Today inBreaking News

Today, we all found out that a guy who looked like he used prostitutes did in fact use prostitutes, albeit apparently high-class ones.

That guy being New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, duh.

I think it's (mildly) interesting (for a journalist) to note that three major papers-The New York Times, the New York Post and the Washington Post-all used almost identical headlines:

Wash Post: "NY Governor Linked to Prostitution Ring"

NY Post: "Spitzer Linked to Prostitution Ring"

NY Times: "Spitzer is Linked to Prostitution Ring"

Come on, New York Post, that's the best you can do? How about: "Hypocrite Gov. Indulged in High-Class Whores?" I think the question mark would maintain the Post's integrity.

Saturday MorningJournalism Round-up

Let's start with the lede from this article by Steven Lee Meyers of The New York Times:

"President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency’s latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques."

I don't know Meyers' writing, but this strikes me as a somewhat Times-ey lede, meaning that the first time I saw it, I had to read it twice to get the meaning. Why not switch things around and simplify a little bit:

"President Bush vetoed on Saturday a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency's ability to torture terrorism subjects, further cementing his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers."

I think that reads a little better, but we're still left with the rather weak "legacy of fighting for strong executive powers." For a paper often accused by the Right of liberal bias, that terminology makes me think either Meyers or his editors handcuffed his writing a little bit. One could just as easily say, perhaps in a different paper with a slightly more partisan bent, that Bush's veto further cements his legacy (maybe the Rove legacy, more accurately) of asserting the supremacy of executive power. To me, "fighting for strong executive powers" implies that Bush is some sort of crusader, bravely defending the rights of the West Wing.

Side note: The Washington Post seems to agree with me:

"President Bush vetoed Saturday legislation meant to ban the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, saying it 'would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror.' "

Right on, Dan Eggen.

And what would a journalism round-up be without the Chicago Tribune and their ever-depressing front page?

"1 student killed, 1 beaten"

"Woman charged with stabbing teen over boy"

"Police have suspect in UNC student leader's death"

From the San Francisco Chronicle, a story about today's Wyoming caucus, which Obama is leading, contains this sentence:

"Obama generally has outperformed Clinton in caucuses, which reward organization and voter passion more than do primaries."

Now, I like this piece of background info, which I've seen repeated in several different papers. It's useful to know the difference between primaries and caucuses. But what about that little "do" stuck in there, as in "more than do primaries"? Seems to me like the case of an over-eager editor trying to make the sentence's grammar perfect, though I'd like someone else to weigh in and tell me if that "do" is really necessary.

Finally, the opening paragraph from a piece found in the Feb. 11 and 18 New Yorker, which piece is unfortunately unavailable online. (note: I think "which piece" is the right way to refer back to the article, and not the entire New Yorker edition, thoughts?)

"My nickname when I was in junior high and high school, in Kansas City, was Loyd, my father's name. It was given to me inadvertently, in 1967, by my seventh-grade math teacher, who had taught my father thirty years earlier and sometimes forgot which of us he was calling on. In my father's day, the math teacher's nickname had been Tarz, short for Tarzan, because he was built like Johnny Weissmuller; by the time I had him, his nickname was Wheezer. He looked like Lyndon Johnson, with tremendous gravity-stretched jowls and earlobes. Age must have lengthened his scrotum, too, because he was always careful to lift his testicles out of the way before sitting in a chair or leaning back against the front of his desk. Sometimes, my friends and I, as we took our seats for math, would pretend to lift our testicles out of the way, too."

Modern LifeFear of Subjectivity

Since the dawn of the trans-digital age, a term I will use to refer to the post-2000s, when information became instantaneously transferable across the world in a matter of seconds, the idea of the live performance has undergone an extreme, yet unnoticed shift.

Arguably, the harbinger of the trans-digital age was YouTube, the monster video sharing Web site. We should have known, while watching one of those anonymous fuck-up videos of someone running into something, or having something run into them, that just as the tribulations of the Everyman could be broadcast, so could the great achievements of mankind, and perhaps more easily.

For, just as the camera seems omnipresent in the trans-digital age, it was equally absent in earlier times. Though mankind has had television for some time now, film for longer, and photography for longer yet, we have never suffered such an omnipresent recorder as we do now. These days, though it might not be apparent, there is a not insignificant probability that your actions are being recorded, and furthermore that those recordings might end up publicly viewed.

In Roman times, the lowly plebeian would obviously never consider the possibility of his actions being recorded. Instantaneous documentation was inconceivable, and no one but the most wealthy were eligible for any sort of immortalization. The frescoes, paintings and mosaics we have received from ancient times represent only the tiniest sliver of memorable life.

The only person worth recording, and likely the only person who would consider himself worthy, would be a kind of Caesar. We in the future might possess a deep, historical interest in the life of the average plebe, but to imagine his life recorded contemporaneously, or rather to imagine that he would possess the arrogance to record his own life, is quite hard.

The point being that, from the time of Caesar to, let's say, some time in the 1980s, the seminal, amazing, zeitgeist-changing, watershed moments in human history were witnessed by, at most, 100,000 people, and understood by far fewer. I use the number 100,000, though it is probably far higher than needed, to account for huge historical battles, or speeches and plays that were relayed to a number of crowds.

Caesar's assassination was probably seen by a crowd numbering less than 100. The beach landings on D-Day can be contemplated only by those who experienced the horror. Only a select few know what it was like to listen to The Beatles at the Cavern Club in Germany. Only a slightly higher number could recall the psychadelic freak-outs of the late '60s acid tests.

Yet now, after the worldwide viewing of the fall of the Berlin Wall, after New Year's celebrations have been transmitted to many nations for many years, and finally after a seemingly infinite number of concerts have been recorded and distributed to millions, we have a reached an era when almost anyone can actually see, and probably hear, what it was like to witness an astounding event.

So what's astounding anymore?

If thousands, or hundreds of thousands, can post their comments on YouTube - "Michael Jordan is hardly the best basketball player ever." "You should really check out his performance at Madison Square Garden." - what does that do to our concept of greatness? Furthermore, in the trans-digital age, is it even possible to form a consensus anymore?

What would have happened if The Beatles earliest concerts had been posted on YouTube? I'm guessing there would have been hundreds of comments criticizing their skill and degrading the band as a knock-off of American R&B and soul groups. Maybe they wouldn't have even gotten their start. Or what if our greatest sports moments - Babe Ruth's Called Shot - had been recorded from multiple angles and critiqued by as many voices? Would we even have a "greatest" concept anymore? Perhaps even now we're moving away from consensus, from the idea that one thing can be objectively greater than another. Subjectivity is the lawless ruler of the day.

LifeSomething Hunter Can Teach Us

I've been reading "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" recently, and sadly for the first time. I had also never sat down and watched the film version all the way through either, despite recommendations from friends for many years, but I did that too the other day.

One thing I get from Hunter S. Thompson, that I semi-understood even before opening his book, is how to dig everything, in one respect or another. There's a story to be had here, is the theme which one needs to pick up. Perhaps the story only becomes available for experience when you are indulging in one of a myriad array of psychadelic mind-twisters, or marijuana, or cocaine, but it's still there.

Hunter has taught me this, but so (obliquely) did a former roommate of mine. It wasn't as if he lectured to me on life - he is not that kind of person - but what I gleaned from him is that there's a story in everything. Maybe it's landscaping in the heat everyday with a crew of men that includes plenty of pot-smoking loonies and a former felon or two. Or maybe it's digging nature zonked out on shrooms. Or maybe it's reporting for a daily newspaper. Hunter, after all, was dispatched to Vegas by reputable magazines to cover actual stories, but what we got out of it was a mythic American voyage, and what we lost was perhaps a couple by-lined stories we would have forgotten about anyway.

The story is there to be had, if you want it. As Hunter said: "Buy the ticket, take the ride."

JournalismSF WeeklyAttepts Satire,Inflamed Testicles Result

The latest edition of SF Weekly, which I picked up this morning at a coffee shop, features a cover article that purports to detail revelatory new claims by a man who served prison time with Barry Bonds' erstwhile trainer/drug pusher, Greg Anderson. "Steroid Confidential" promises to reveal new facts about Bonds, spilled behind bars by Anderson, who has steadfastly refused to give any evidence to the grand jury investigating steroids claims.

The tribulations of Bonds and BALCO have always been one of those stories that fail to hold my attention, so it took me a while to flip back to the article. After I began to read, I felt a creeping unease. Something in the writing wasn't kosher. It started with the overwrought, over-dramatic phrasing in the introduction: "Prison changes a man. Makes him hard and cold, 'like the frozen earth itself,' as Hemingway once observed. Only returning to the outside has allowed Marlon Leftwich to thaw his spirit, to warm his soul." Then there's the continual interruption of the article's affected seriousness by what appear to be unfortunately humorous details: a junk-food addict taken down by a pimpled FBI agent, Bonds drinking a homemade concoction that included elk semen.

Aside from stylistic issues, there are glaring journalistic flaws. The article relies on one source, Marlon Leftwich, a barely employed ex-con who says, among other things, he overheard Anderson talking in his sleep. The reporters blatantly state they failed to contact Bonds or Anderson for comment. There is one photo on the second page of the article showing a man whose face is obscured by shadow, whom we must infer is Marlon Leftwich. The staging seems out of place, as does the lack of clear attribution.

By the end, after a series of increasingly ridiculous quotes climaxes with someone claiming Bonds actually drives 100 miles every month to masturbate male elk, half of me felt partially that SF Weekly would print such awful journalism and half knew the article had to be fake.

Which it was.

Josh Wolf, a CNET.com blogger who served time in the same prison as Anderson for refusing to give videotape to a grand jury, has performed the best post-mortem on the piece. He contacted SF Weekly, who affirmed the story was entirely made up. The names of the two reporters, Nic Foit and Ira Tes, are anagrams for "fiction" and "satire." Wolf also points out the article's biggest flaw: There is absolutely no indicator the story is fake or meant to be humorous.

I've got no problem with satire, from Swift to The Onion. In fact, I love it. But as a j-school graduate, I do have a problem when a widely read alt-weekly not only writes a fake story but makes it the headlining, front-page piece. A rumor has been circulating that a Chicago radio station read portions of the article on the air assuming they were true. The article is clearly ridiculous, it should be obvious to most readers that something is amiss, so it would be irresponsible for any media personality to simply repeat the story verbatim. Yet even if every reader knew it was fake, what must this make the average person think about SF Weekly, and journalism as a whole?

I can't imagine, given the news media's damaged reputation, that articles like this do any good. Some might applaud (or laugh with) SF Weekly for doing something daring, but satire is not the provenance of such a paper. At the very least this story does not belong in such a prominent position unaccompanied by any disclaimer or indication of humorous intent. Stamping the word "Satire" in caps lock above the headline would, of course, ruin most of the article's fun. But that's not something SF Weekly should be worrying about. Perhaps they might concentrate on news and commentary about the events of real life. It's sad that SF Weekly would waste time, talent and money like this.

Music ReviewWilcoYankee Hotel Foxtrot

Note: Wilco released Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2002. It's now September 2007. The album is five years old, but I feel that doesn't disqualify it from eligibility. If Mick Jagger is still prancing around stage when by all rights he should be in a wheelchair, then I can review a five-year-old album. Plus, it's one of my all-time favorites. Enjoy.



With an undulating electrical hum and the simply tapped time-keeping of Glenn Kotche’s drumstick, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot assembles itself out of the void. The first moments of the album swirl like the first moments of a planet: empty and dark, sprinkled with dust, then filled with warmth – the slow strumming of Jeff Tweedy’s acoustic guitar. Kotche’s drums reappear, with life this time, and “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” begins.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot places Wilco in the same emotional spectrum occupied by contemporary releases like Bows + Arrows by the Walkmen, or even the Strokes’ masterful debut, Is This It? The album chronicles the wandering of a boozed and broken mind backward through a mournful tale of lost love, lost possibilities and remorseful acceptance. While it once might have seemed more appropriate to group Wilco with other “alt-country” rockers, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot clearly channels the same lost-in-the-big-city pathos as the Strokes and Walkmen. But Wilco seems to have mastered a sound that captures the wounded, drunken lover better than anyone else, one that is realized beautifully in the last minute-and-a-half of “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.”

The album’s curtain-opener encapsulates the arc of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s story. As notes from an electric organ hover in the background, tinkling bells and the round clunk of empty bottles complement Tweedy’s defeated and backward-gazing lyrics. “What was I thinking when I let go of you…what was I thinking when I said good-night…what was I thinking when I said hello?” Gradually, the beauty of the song begins to disintegrate. By the time we reach the slow-moving breakdown of its conclusion, a repetitive and heavily-strummed cello and Tweedy’s street-corner, echoing voice signal that everything is coming apart.

At seven minutes, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” undoubtedly tries the patience of today’s pop-music listener; to be sure it even confuses long-time Wilco fans, many of whom disappointedly concluded that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot moves too slowly and never rocks. While it’s true that no song on the album bounces with the energy of Summerteeth’s “A Shot in the Arm” or Being There’s “Someday Soon,” Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a masterpiece of production whose crispness and perfectionist production distinguish it from the band’s previous albums, recalling the creative leaps and bounds of the Beatles during the era of Revolver and Sgt.Pepper’s. The elements of music and sound layer so well in the opening moments of “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” that it’s hard to remember why music can’t always sound at once this complex and this beautiful. In fact, given the amount of dissonant noises Wilco and producer Jim O’Rourke threw into Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it’s a marvel the album came together at all, and a credit to Wilco’s obsessive perfectionism.

But it’s also a symptom of the tumultuous storm of intra-band relationships Wilco navigated during the album’s production. As viewers of Sam Jones’ 2002 documentary know, the shipwreck at the end of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s squall came in the departure of Wilco’s guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, Jay Bennett. Along the way, the band was pushed from the Reprise label (a division of Warner Bros.), signed to Nonesuch (also a division of Warner Bros.), brought in producer Jim O’Rourke and percussionist Glenn Kotche (both members of Tweedy’s one-time three-piece, Loose Furs) and lost drummer Ken Coomer. But chaos can breed beauty, and as any listener can attest, the alternating twinkling, crashing, shaking, caressing sound of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot can find a home as easily in a green summer backyard as your buddy’s living room on a hot night with a bottle of whisky or your headphones the day after your love is gone.

O’Rourke’s production suggests both dark, dystopian city wreckage as well as idyllic green fields over which Tweedy’s voice both skips and stumbles. Throughout the album seeps a tone of remorse, loss and desire. “I want to salute the ashes of American flags, and all the fallen leaves filling up shopping bags,” sings Tweedy slowly, ushering “Ashes of American Flags” into an unlikely but effective transition with “Heavy Metal Drummer,” the most accessible tune on the album. But even here we find Tweedy continuing to dwell on something lost: “I miss the innocence I’ve known, playing Kiss covers beautiful and stoned.” He seems to spend the whole album both searching and looking back.

If the best lyrics in rock are love poetry, and the best in country tales of hardship, defeat and redemption, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot finds Jeff Tweedy combining both in an alchemy whose chemical residue looks, smells and tastes like a confused romantic lost inside his own wilderness. All he wants is the good life, but something – perhaps himself – prevents him from holding onto it. Foxtrot’s Tweedy is war-worn, but not so much that he can’t feel. “You have to lose/You have to learn how to die/If you want to want to be alive,” he sings. But it’s also Tweedy who desperately wants to hold onto his love in “Pot Kettle Black,” promising to keep her in his locket, “a string I never strum.” The nearly uplifting chorus – “every song is a comeback” – gives even the most jaundiced listener hope for a happy conclusion.

But as the strings fade and a soft wind blows in the background, a medical beeping emerges, and a different Tweedy steps into the spotlight for “Poor Places,” the album’s anthem. The lyrics are wildly different from “Pot Kettle Black” and the album’s other summer boppers, they are deeply depressing on a personal level. Here is loss presented; loss of life, loss of a love, loss of faith in oneself. The composition is so clear and simple that Tweedy’s lyrics are allowed to speak for themselves. He’s not going outside tonight, rather the Tweedy of “Poor Places” is melting down all alone in the heat, and when the song begins its climactic conclusion, it’s clear that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot will provide no easy resolution. By the last minute, the song has broken down into static, an emotionless female voice repeating the album’s titular call sign as the world descends into oblivion around her.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot leaves us with glorious doubt. Tweedy’s voice disappears from the album’s finale a good three minutes before the music does, fading slowly back into the darkness with the creaking of a piano bench, the lightning bug zips of soft electronics and the whispered voice of a lover or a friend. There’s a melodic beeping, like the alien greetings from Close Encounters, echoing off tiles in some subterranean passage, perhaps on downtown Chicago’s Red Line as the singer stumbles onto a late-night train home.

RandomSports Fans

It's been a while since Ted and I established this blog and I realize there have been zero posts having anything to do with sports. This is sad, since the world of sports occupies such a prominent spot in my life. It's usually fun to be a fan of Chicago teams, which I am. Even though they have a tendency to disappoint, they're still not as disastrous as, say, teams from Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love celebrated its last championship, in any sport, in 1980. How much does that suck? Any friend my age who's a fan of Philadelphia sports has not been alive for any championship, which is sad. Although I cannot say I was really conscious of the Bears winning in 1986, or even the Bulls' string of victories in the 90s, I can still lay claim to them. Being a fan of often-disappointing but occasionally successful teams breeds a curious sense of loyalty. Like the Cubs, they're the "Loveable Losers." Most Cubs fans would probably prefer their team to win consistently rather than melt down in Game 6 of the NLCS, but the fact that they do melt down so often makes each season such an exciting roller coaster ride.

Anyway, I was reading
Bill Simmon's column on Page 2, and in his most recent article he wrote about the power of fans at sporting events. Here's Bill's interesting first paragraph:

"It's easy to discount the spiritual impact of basketball crowds if you haven't attended a playoff game with special fans before. There's no way to understand it unless it definitely has happened to you. Then you know. As strange as this sounds, it's like a woman being unable to tell whether she's ever had an orgasm. If she thinks it might have happened, or it felt like it kind of happened one time ... it didn't happen. When it happens, they know. Then they feel stupid for all the other times when they thought it had happened."

Perhaps I'm like the poor, suffering example he gives, but I feel like I've been around a good crowd before. Although, he's right, I can definitely see how you would just feel it if you were in the presence of an amazing crowd. And maybe I haven't felt it. But this led me to the question: Do sports fans make a big difference in games? Or, more specifically, do you need "special" fans to make a real difference. According to Bill, he and his fellow fans "swung the outcome of six series ('81 Sixers, '84 Lakers, '87 Bucks, '87 Pistons, '88 Hawks and '91 Pacers)". Quite a hefty claim. The one example Bill gives of the kind of things a "special" fan does is this: "These are the fans who instinctively understand stuff like, 'Mickael Pietrus just threw down a ridiculous putback; I'm going to stand and keep cheering for an extra 30 seconds because he's a young kid and we need to keep pumping him up so he'll do it again.'"

This doesn't really sway me, though. I mean, what's the difference between 30,000+ Angels fans screaming all the time at the top of their lungs with those damn thundersticks and the supposedly great Golden State fans at Oracle Arena? Sounds like the same noise to me. I know what Simmons means when he says that "real fans" don't follow the directions on the big screen, don't need to be told how to cheer, but really I think it just all comes down to the noise. Perhaps you could say something about the dedication. Cubs fans at Wrigley get up to cheer for specific at-bats more often than any other fanbase I've seen. The character of the stadium and the city contribute as well. For instance, would you want to be an NFL player and go to Cleveland, where they throw shit at you on the field and destroyed their own stadium after Art Modell sold them out? Not me. It's not necessarily the experience of the fans but their intensity. Yankees fans, Red Wings fans, Bears fans.. they're all probably very in tune with their teams and well-versed in the history of the franchises, but I wouldn't say it's scary to play baseball in NYC, hockey in Detroit or football at Soldier Field. A great time, for sure, but I don't know if the fans affect the game.

Bottom line, Bill Simmons is just a little too nostalgic about those classic series he attended. The only (or at least only major) requirement to be an effective crowd is too make enough noise to disrupt the other team, be it calls for a quarterback or signals for a pitcher.