The death spiral of the newspaper industry has been well documented — but the once-proud comics section has been struggling for some time now. Ann Logue surveys the damage in her latest column.
It was such a simpler time, that summer of 2001. Remember it? That last season of America’s (cyclical) innocence shimmers in the memory, sorta like those gauzy images of lovebirds Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby – images so blurry they make you wonder if you need to adjust the focus on your TV. Ah, for those halcyon days! … when the only Washington story most of us cared about was the fate of Chandra Levy, and the most pressing topic on George Bush’s plate was stem cells (because he sure as hell wasn’t paying attention to al Qaeda).
Back then, the Taliban were a nasty band of fundamentalist cusses about whom we knew rather little – apart from the facts that they oppressed their women, didn’t care much for poppy growing, and were somehow in cahoots with that bin Laden guy we’d been hearing about. That summer the biggest Taliban-related news was a minor international uproar over their peculiar decision to use small explosives and machine-gun fire to attack a pair of massive Buddha statues that had been carved out of Afghan cliffs a couple millennia earlier. Meanwhile, a fascinating story emerged (I don’t remember where) about the last two remaining Jews in Kabul, and their daily struggle to observe their cultural traditions despite the Taliban’s strict enforcement of Sharia laws concerning everything from beard length to public worship.
It’s a story that has shownremarkable legsthrough the years, partly because of this juicy detail: The two aging men were living in the ruins of a synagogue … and they weren’t speaking to one another! Their saga has spawned at least two darkly comic plays: My Brother’s Keeper played in Edinburgh and London in 2006, while The Last Two Jews of Kabul premiered off-off-Broadway last year. Much earlier than that, during those happy-go-lucky days of summer 2001, that first article had inspired me to write what remains my one and only original limerick. So if you’ll forgive my mispronunciation of the Afghan capital…
There was just one Jew left in Kabul
His beard shaven, by government rule
But he was much too distinct
In his lower precinct
So the Taliban shot off his tool(more…)
Last week, a conservative friend asked me how I liked living in Sweden under Comrade Obama. I sighed. Somehow or another, it has become accepted that Sweden is a frightening socialist state and that life there would be horrible. I am here to defend Sweden, a nation I have never visited.
Sweden is a monarchy, a governmental structure very far from socialism and from the American ideal that all people are created equal. Marx, of course, believed that his radical socialist ideal started with the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, which pretty much eliminates a monarchy. The United States was founded on the principle that people did not need a king because they could rule themselves. We might think that the trappings of a monarchy are pretty and that their personal lives are fascinating, but is anyone really excited about the prospects of Prince Charles replacing Barack Obama?
Marx’s version of socialism, Communism, failed everywhere it was tried. No one seriously advocates Communism anymore. Socialism is more complicated, but it is not what Barack Obama or anyone else in U.S. government advocates. (By the way, “The Communist Manifesto” is in the public domain, in English, and it is short. There is no excuse for not reading it. Frederich von Hayek would be good to read, too, but his books have a lot more pages.) (more…)
A nation mourned Wednesday night, as CNN’s Lou Dobbs, an outspoken critic of illegal immigration, announced his retirement from the network. Though it’s still unclear which nation is in mourning, experts have conclusively ruled out Mexico.
According to the Associated Press, the controversial newsman “angered CNN management this summer by pressing questions about President Obama’s birth site after CNN reporters determined there was no issue.”
I myself was skeptical of the president’s birthplace until he drank a domestic beer — Bud Light — at the July 30 “beer summit.” Then I remembered that Anheuser-Busch, the makers of Bud Light, sold their company last year to InBev, a Belgian company. Thanks to CNN’s shortsightedness, we may never find out if InBev is secretly run by Kenyan expatriates.
This isn’t the first time Dobbs has left CNN. He was one of its original anchors back in 1980 when it debuted, overseeing financial news and hosting Moneyline. But in April of ‘99, after being reprimanded by the network’s then-president, Rick Kaplan, for cutting away from a speech by President Bill Clinton on the Columbine shootings, Dobbs announced that he was departing CNN, saying he wanted to focus on a new website he’d founded, Space.com, because in space no one can hear you call your boss an idiot.
(I was working at CNN in a bottom-rung position back in 1999, and I would bet money that Kaplan’s voice, which combined the omnipotence of God with the volume of a T. Rex, can be heard in space. If I remember correctly, he was also nine feet tall.)
Ever since Al Franken parked his rear end in the Democrats’ 60th U.S. Senate seat, the conventional wisdom has held that no matter how much of a fuss the Republicans kicked up this summer and fall, some form of healthcare legislation was bound to reach President Obama’s desk. Taking the midterm election of 1994 as a template for what happens when Democrats spend a year on healthcare and don’t pass anything, party leaders have insisted that such a fiasco must not be repeated, no matter how mediocre a bill eventually emerges. So now that the House has wrapped up its business – taking what was already a warm bucket of piss and vomiting all over it with the Stupak amendment – a nation that not-so-narrowly voted for this agenda turns its lonely eyes to the Senate and screams, “Could you people please just get on with it?”
And the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest deliberative body” responds, “Not so fast.” The House bill is “dead on arrival,” says Lindsay Graham. “I won’t let the public option come to a vote,” says Joe Lieberman. “We’re ready to take the whole Democratic Party down, rather than vote for a package that might cost us a small percentage of voters in our backwater states,” say Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln. (Or, at least, they may as well be saying it.) No one at this moment has a clue how the Senate will proceed, or when – not even its majority leader, Harry Reid, who was against the public option before he was for it, and may soon be against it again.
But you know what? That’s all OK, because I can’t imagine there’s anybody out there who is actually happy with the House bill. Truth be told, there may be a grand total of 43 such folks – those being the Democrats who voted for the bill after also voting for the Stupak amendment, which bars the inclusion of abortion coverage in any health-insurance plan that participates in the new purchasing exchanges. Already we’ve seen a similar number of progressive Dems insist they won’t vote for final passage of the bill if the abortion measure isn’t stripped out in conference. But even if both chambers eventually agree on a bill, it will undoubtedly cost too much, cover too few (and make some pay too much to buy in), start too late (the new exchanges are delayed til 2013, simply to keep the bill’s 10-year cost projections down), and be positively loathed by far too many.
In other words, Obama and Congress have screwed the pooch completely on this bill. They should pass it anyway. (more…)
Stories about the death of newspapers are tired. Yeah, we get it, newspapers are struggling.
This is a drawing of Annie Logue, no relation, a character in a comic novel by Mike Kennedy.
But the story is all about how there won’t be any more investigative journalism or how bloggers are sloppier than Judith Miller when they do their reporting.
No one looks at the real tragedy: the death of the comics. The comic strip is an art form in its own right, but it is also one closely tied to newspapers. As newspapers cut back, they often eliminate the page that introduces the paper to new readers in the first place.
$12 a week per paper? Shared equally with the syndicate? For a cartoon that’s run in 100 papers, that represents an income of $31,200 – which means you can’t quit your day job. Scott Adams, Garry Trudeau, and the estate of Charles Schultz may have a little negotiating power, but not many other cartoonists out there do. If the strip catches on, there are greater profit opportunities in the form of books, calendars, character licensing, and possibly television. If you look at your daily paper, though, how many of the strips are good enough to get you to rush out for the book?
The low syndication rates date from a time when a cartoonist would most likely be on staff. The syndication money was meant to be a bonus, not the primary way that the cartoonist made a living. Comic strip writers would often be employed by a newspaper and also create political cartoons or draw illustrations for stories. Very few were completely independent, at least not when they started. (more…)
We may not have John Edwards to kick around anymore – though that hasn’t stopped us from putting the occasional boot into his backside, has it? – but he did leave us with a paradigm that remains useful in surveying the political landscape circa November 2009. Forget, for the moment, Edwards’ rhetoric about the rich and the poor, and focus instead on the two wildly disparate narratives about the nation’s politics that have emerged over the past 12 months. On one side are those are still living in Bamalot, who see slow but steady progress toward fixing enormous problems in the economy, health care and foreign policy; on the other are those who see nothing but dollar bills flying out the windows of the Capitol. On one side are those who remain quietly, but fiercely proud of what America accomplished last autumn; on the other are those who loudly trumpet their conviction (or who put up with people who remain convinced) that the president himself is not an American.
On Tuesday, in a couple of states, one side sat contentedly on their asses and did nothing; the other harnessed themselves into an angry, energized mini-electorate that drove to the polls and turned their governors’ mansions from blue to red.
There was something deeply ironic about HBO’s decision to debut its new documentary, By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, on Tuesday evening. At the same hour on every news channel, a debate was raging as to whether Obama’s “movement for change” had hit a roadblock with the Republican victories in New Jersey and Virginia. But over on pay cable, it was Decision ’08 all over again as the Edward Norton-produced doc replayed the goings-on behind the scenes of Obama’s primary and general-election victories – and portrayed his opponents as little more than flies to be swatted along the path to the inevitable.
So, yes, the dichotomy was ironic – but it was also a nice metaphor for Tuesday’s outcome. Obama’s voters, feeling like they did their job last year and remaining pretty happy with the way things have gone since then, stayed home and watched TV, while the unhappy folks dragged their butts to the polls and changed the status quo. Such is democracy in America – particularly in these off-off-year elections, when the voters of New Jersey and (particularly) Virginia love to send Bronx cheers to the party in power. (more…)
The latest trend in the “something for nothing on the Internet” game is the pay-to-bid auction site. The auction operator lets such items as cash and gift cards go at prices far below face value because all the bidders, even the losers, have paid to place their bids. Some of these sites claim to be helping people beat the recession. One, PsychoAuction.com, even has a complicated back story involving a founder, Nick Dickreuter, who was let go when Lehman Brothers failed. According to the PR version of the story, Dickreuter lost all respect for money and now gives things away online.
Except, of course, that Dickreuter clearly respects money. Hs site stands to make a lot of it from those who don’t understand how giveaway auctions work. It’s not like Dickreuter took a vow of poverty and went out to serve the poor.
PsychoAuction isn’t the only site following a pay-to-bid model. DFWbid.com is another that has been mentioned on different bargain-hunting Web sites. The pitch is that you can get a $25 gift card for $8; the reality is that a lot of people spend money to bid without winning. (more…)
“Everyday People” entered the Billboard Top 40 on January 4, 1969. Six weeks later it was the number-one song in the country, holding onto the top spot for an entire month. The lead single from Sly & the Family Stone’s upcoming album Stand!, it espoused “different strokes for different folks,” with the group’s leader, Sly Stone, assuring listeners that “I am no better and neither are you / We are the same whatever we do.”
Later that year the “psychedelic soul” band from San Francisco — featuring black, white, male, and female members — played the Woodstock festival, taking the stage at three in the morning on August 17 with inspirational anthems like “You Can Make It If You Try” and “I Want to Take You Higher,” which quickly moved the predawn crowd out of their sleeping bags and onto their feet.
In hindsight, it was as high as Sly & the Family Stone would go.
On January 10, 1970, their first single of the new decade, the double-A-sided “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” and “Everybody Is a Star,” landed in the Top 40, and within a few weeks had become the band’s second chart topper.
Ushering in the era of bottom-heavy ’70s funk dominated by bands like Kool & the Gang, Ohio Players, and Earth, Wind & Fire, “Thank You” featured a harder sound than the Family Stone’s previous hits, with Larry Graham’s percussive thump-and-pluck bass dominating the track alongside Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini’s trumpet-and-sax combo. Sly’s lyrics weren’t exactly relegated to the background, but expectations of good-time vibes from the group that recorded “Dance to the Music” tended to obscure lines like “Flamin’ eyes of people fear burnin’ into you” and “Dyin’ young is hard to take / Sellin’ out is harder.”
The lyrics that typically stand out on first listen are the titles of previous Family Stone hits incorporated into the third verse: “Dance to the music all night long / Everyday people sing a simple song.” It comes across as playful — a clever summation of the Family Stone’s triumphs in the decade just ended.
It’s darn near impossible for an investment manager to beat the market once you adjust performance for risk and fees. Every quarter, when Morningstar shows its fund reports, more than half of all funds prove to be laggards after adjustments. We all know that Warren Buffett can beat the market because he’s pretty much the only person who can. Bernie Madoff lied. And Raj Rajaratnam allegedly traded on inside information.
Alleged Inside Trader
Even then, it does not seem to have helped him much. The Galleon Group of hedge funds, which Rajaratnam managed, has shut down in the wake of insider trading charges against Rajaratnam and several associates. However, it doesn’t look like the funds’ performance was all that great, so Rajaratnam and company may base their defense on the fact that they did not make excess profits. One of the charges is that Galleon made $500,000 trading in options in Google after receiving a tip from an employee of Google’s investor relations company that earnings would be lower than expected. To make that profit, an inside trader would have to identify informants, figure out how to reach them, compensate them, act on the information, and take the risk that it was good information. These steps involve time and expense that cut into the profits from insider trading. The profits have to be huge to overcome the costs, and they may not be big enough to compensate the inside traders for the risk. And then, of course, the information has to be good. A wise inside trader would probably sit on the first few tips just to see if the tipper has good information. But even a tipper with mostly good information will have a few duds. (more…)
Now is the autumn of our discontent … at least for us Los Angeles baseball fans. Last night the Dodgers were polished off by the ruthless Phillies, their forever-teetering staff of pitchers finally crumbling in the face of Ryan Howard and that goddamned Victorino. Tonight the Angels may suffer the same fate – and even if they survive long enough to fly back east for the weekend, the Yankees will have their $161 million man waiting.
Which $161 million man? Now, there’s a question that could only refer to the Yankees. The one I’m talking about is CC Sabathia, the team’s most recent nine-figure pitching purchase, who has already shut the Angels down twice in this ALCS. But I could also be talking about first baseman Mark Teixeira, whom the Yankees plucked off the Angels’ roster last offseason for $180 million and who has repeatedly robbed his former teammates in the field this week (though his offensive numbers are pathetic). Of course, I might otherwise be talking about Derek Jeter, who’s nearing the end of his own $189 million contract. And as for Alex Rodriguez … well, he’ll earn $161 million in about the time it takes me to finish this column.
At least A-Rod is earning his salary (for once) this postseason. Still, like most baseball fans who don’t root for the Yankees, I have a hard time watching the Bombers without becoming queasy from the tsunami of dollar signs. In fact, Sabathia, Teixeira and A-Rod have ceased to function for me as human beings; their uniform numbers may as well be replaced with contract numbers – 161, 180, and 275, respectively. (Jeter gets a pass, since he came up through the farm system back in the ’90s, but the mind reels at the thought of the Yankees’ other free-agent acquisitions this decade – including tonight’s starting pitcher, number 82, otherwise known as A.J. Burnett.) If you add up the number of dollars the Steinbrenners have committed to their Big Three free agents through the end of Sabathia’s contract in 2016 – a total of $616 million – you get a number larger than the expected cumulative payrolls of 18 of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams over that span, even accounting for inflation. (more…)
Back then, the Taliban were a nasty band of fundamentalist cusses about whom we knew rather little – apart from the facts that they oppressed their women, didn’t care much for poppy growing, and were somehow in cahoots with that bin Laden guy we’d been hearing about. That summer the biggest Taliban-related news was a minor international uproar over their peculiar decision to use small explosives and machine-gun fire to attack a pair of massive Buddha statues that had been carved out of Afghan cliffs a couple millennia earlier. Meanwhile, a fascinating story emerged (I don’t remember where) about the last two remaining Jews in Kabul, and their daily struggle to observe their cultural traditions despite the Taliban’s strict enforcement of Sharia laws concerning everything from beard length to public worship.
Last week, a conservative friend asked me how I liked living in Sweden under Comrade Obama. I sighed. Somehow or another, it has become accepted that Sweden is a frightening socialist state and that life there would be horrible. I am here to defend Sweden, a nation I have never visited.
I myself was skeptical of the president’s birthplace until he drank a domestic beer — Bud Light — at 
But you know what? That’s all OK, because I can’t imagine there’s anybody out there who is actually happy with the House bill. Truth be told, there may be a grand total of 43 such folks – those being the Democrats who voted for the bill after also voting for the Stupak amendment, which bars the inclusion of abortion coverage in any health-insurance plan that participates in the new purchasing exchanges. Already we’ve seen a similar number of progressive Dems insist they won’t vote for final passage of the bill if the abortion measure isn’t stripped out in conference. But even if both chambers eventually agree on a bill, it will undoubtedly cost too much, cover too few (and make some pay too much to buy in), start too late (the new exchanges are delayed til 2013, simply to keep the bill’s 10-year cost projections down), and be positively loathed by far too many.
There was something deeply ironic about HBO’s decision to debut its new documentary, By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, on Tuesday evening. At the same hour on every news channel, a debate was raging as to whether Obama’s “movement for change” had hit a roadblock with the Republican victories in New Jersey and Virginia. But over on pay cable, it was Decision ’08 all over again as the Edward Norton-produced doc replayed the goings-on behind the scenes of Obama’s primary and general-election victories – and portrayed his opponents as little more than flies to be swatted along the path to the inevitable.
In hindsight, it was as high as Sly & the Family Stone would go.
Which $161 million man? Now, there’s a question that could only refer to the Yankees. The one I’m talking about is CC Sabathia, the team’s most recent nine-figure pitching purchase, who has already shut the Angels down twice in this ALCS. But I could also be talking about first baseman Mark Teixeira, whom the Yankees plucked off the Angels’ roster last offseason for $180 million and who has repeatedly robbed his former teammates in the field this week (though his offensive numbers are pathetic). Of course, I might otherwise be talking about Derek Jeter, who’s nearing the end of his own $189 million contract. And as for Alex Rodriguez … well, he’ll earn $161 million in about the time it takes me to finish this column.