to the stage. The government made no secret of its intention to try her in the press - to gain maximum deterrent value from her public shaming. She should have replied in kind, with a PR campaign to brand an image of innocence.
...
[Whilst her post-trial strategy seems to have led the public to see the conviction as unfair,] Ms Stewart ought to have sharpened her PR instruments months ago, while there was still time to separate the prosecutor from his indictment, like the meat from its bone on a shoulder of lamb."
I don't know whether this says good things or bad things about the potential impact of money and politics on justice in America, and it should surely feed into Britain's considerations on reporting restrictions. But it does seem to suggest that the American arrangements, potentially, let people protect themselves from weak prosecutions. If they play their cards right. But that's no substitute for getting rid of bad laws.
* as I understand it, she was convicted for what was said to federal officials investigating the alleged crime, rather than for committing the offense...
Of course, the All Black didn't mean to do this:
