The Ledes

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

New York Times: “The Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, who emerged from the backwoods of Louisiana to become a television evangelist with global reach, preaching about an eternal struggle between good and evil and warning of the temptations of the flesh, a theme that played out in his own life in a sex scandal, died on July 1. He was 90.” ~~~

     ~~~ For another sort of obituary, see Akhilleus' commentary near the end of yesterday's thread.

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Marie: Sorry, my countdown clock was unreliable; then it became completely unreliable. I can't keep up with it. Maybe I'll try another one later.

 

Commencement ceremonies are joyous occasions, and Steve Carell made sure that was true this past weekend (mid-June) at Northwestern's commencement:

~~~ Carell's entire commencement speech was hilarious. The audio and video here isn't great, but I laughed till I cried.

CNN did a live telecast Saturday night (June 7) of the Broadway play "Good Night, and Good Luck," written by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, about legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow's effort to hold to account Sen. Joe McCarthy, "the junior senator from Wisconsin." Clooney plays Murrow. Here's Murrow himself with his famous take on McCarthy & McCarthyism, brief remarks that especially resonate today: ~~~

     ~~~ This article lists ways you still can watch the play. 

New York Times: “The New York Times Company has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon for use in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence platforms, the company said on Thursday. The multiyear agreement 'will bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,' the news organization said in a statement. Besides news articles, the agreement encompasses material from NYT Cooking, The Times’s food and recipe site, and The Athletic, which focuses on sports. This is The Times’s first licensing arrangement with a focus on generative A.I. technology. In 2023, The Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement, accusing the tech companies of using millions of articles published by The Times to train automated chatbots without any kind of compensation. OpenAI and Microsoft have rejected those accusations.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I have no idea what this means for "the Amazon customer experience." Does it mean that if I don't have a NYT subscription but do have Amazon Prime I can read NYT content? And where, exactly, would I find that content? I don't know. I don't know.

Washington Post reporters asked three AI image generators what a beautiful woman looks like. "The Post found that they steer users toward a startlingly narrow vision of attractiveness. Prompted to show a 'beautiful woman,' all three tools generated thin women, without exception.... Her body looks like Barbie — slim hips, impossible waist, round breasts.... Just 2 percent of the images showed visible signs of aging. More than a third of the images had medium skin tones. But only nine percent had dark skin tones. Asked to show 'normal women,' the tools produced images that remained overwhelmingly thin.... However bias originates, The Post’s analysis found that popular image tools struggle to render realistic images of women outside the Western ideal." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The reporters seem to think they are calling out the AI programs for being unrealistic. But there's a lot about the "beautiful women" images they miss. I find these omissions remarkably sexist. For one thing, the reporters seem to think AI is a magical "thing" that self-generates. It isn't. It's programmed. It's programmed by boys, many of them incels who have little or no experience or insights beyond comic books and Internet porn of how to gauge female "beauty." As a result, the AI-generated women look like cartoons; that is, a lot like an air-brushed photo of Kristi Noem: globs of every kind of dark eye makeup, Scandinavian nose, Botox lips, slathered-on skin concealer/toner/etc. makeup, long dark hair and the aforementioned impossible Barbie body shape, including huge, round plastic breasts. 

New York Times: “George Clooney’s Broadway debut, 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' has been one of the sensations of the 2024-25 theater season, breaking box office records and drawing packed houses of audiences eager to see the popular movie star in a timely drama about the importance of an independent press. Now the play will become much more widely available: CNN is planning a live broadcast of the penultimate performance, on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The performance will be preceded and followed by coverage of, and discussion about, the show and the state of journalism.”

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. -- Magna Carta ~~~

~~~ New York Times: “Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946. That is about to change. Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties. It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.... A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.... First issued in 1215, it put into writing a set of concessions won by rebellious barons from a recalcitrant King John of England — or Bad King John, as he became known in folklore. He later revoked the charter, but his son, Henry III, issued amended versions, the last one in 1225, and Henry’s son, Edward I, in turn confirmed the 1225 version in 1297 and again in 1300.”

NPR lists all of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners. Poynter lists the prizes awarded in journalism as well as the finalists in these categories.

 

Contact Marie

Email Marie at constantweader@gmail.com

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Thursday
Jan202011

The Commentariat -- January 21

** Best Blogpost Ever on Court Challenges to the Affordable Care Law. Rick Ungar of Forbes (of all places), in a post titled, "Congress Passes Socialized Medicine and Mandates Health Insurance...":

In July of 1798, Congress passed – and President John Adams signed - 'An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen.' The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance.

Keep in mind that the 5th Congress did not really need to struggle over the intentions of the drafters of the Constitutions in creating this Act as many of its members were the drafters of the Constitution.

Steve Benen on Joe Lieberman -- still able to get "foreign policy AND feminism wrong at the same time."

I'm posting this for the behind-the-scenes stuff, which I love:

CW: Mary Williams Walsh of the New York Times writes what I think is an alarming report on what some policymakers are advocating for cash-strapped states: bankruptcy, including reneging on pension obligations to retirees. My friend Peter S. directs you to the most recommended comment by Zeppo.

Jeffrey Immelt in a Washington Post op-ed: "President Obama has asked me to chair his new President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.... The president and I are committed to a candid and full dialogue among business, labor and government...." (See today's news.) ...

... Read Marcy Wheeler on Jeff Immelt: "... no matter how many times Immelt gets up on a podium or in an op-ed and feigns an interest in American jobs, his actions make him the poster child for everything wrong with the U.S. economy right now." Marcy embeds this terrific clip from Bernie Sanders' Senate "filibuster":

... Also, please read Melissa McEwan on Obama's choice of Immelt. I can't match her sarcasm, but she perfectly captures my sense of the pick. ...

... Pat Garofalo of the Wonk Room: "... due to a corporate tax system that is loophole-ridden and full of giveaways, General Electric pays a pittance in corporate income tax. Though the statutory corporate income tax rate is 35 percent, GE last year paid a paltry 3.6 percent. In 2009, despite making $10.3 billion in pretax income, GE paid nothing in corporate income tax (and, in fact, received $1.1 billion in tax benefits)." ...

... The new chairman of our "Council on Jobs" is what you might accurately call a "jobs-killer."

Noam Scheiber in The New Republic on President Obama's Wall Street Journal op-ed piece re: regulatory reform. Here's the President's piece. Scheiber's analysis is pretty illuminating.

Ezra Klein: "It's the age of civility in American politics, but there's one institution that's been civil all along: the Congressional Budget Office.... The nonpartisan agency ... speaks in the polite language of actuarial tables, refuses to reliably please or disappoint either party and is the closest thing American politics has to an umpire. And the Republicans are getting sick and tired of it."

Jonathan Martin of Politico: Dick Armey to House Republican Tea Party members: "Curb your enthusiasm." Includes three videos of Dick Armey talking, none of which I even clicked on. CW: my friend Kate Madison warned at least a year ago that Armey, a big financial backer of the TP, would try to make regular Republicans out of any tea party members who made it to Congress. Let's see how that goes. ...

... David Herszenhorn of the New York Times: "House Republican leaders confronted pressure from conservatives on Thursday to take more aggressive steps to cut federal spending, with a large group of lawmakers calling for outlays to be slashed by $2.5 trillion over the next decade, far more than the party has sought so far." ...

... Steve Benen: "The likelihood of these cuts actually passing is non-existent, but it is a helpful snapshot of Republican priorities. But also note perhaps the most important detail about a plan such as this one: it would be devastating for American jobs. Indeed, if lawmakers were to get together to plot how Congress could deliberately increase unemployment, their plan would look an awful lot like this one. The RSC proposal would deliberately fire thousands of civilian workers, force states to make sweeping job cuts, and lay off thousands more who work in transportation and infrastructure." ...

... David Dayan of Firedoglake: "The value in [the Republican Study Committee's spending cuts] document is knowing that the battle lines have been drawn.... The end of the continuing resolution on March 4, as well as the need to increase the debt limit, hang out there over the horizon."

As the Worms Turn. AP: Justices Scalia & Thomas try to explain away their relationship with Charles Koch, one of the brothers who have benefited from the Citzens United ruling, in which Scalia & Thomas were in the majority. The Supremes look shady to me. But you decide. Here's the New York Times' backstory, which I linked to yesterday.

Another reason DADT was stupid. Mark Thompson of Time: "The Government Accountability Office has concluded it cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $200 million to oust 3,664 service personnel for violating the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' law between 2004 to 2009.... That works out to $52,800 per person."

Floyd Norris of the New York Times suggests a new chapter for Gail Collins' proposed book, Everything Bad Is Joe Lieberman's Fault. Norris says had it not been for Lieberman's insistence in 1994 upon allowing fantastical stock-option accounting, "some of the worst excesses of the technology stock bubble might have been avoided."

AP: "Rep. Gabrielle Giffords left a Tucson hospital Friday and is being flown to a Houston rehabilitation center for her next steps in her recovery, less than two weeks after the congresswoman was shot in the head. Well-wishers ... lined the ambulance's route between the hospital and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, where Giffords was loaded on a specially outfitted jet." ...

     ... Washington Post Update: "Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's transfer Friday from a Tucson trauma center to a Houston hospital went 'flawlessly,' and she will begin rehabilitation right away, doctors said."

Michelle Obama is killing people on the streets! Jason Linkins mocks the Daily Caller's latest lunacy.

President Obama on the 50th Anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's inauguration. Scroll down for JFK's inaugural address:

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