The Alabaman National Guard Brigadier General and the Donor List; Arabian Nights & Photography; some notes from Tom Paine

Buried in Atrios/Eschaton's prolific posting , an item entitled Fact Checking:

"It's time for the media to recognize that they cannot put everything the RNC and their goons claim as fact into print. They lie. When you print their lies, you are lying too."

Ouch. The article he cites (as an example of fact-checking, not of lying) is fascinating: a blow by blow account of figuring out why people to think that Brig. General Turnipseed, the first man quoted as not recallling Bush in the AL National Guard, is a Democrat--when, in fact, he is a loyal Bush voter.
Reading this, I would like to know the answer to two totally tangential questions. 1) Why is he a loyal Bush voter? and 2)Is it not odd (and nothing more) that there are not only two different people named Turnipseed in this article, but two different people named Calhoun? Or is that just the way the South is? Update: my clever sister points out the article quotes first says,
"That's largely because, in the past two weeks, Turnipseed's credibility, even to some extent, his reputation, have come under fire.

Conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr. snickered in his nationally syndicated column that Turnipseed had "a name Charles Dickens would have lost sleep for not having invented."
and then caps off the article with:
"Friday afternoon, the Register contacted the Bush-Cheney'04 campaign and informed it of the true identity of the Edwards donor. Reed Dickens, a Southeast region spokesman, called back with a short response.

Said Dickens, "The statement was inaccurate, and we regret it."

I guess Dickens isn't losing much sleep at all.

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And now for somethings completely different.

1001 Arabian Nights

A lovely website that allows you to navigate through the chaotic and charming confusion that is 1001 Arabian Nights. Asad loaned me his copy from class when we were Juniors, and I was so loathe to give it back to him I think I only finally did when he left for graduate school more than a year later. That edition, by Husain Hadawy, was particularly lyrical, apparently aimed at a direct translation that does not smooth out the edges. As one reviewer from Amazon writes, "It has a feeling of authenticity, as if it is truely an oral story being passed down through the ages, as it once was." Another reviewer writes, "Previous translators have sought to colorize or edit the tales, but here the translator sought to stay true to the text." Referring, probably, to the old and classic translations by Andrew Lang & Sir Richard Burton, which are what power the website---nonetheless, they are still a lot of fun.


Photography.

While working on last week's New Media story (which didn't get nearly enough play on this play. It was a lot of fun, I was just totally exhausted by the time it finished. Get the hint? Go read it, please! ) I was repeatedly and viscerally struck by the power of good photography. I am lucky to work with some of the best photographers in our class in New Media. Lane Johnson, my partner from last week, only took photography with me last semester, but wow, isn't he talented! As I told my professor from last semester, "Perhaps I didn't do so wonderfully in your class but I did learn to spot the great photographers." Waiting with breathless anticipation for the upcoming website of professional photographer and classmate Alexandra Huddleston.
I think the web is a particularly powerful place for showcasing photography, what with the proliferation of beautiful new LCD screens. The Justly Married shots Patrick Nielsen Hayden used in his "Our Fellow Americans" post I noted yesterday lead me to some more interesting sites, and I thought I'd just repost a few photography websites here.

Ephemera.org -- from the man who brought you Justly Married.
Heather Champ --apparently, his fiancee.
Rachel Brown --formerly Rachel Giese. Ireland, among other subjects.
Stephanie Sinclair
One of Moises Saman's Newsday Photojournals from Iraq.
And the legendary war photographer James Nachtwey.



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Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

A note from Richard Blow on TomPaine about last week's gossip-burst. This is a little weird--in some sense Blow is writing about people like me (though I was only ever engaging in meta-observation of the story), and I am in the process of researching a paper about people like him--i.e. people who wrote for George Magazine and similar political publications, and what they envisioned.

And an article by Berkeley Linguist George Lakoff about "gay marriage" and "civil unions," also from TomPaine. As usual I find his tone somehow subtly lacking in objectivity; while I certainly don't believe that objectivity (or the pretense of objectivity) requires one give equal play to both sides (or all sides) of an issue, it still seems he's not quite playing fair* somehow. I rather like his conclusion as a general concept:

"The media does not have to accept the right wing's frames. What can a reporter ask besides "Do you support gay marriage?" Try this: "In San Francisco, there has been a lot discussion of the freedom to marry, as a matter of equal rights under the law. How do you feel about this?"

Reframing is everybody's job. "

especially since I'm generally in favor of attempts at reframing and thinking out of the box. But I'm still grappling with the continual ability of certain thinkers from my beloved alma mater to make my back stiffen and my reactionary side come out even when I basically agree with them. Ah well, Go Bears.

And I didn't know there was a Rockridge Institute! More west coast think tanks are always a good thing, though I'd be more enthusiastic if I could find an address.

*An intuitive way of assessing objectivity proposed to my National Reporting class by the incomparable Bill Blakemore last week.