Snowden Commentary Dec 2013

I am a big fan of what Edward Snowden has done in revealing the 4th amendment abuses perpetrated by the NSA. Big fan, love your work.

True, Snowden is a criminal under existing laws, but much of what we've been allowed to see of those laws indicates they are illegal as well, so who's zooming who? And while legality is a matter of high importance, it has never, ever been the marker of good or right. Legality and goodness should be very best of friends, but they do not share a passport. A long line of martyrs keeps attesting to this. Reminds one of the parable of the tenants.

Snowden has shown himself to be restrained and principled in his communications post-affair, while several members of the U.S. government have behaved with red-faced bluster. The primary journalists spreading the leaks demonstrate care and responsibility in releasing information, while the leakees unlawfully detain journalists' loved ones and force leaders of sovereign nations out of the sky in their manhunt. Even unsophisticated observers such as myself can read these stars.

Every time a new piece of information arrives, I feel an impulse to blog about it, but have nothing substantial to add. "Right on!"; "Well what do you know?"; "I'm angry at the government's plainly foreseeable abuses in the wake of the PATRIOT Act."

Anyway, these are sentiments better expressed in a service featuring hashtag appendages. Blogging -- well, this blog anyway -- is for having an opinion and working to express it well.

If you've only kept up with this out of the corner of  your eye, I encourage you to catch up. It now looks like this issue probably won't just fizzle. Something will probably be done. But will enough be done? Will good or right things be done? These are not settled questions. Your participation is relevant.

Privacy in this modern world remains arguably our biggest American issue right now. That includes issues of income equality, sluggish job market, deficit reduction, same-sex marriage, and anything involving Middle East policy. There are bigger world issues: climate change and antibiotic overuse come to mind. An excellent case can be made for the prevalence of untreated sin as the biggest issue facing humanity, which, if faced, could solve many of these other issues virtually overnight.

But I'll confine myself to talking about trees instead of forests. Myopic as it might sound, privacy is the big American issue.

Ironically, you need to go to a British source for comprehensive information. The Guardian is a London-based newspaper that has been in publication in various forms for 192 years. They have been the primary journalistic outlet for reporting on the Snowden leaks. They present information in clear, easy-to-understand articles and organize the entire story well at their website.

If you've fallen a behind on the whole deal, see their overview of what's going on.

And for what it's worth, I am angry about the government's plainly foreseeable abuses. Encourage your congressperson to repeal the PATRIOT Act. It hurts us much more than it helps.

The French Capital

I was reading up on how Napoleon rebuilt Paris today, and I found a fantastic original source: The New York Times.

They've scanned and made available their entire archive, and this story, dated "December 13, 1867, Wednesday" was a treat. In addition to the useful information, I read the top journalistic stylings of 150 years ago. It's quite a bit chattier than I'd expected.

You'll need to log in, and then download a pdf, but it's worth the hassle. Here's bugmenot if you're a privacy goon like me.

Check that out.

Jim Cramer on Jon Stewart

On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart is typically acerbic in his segments, but gentle in interviews. This is because the guy is genuinely uncomfortable with conflict. You would think this a strange trait for a man who professionally mocks powers and principalities.

But nobody ever got funny by being good at confrontation. You get funny by thinking around things, not through them. Listen to Stewart talk about himself; you consistently hear him mention discomfort at creating or withstanding awkwardness. Certain issues get Stewart to come out of his congenial motley though.

What got us here: Stewart recently did a segment on CNBC show hosts making bad calls on investment, mocking their self-proclaimed expertise. Standard, cutting Daily Show fare, which the powerful and noteworthy routinely ignore four days a week. Jim Cramer, one of several skewerees, took particular umbrage at this and (no doubt backed by the network) began an NBC tour of programs defending himself.

Of course, this peacock display prompted an invitation to appear on The Daily Show. The segment that appeared on the show yesterday was 3 minutes. Forget that.

Instead, view this unedited version, about 25 minutes total, and watch a man held to the fire from the knees down.

Having swum in the American TV journalism pool for so long, I'm used to interviewers playing catch and release. They ask a pointed question, the savvy interviewee deflects it, and because there are only 3 minutes allotted to this segment, everyone moves on. (For that reason alone, I have virtually no use for television journalism.)

I'm amazed at how this fails to happen here. Every time a normal TV interviewer would be done, Stewart keeps going. He has not just a tenacity, but a clarity of thinking that refuses to be sidelined by mealy-mouthed interview subjects.

Stewart is tricky, because he jumps around a lot in the interview. But his thrust is: As a member of the media, you have a responsibility to promote truth. You may not be complicit with the corrupt and powerful.

Cramer behaves in a chastised manner, but see, the guy's on TV in his normal TV costume.* ("My sleeves are rolled up really high, because I'm ready to WORK!") By the end of the interview, when they're both making their preparatory closing remarks, it strikes me that Cramer hasn't even fingered, much less grasped, Stewart's point.

So we don't get reform in the media. The best we get is a vision that this is how somebody should be doing journalism.

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I've started to think of The Daily Show as the 5th estate, our current best answer to Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? He is the feudal-era jester, the guy who hung around important people and pointed out their flaws with a yuk and remained untouchable for it.

Therefore, it is wrong to call Stewart a journalist. As he himself will remind you (and as Cramer repeatedly crowed in the beginning stages of this dust-up), he's a comedian. But in the process of satire, he does journalist work. This is the distinction that people fail to make, and it's why young people and stoners (and some other notable demographics) love him like a folk hero. He's whipsmart funny. But if more journalists were doing journalist work, The Daily Show would be a footnote, not a keynote.

Link to full, uncut interview


* Compare his TV costume to the polo he's wearing in the clips Stewart runs -- watch how his persona is different out of his work clothes.