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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To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

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Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

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

Page Links
Sunday
May152016

The Commentariat -- May 16, 2016

CW: Looks as if somebody completely deleted this day's page. What makes this super-weird is that some of the comments from May 16 ended up in the May 17 Commentariat. Here's some of what was in the page for the 16th:

Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post: "President Obama delivered a commencement address at Rutgers University on Sunday that ... sounded a lot like a tough, aggressive takedown of [Donald Trump].... The 45-minute-long address was filled with obvious jabs at ... Donald Trump, whom the president didn't name but who was a foil for the graduation speech's most cutting applause lines." -- CW

Presidential Race

Philip Bump of the Washington Post on "what happened at Saturday's dramatic Nevada Democratic convention." -- CW

TMZ: "'The Wire' star Wendell Pierce was arrested Saturday after allegedly physically assaulting a woman supporting Bernie Sanders. Sources at the Loews Hotel in Atlanta tell us the actor struck up a convo with the woman and her boyfriend at around 3:30 AM. The talk turned political and Wendell -- a big Hillary Clinton supporter -- got upset when the woman declared her support for Bernie. We're told Wendell -- who played Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the HBO drama, 'Confirmation' -- became enraged, pushed the boyfriend and then went after his girlfriend ... grabbing her hair and smacking her in the head." -- CW

Liz Kruetz of ABC News: "During a campaign event in Fort Mitchell, [Kentucky, Sunday, Hillary Clinton] was more blunt than ever about what her husband's role could be in a future Clinton administration -- saying she plans to to put the former president 'in charge of economic revitalization.' 'My husband, who I'm going to put in charge of revitalizing the economy, cause you know he knows how to do it,' Clinton told the crowd at an outdoor organizing rally. 'And especially in places like coal country and inner cities and other parts of our country that have really been left out.'" CW

Elise Viebeck of the Washington Post: "The head of the Republican National Committee denounced efforts to draft an independent candidate to run against Donald Trump as a 'suicide mission' that could 'wreck' the United States for generations. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus did not mince words as he urged party figures laying the groundwork for a third-party bid to suspend their operation." -- CW

Elise Viebeck of the Washington Post: "The head of the Republican National Committee played down criticism of Donald Trump's character after new reports chronicled his troubling behavior toward dozens of women and his past habit of impersonating a publicist to boast about his private life. A visibly uncomfortable Reince Priebus defended Trump in three Sunday talk show interviews, arguing that questions about Trump's integrity do not matter to supporters of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and refusing to say whether they should." -- CW

Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed: "Donald Trump said Sunday that he believes refugees will launch a terrorist attack against the United States comparable in size to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.... Trump said refugees coming into the U.S. had cellphones with ISIS flags on them, and questioned how refugees could afford cell phones, suggesting ISIS paid the monthly fees." -- CW

Emily Schultheis of CBS News: "Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates has worked with eight presidents, Republican and Democrat -- and the biggest difference between them and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump is that they all were 'willing to listen,' he said in an interview airing Sunday.... 'I guess one of the things that makes it challenging for me is that he seems to think that he has all the answers and that he doesn't need advice from staff or anybody else,' he said." With video. -- CW

Veepstakes! Ben Terris of the Washington Post: "The most favorably regarded contenders [for Trump's running mate, Ben Carson told a reporter,] after himself..., were John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin and Chris Christie. 'Those are all people on our list,' he said.... That the Trump campaign might want its potential VP picks held close to the vest didn't seem to occur to Carson. He's not the type to keep his candid thoughts to himself." -- CW

Poor Drumpf! Annie Laurie of Balloon Juice: Donald Trump can't self-fund his general election campaign because he doesn't have the money. The Wall Street Journal reports, "When his campaign began last summer, a financial disclosure Mr. Trump filed said he had between about $78 million and $232 million in cash and relatively liquid assets such as stocks and bonds. That would go fast if Mr. Trump spent an amount close to the $721 million President Barack Obama spent in 2012 up to Election Day.... Mr. Trump's businesses don't produce that much in a year, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. His 2016 pretax income, according to the analysis, is likely to be around $160 million...." Laurie observes, "While $160 million (more or less) would be a more-than-satisfactory income to you or me..., it's nowhere near enough to qualify Trump for 'Really Rich Person' status." -- CW

Michael Crowley of Politico on "How a 2013 beauty pageant explains Trump's love for Russia and obsession with Vladimir Putin.... Trump has said his understanding of Russia is based in part on the 2013 Miss Universe event in Moscow..., for what he would call 'the world's biggest and most iconic beauty contest.' 'I know Russia well,' Trump told Fox News on May 6. 'I had a major event in Russia two or three years ago, which was a big, big incredible event.' Asked whether he had met with Putin there, Trump declined to say, though he added: 'I got to meet a lot of people.'" -- CW

Trump's Family Values. 1. Paul Krugman: "The state of child care in America is cruel and shameful -- and even more shameful because we could make things much better without radical change or huge spending. And one candidate [that would be Clinton] has a reasonable, feasible plan to do something about this shame, while the other [that's Drumpf] couldn't care less." -- CW ...

... 2. Benjamin Wallace-Wells in the New Yorker: "... during George W. Bush's Administration..., better-educated people (often men) lectured less-educated ones (usually women) about the importance of abstinence and marriage. Against that backdrop, there must be something refreshing in Trump's message that the problems of American communities are located not within them but in China, and that they can be solved by appointing a new ambassador." -- CW

Alan Rappeport & Patrick Healy of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump plans to attack the character, honesty and authenticity of Hillary and Bill Clinton in the months ahead, in hopes of increasing their unpopularity among voters and deflecting attention from his vulnerabilities. Here are some of his lines of attack against the Clintons, which he described in a recent interview with The New York Times." -- CW

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