John Nolte on Oliver Stone: “As long as your politics are in order, no ‘Jewish domination of the media’ comments can hurt you.”
Can We Ever Believe Them Again?
Ed Morrissey of Hot Air describes more of the coverage of the JournoList revelation, talking about the few reporters who stood up for honesty on occasion:
James Surowiecki offered a longer exposition on the same theme after Journolisters started debating whether the media should report on Fort Hood terrorist Nidal Hasan’s ties to radical Islamist terrorists. When Luke Mitchell of Harper’s argued that reporting on the ties would lead to something “alarmingly dangerous, such as the idea that there is a large conspiracy of Islamists at work in the United States,” Surowiecki reminded Mitchell and others of the entire purpose of journalism, emphasis mine:
“I find it bizarre that anyone would argue that an accurate description of what happened is somehow pointless,” Surowiecki said. “That is, that it’s not useful to offer up an accurate picture of Hasan’s actions because nothing obvious follows from it. We want, as much as possible, to have a clear picture of what’s actually going on in the world. Describing Hasan as a violent Islamist terrorist is much closer to the truth than describing him as a disturbed individual.”
One has to wonder why a journalist from Harper’s — and other publications — would need that reminder, especially about terrorism.
Obama and The Fake Tag
Here’s a little story from the proprietor of The Black Sphere. “The election of Obama reminds me of years ago, when I bought a fake Tag Heuer watch while visiting Manhattan.”
A weekend in exotic Iowa
I meant to share some pictures of my weekend in Decorah, Iowa, but I can’t seem to upload anything to Photobucket today. Not sure if it’s their fault or mine. I’ll try again tomorrow.
I rode down with one of the other Vikings, who has relatives in the area with whom we bunked. The festival actually starts on Thursday, but we only took Friday off, and arrived a little after noon. Viking Sam was there with his Viking boat, and a small contingent from the Skjaldborg group from Omaha.
Friday was an amazing day for me. It was stinking hot—tropical hot, southeast Asian hot and humid, as it so often is in Decorah at the end of July, most especially in the little hollow behind the Norwegian immigration museum where the Viking camp has been located for the last few years.
First of all a couple ladies, sisters as it turned out, came into the camp and talked about a Viking festival they’d attended in Norway. Turned out it was Vikingfestivalen Karmøy, which I’ve been trying to get to for the last decade or so. It further developed that they were descendents of Karmøy, home of my great-grandfather, and their family had come from a neighboring farm.
Later, when I went up to Main Street to scrounge up some lunch, a total stranger stopped me and asked, “Are you Lars Walker, the author?”
I expect that’s the only time that’ll ever happen to me in my life, so thanks, whoever you are, for making me feel like a big shot.
Finally, a couple from Illinois wandered into the camp. She was, as it turned out, the president of the organization devoted to saving and preserving The Viking, the replica Viking ship that was sailed from Norway to America for the Columbian Exposition in 1893. It’s been gradually allowed to deteriorate ever since.
As an added bonus, they’re Christians. He’s a retired employee of Moody Broadcasting.
Saturday was OK, the weather actually pleasant (following thunderstorms which soaked my stuff) but my normal insecurities returned, and—oddly—although traffic was heavier, I sold fewer books.
But you can’t have everything.
Thanks to Sam and Skjaldborg for making it possible for me to be there.
Grading Websites
Michael Hyatt has some interesting thoughts on author websites and points to a tool for grading your site. I thought BwB would rank fairly low, and I could see how we could improve our grade, but our website grade is 95. I wish that meant something. Maybe it means more than I know. Perhaps a more realistic score comes from the blog-specific grader, which gave us a 68. And the grader did not find our Twitter account, so I wonder if that put us down a notch.
Anyway, I’m a little encouraged by our 95 grade. That’s a solid A, and we have room to improve. Our traffic could be much better. Our images could have alt tags, and our pages meta tags. We could allow Sissel to guest blog. Anyway, I’m encouraged.
Speaking of the End: Xclusive eBooks
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light!” Publishers Random House and Macmillan are criticizing an eBook deal by one of America’s leading literary agents.
Home to 700 authors and estates, from Philip Roth to John Updike, Jorge Luis Borges and Saul Bellow, the Wylie Agency shocked the publishing world yesterday when it announced the launch of Odyssey Editions. The new initiative is selling ebook editions of modern classics, including Lolita, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Updike’s Rabbit tetralogy, exclusively via Amazon.com’s Kindle store, leaving conventional publishers out of the picture.
Publishers are citing active contracts on these works and Amazon’s dominance in the market as reasons against this deal. Agent Andrew Wylie doesn’t know how to respond, according to the NY Times.
I am neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet
It was one of those rare, perfect moments in preaching.
While living in Florida some years back, due to limited choices I was attending a church of a different denomination than my own. It was a large, growing, dynamic congregation. The pastor announced a series of sermons on Revelation. But when he started preaching, it quickly became clear he was not teaching the Dispensational Premillenial (i.e., Left Behind) interpretation that’s so popular in our day. He was an amillennialist.
Many congregation members were not happy about this, and made their opinion known.
After a few weeks of controversy, the pastor got into the pulpit one Sunday morning and announced that, for the sake of peace, he was discontinuing the sermon series on the End Times. Instead, he would take up a topic that would trouble people less.
“I’m going to preach on Hell,” he said. Continue reading I am neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet
Three Key Points for Writers
It’s easier to publish a work or a video than ever, so here a few observations from Jane Friedman of Writer’s Digest. A commenter points to this comedy sketch on choice for perspective.
Everyone's Talking Minotaurs!
A publishing executive trying to get ahead of the next big wave says minotaurs are the new vampires, according to this Onion News report. I’m thinking librarians are about ready for their due.
Of butterflies and kerfuffles
Last night I confessed on my Facebook page that I love butterflies and dragonflies. I think my love for butterflies is easily understood. If there are any butterfly haters out there, I’ve never encountered one. Dragonflies, for their part, are cool because they’re beautiful in a sleek, deadly, Viking ship kind of way. As an extra bonus, they devour mosquitoes in large quantities. Every time I see a dragonfly, I want to show my support in some way; buy him a drink and say, “Thank you for your service.” Haven’t worked out a way to do that yet.
Did you ever ponder the word “butterfly?” Where does the butter come in? I did some web searches and discovered (to my delight) that nobody really knows. There are, thank goodness, a few mysteries left in our world. Some say that it’s a confusion of the original name, “flutterby.” That seems to me a little precious, and there seems to be no actual evidence for such a word in history. Some think the word originally only designated the yellow ones, and then expanded to embrace the entire genus. Others say that it’s because butterfly droppings are yellow. Take your pick, or make up one of your own.
By the way, the Norwegian word for butterfly is sommerfugl, which means “summer bird.” What a lovely, poetic name. Illogical, as they have lots of birds in Norway in the summer, but apt.
Much summer heat is being generated by Andrew Breitbart’s story on Shirley Sherrod and her speech to an NAACP meeting. I defended Breitbart in a discussion over at Threedonia earlier today, but on consideration I’ve come to the conclusion that he had a fair point, but bungled the story badly. He was trying to make the reasonable argument that the NAACP shouldn’t call other people racist when its own members laugh and cheer at a story of reverse racism. But he went ahead without having the full story, and should have been aware that Ms. Sherrod, who seems to be a decent person, would be caught in his line of fire.
Talleyrand is supposed to have once said of a political assassination, “It was worse than a crime. It was a blunder.” This was worse than a blunder. It was a sin.
I confess I can imagine myself committing the same sin. Doesn’t make it right, though.