Nicholas Kristof writes his first column of the new year stating he is dropping his middle initial "D" from his byline. Personally I think if we all dropped our middle names from our bylines, the world would be a better place.
An early candidate for the dumbest column of the year, newspaper division. Tough competition.
Via Weasel Zippers
If you look closely at my Times byline, beginning with Thursday's column, you'll notice something odd. Well, actually, you probably won't notice it. Thanx for the 411, Nick.
I've knocked out my middle initial for the new year. I acquired it in my byline because as a college journalist at The Harvard Crimson, we were all encouraged to use full names with middle initials. In the fall of freshman year, I wasn't going to argue, so I became Nicholas D. Kristof. And I have been, in the Times and in my books, ever since. The middle initial adds a bit of authority and gravitas, and when you're a 25-year-old Times reporter covering global economics and hoping to be taken seriously, that's very welcome. And here all these years, I thought it would be concise writing and the fair presentation of facts in a news story that would add "gravitas" (whatever that is). Silly me. His whole writing career has been an effort to overcome the gravitas provided to him by his middle initial...
So why am I dropping it? First, I don't think it buys any clarity. As far as I know there isn't a single other Nicholas Kristof anywhere in the world, so I'm unlikely to be confused with Nicholas G. Kristof or Nicholas S. Kristof III. Yeah, why confuse your 11 readers with a single alphabetical letter. Nick, I get the sense you regard your readers as a buncha morons, which is what liberals, by definition are.
More broadly, I think in the Internet age, the middle initial conveys a formality that is a bit of a barrier to our audience. I would be afraid to tell a narcissistic writer for the New York Times any of my objections to his slanted writing, because of a single initial. And I guess that applies to everyone else, as well. Now, without the letter I can fearlessly tell Nick he is a liberal baboon.
It feels a bit ostentatious, even priggish. And if anyone know priggishness and what is ostentatious, it's a NY Times writer.
If my aim in my 20's was gravitas, now I want to reach people and connect with them, and I wonder if the stuffiness of the middle initial isn't a little off-putting. The NY Times by the very nature of its reporting and location is by definition off-putting.
I doubt if it makes much difference, frankly, but at the margin I think that we're moving to a kind of journalism that is more casual, more informal, more personal, and a very formal byline seems as out of place as a three-piece suit in the newsroom. Speaking of which, when I started at the Times in the business section in 1984, I wore a business suit and the middle initial was a nice accoutrement to pinstripes; now I wear an open collar, and I don't need the middle initial any more than a necktie. He's a rebel and he'll never, ever be any good. I bet the ladies swoon whenever you enter the newsroom now, huh Nick.
#4
"a kind of journalism that is more casual, more informal, more personal, and a very formal byline seems as out of place as a three-piece suit in the newsroom".
I think perhaps this is what the Duck Dynasty patriarch was warning us against...being attacked by a piece of fruit.
#13
Dropping all barriers? Ok, here's a story you can sink your teeth into:
Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the no-bid contract to build the disastrous Obamacare website. Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of '85, is senior vice president at Canadian company CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the so far costing $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov.
Townes-Whitley and his Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni. Toni Townes, Pricenton '85, is a onetime policy analyst with the General Accounting Office and previously served in the Peace Corps in Gabon , West Africa.
George Schindler, the president of the CGI Federal's Canadian parent CGI Group, became an Obama 2012 campaign donor after his company gained the Obamacare website contract.
Sooooooo...........
Let's see if we can connect the dots here ...
1.) No American companies considered for building Obamacare's website;
2.) CGI Federal was chosen by God knows which criteria and hired;
3.) CGI Federal was given a NO BID contract worth $93 million;
4.) A top executive at CGI Federal was a Princeton classmate of Michelle Obama;
5.) Previous company's experience was building a gun registry for the Canadian government;
6.) CGI Group was fired by Canadian Government for overruns that cost Canada $100 million;
4.) CGI has continued its practice of overruns as the Obamacare enrollment website has gone from $98 million to costing U.S. tax payers $678 million, and it's still going up!
I'm sure he'll write about how we shouldn't judge other cultures and other races (like Islam - yea I know Islam isn't a race...). And all cultures and races are equally valid. And didn't the Joooes use stoning a long time ago so they did it first!
#19
Y'all need to give this boy some credit. For someone from his background, with his resume and spouse, to figure the whole new media thing out in only a decade and a half is extraordinary. The kid is crumbling the cookie and throwing away the mold. Tubing the Rubicon. Throwing out the old rusty battle-axes and decking the hall with flatscreens. Mortarboards for surfboards. Recasting type into fishing weights, by golly. Goldman Sachs boo! Bold new hacks yay! Civis-nuntius sum. Demotic moniker... check! Bunny slippers... check! Hipster trilby... check! All systems are go. The new journalistic order slouches over to Port Authority to bum cigarettes from regular folks. Kristof our savior is born!
Can't wait for his book raising serious questions about the 2008 campaign in, uh [fingers], 2027.
[Al Ahram] The US government should grant former NSA contractor Edward Snowden clemency or a plea bargain given the public value of revelations over the National Security Agency's vast spying programs, the New York Times ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... editorial board said on Thursday.
In its lead editorial, the newspaper said Americans now more fully understand how widely their phone calls, emails and other information are tracked. Information provided to journalists by Snowden has also prompted needed legal review of the intelligence gathering and led a presidential panel to call for a major overhaul of the agency, it said.
"Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service," the New York Times' editorial board wrote.
The Guardian, a British newspaper that along with The Washington Post received Snowden's leaked documents, also called for President Barack Obama I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go... to pardon Snowden in its own editorial published on Wednesday.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/03/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
I like to think of myself as a reasonable man ( I'm not but I like to think I am )...so ANYTHING the NYT wants I ......just on general principles ,wouldn't give it to them.
Even if I didn't need it myself, I still wouldn't give it to them.
I can't really get over the nagging suspicion that Snowden is a "citizen of the world " and not really an American.( For some reason )
. WE have nothing to gain from giving HIM anything. Screw him, hope he likes the snow in Moscow. Buy himself some cardboard shoes and some Vodka and he's set.
What we are really talking about here is a globalized system that prevents any form of electronic communication from taking place without it being stored and monitored by the National Security Agency, Greenwald said in a webcast to the Socialism Conference in Chicago. It means theyre storing every call and have the capability to listen to them at any time.
#5
My opinion is that what Snowden did was necessary, in some ways patriotic, and in some ways a very good thing exposing the questionable and extra-constitutional domestic spying by the NSA and other tentacles of the domestic government. But it also completely broke the law. He knew the consequences. Part of being a true patriot is to man up, and potentially take the penalties on himself. This would be a standing example to the would-be tyrants in government that We The People are willing to do things regardless of the cost (bonus points is that he makes himself into a legit case for clemency after serving some time, with support from the left and the right and even the libertarians).
That being said, the constitutional argument should be made at any trial to fully spotlight the domestic spying and the unconstitutionality of it, if his lawyers are worth a damn, making it a similar argument to, say, Rosa Parks. That would work to reduce (mitigate) the penalties, but only if they can make the case that he truly was out to do this for only the right reasons (which I rather doubt were completely the reasons, given the exposure of external operations as well s domestic ones, and handing the classified data to hostile powers)
N.b. this is unlike that a-hole Manning who was completely sabotaging legitimate action committed in the defense of the nation against foreign enemies.
#7
My problem with Snowden is that he not only exposed things like domestic spying, he exposed EVERYTHING the NSA does - listening in on foreigh leaders, etc. etc. That is the reason the NSA exists. It is not to spy on Americans on American soil.
If he were really a patriot, he could have just taken stuff that showed the illegal stuff going on. Instead, he took everything he could get his grubby little paws on and released it. Manning did the same thing.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/03/2014 18:53 Comments ||
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#8
Your right Rambler... And who knows what else he gave our enemies... Things that can't be mentioned or talked about. Things that can (or already have) get people killed.
[DAWN] A PATTERN seems to be developing in the government's so-called strategy against militancy: after meetings with security officials, the resolve to defend the country by whatever means -- militarily too -- is reiterated, while after meetings with political allies, the preference for talks is reinforced. If that were not confusing enough, there is no consistency in the talks strategy either, even on something as seemingly straightforward as who will be the principal interlocutors between the TTP and the federal government. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... appeared to have authorised Samiul Haq ...the Godfather of the Taliban, leader of his own faction of the JUI. Known as Mullah Sandwich for his habit of having two young boys at a time... , the so-called godfather of the Afghan Taliban because of its leadership's ties to the maulana's infamous madressah in Akora Khattak, to reach out to the TTP and set the stage for dialogue.
What, then, has become of Fazlur Rehman, a fierce rival of Samiul Haq, and his efforts to try and set the stage for dialogue? And what has become of the team of so-called notables who Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan had been on the verge of sending to the Wazoo agencies before Hakeemullah Mehsud was killed in a drone strike? Are the interior minister and prime minister even on the same page anymore? For the interior minister appeared to contradict the prime minister hours after the announcement of Samiul Haq's new task. The questions just keep piling up, with answers nowhere in sight. About the prime minister's new point man for negotiations too there are several questions. Samiul Haq may have some ties with the new TTP chief and his deputy, but in May this year, in an interview with this newspaper, he admitted to knowing little about the TTP and the various groups that operate under its umbrella. So is the government really still just splashing about, looking here, there and everywhere for anything that may work in its bid for talks with the TTP rather than having a focused strategy?
If the possibility of the government not having a coherent strategy to deal with militancy half a year into its rule is unsettling enough, what is equally worrying is how tone-deaf the government appears on the signalling front. Ultimately, government-appointed interlocutors are supposed to help work towards an agreement that reinforces the status quo of the state and the constitution being the only acceptable centres of power and legitimacy. But how can a known Taliban sympathiser help achieve that? Yet again, the government seems to be willing to cede the narrative, initiative and control of a dialogue process to elements who have more in common with the Taliban's worldview than what Pakistain should be: a constitutional democracy with modern rights and freedoms.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/03/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
Incoherent government strategy. Thought it was about Obumbles and staff.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Nawaz Sharif
Wazoo
