Some nice folk hoping to help craft a better future for my alma mater, The Baltimore Sun, stopped by the office a few weeks ago and asked me some questions about what I thought about the Koch brothers, those politically passioned gentlemen, purchasing the half-empty husks of what remains of the Chicago Tribune newspapers. I replied in detail, but of course, they needed a shorter sound bite: Okay as far as it goes, but I’d like to be a little more clear about why the Koch family isn’t really cut out to be a publisher of American newspapers. It isn’t that they are rightist libertarians and I am not, honestly. As I said in my remarks, but which do not convey fully in the edited clip, I’d be as distressed if Ariana Huffington or George Soros wanted to purchase and operate The Sun. Why? Because 1) they are engaged in ideological advocacy and 2) they aren’t from Baltimore and their ties to my community are insufficient to guarantee a responsive and locally...
Doubling down
Among many, many others of similar passion: pat stevens ?@stevepatg39m david simon, I hope a black guy punches you right in the fucking face just for being white.. Michael Bailey ?@mikelbtko1h David Simon A Jewish man… “One less Jew to answer, One less Jew (cont) Willy Scanlon ?@shanlone1h @7sMRD313 Then David Simon should leave for Israel with the rest of the Fucking Jews who think that they own this country. Robert Aguilar Jr. ?@robertaguilarjr3h David Simon can take the first Asiana flight the fuck out of here too!! My actual words: “Tonight, anyone who truly understands what justice is and what it requires of a society is ashamed to call himself an American.” * * * Some random moments in my lifetime when I have been intensely proud of my country: 1. “Ich bin ein Berliner” and “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” 2. The arrival of U.S. carriers off the shores of Indonesia after a devastating tsunami. 3. Standing...
Comments on Martin-Zimmerman. To reiterate:
If you go to the original post on the verdict itself, entitled “Trayvon,” you will find more than five hundred posts in which all of the issues regarding the case were debated to the point of repetition over more than 48 hours, after which, as every new comment in the last several hundred had already been addressed, we closed the comments to preserve the give-and-take of the debate — debate becing one of the fundamental goals of the website. The dynamic is explained in greater detail in the subsequent and concluding post, “Trayvon: Calling It.” Commentary on that post is naturally being limited to a discussion about the debate dynamic here. A third post stands only as a corrective to the false claim that I was exhorting anyone to riot, and that the reductive medium of Twitter was being so utilized. Commentary there is being limited largely to a discussion of the claim and the uses or misuses of Twitter. If you have a point to argue about the issue...