Monk

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First space weapons and now blackmail journalism, China is become ever more innovative and the West can learn from them:

At 9 p.m. in a dark Shenzhen parking lot, Bai Xiuyu handed over a plain brown envelope containing 15,000 Chinese yuan, the equivalent of nearly $2,000, in what was supposed to be a discreet blackmail payment to a local reporter.

... To his consternation, what Gou saw the evening of Sept. 21 was another instance of the blackmail journalism metastasizing through China's news media. Bai's money was supposed to buy silence on alleged wrongdoing at her health clinic in this southern Chinese city. But more generally, journalists and officials say, Chinese reporters are demanding such hush money with increasing regularity from businesses and government agencies in exchange for the withholding of unfavorable news.

Maybe this practice has taken off because journalism has not really gotten off the ground in more repressive China. In the West, journalists are more interested in making a name for themselves by breaking nasty stories, which can be lucrative in its own right. But maybe the practice will grow - all that cultural sharing!


(Source: Edward Cody for The Washington Post)

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Frank Rich exercises his talents in mocking Time magazine for picking Monk as its person of the year. In the process, he also gives us a caustic year in review of our catastrophic stay in Iraq and our escapist ways. I want to take one exception to his argument that it is because of Iraq that Americans are so far gone into the frivolities of the Internet and celebrity news.

Even if things were going splendidly in Iraq and Sunnis and Shia were going around arm-in-arm singing Christmas carols to American troops in appreciation for toppliing Saddam and promoting democracy, I think the YouTube video of "Britney Spears Nude on the Beach" would still get a lot more hits than the news clips of Iraq. And it is not just about the teenager hiding in his room. Look, reality sucks for most of us in the best of times. We are just naturally escapist and constantly on the prowl for cheap thrills. Maybe that is nothing to celebrate. It is just what we are. And I'll say it again: THANK GOD FOR THE INTERNET!

( Rich column )

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I was watching Fox News tonight for some of their coverage on the elections, thinking that I might feel sad for them as they put up a brave front. But it got really tiring hearing them say that it looks like the Democrats crested too soon, and the races are really tightening up, and there's a good chance that Tuesday will not be so black for Republicans, after all.

I refuse to believe that shit.

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“It seems hopeless. How can the newspaper industry survive the Internet? On the one hand, newspapers are expected to supply their content free on the Web. On the other hand, their most profitable advertising--classifieds--is being lost to sites like Craigslist. And display advertising is close behind. Meanwhile, there is the blog terror: people are getting their understanding of the world from random lunatics riffing in their underwear, rather than professional journalists with standards and passports.”

-- Michael Kinsley for Time

Don't you have to hate the snobbery of the mainstream media?

I certainly don't see a competition between journalists and bloggers. If it is not exactly a marriage, it is a relationship that is at least good for sleazy recreational sex in cheap hotel rooms that have mirrors on the walls. And there has to be life and money in that somewhere.

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