Attack Dog

New Yorker piece on the nature of negative political ads and the Super-pacs that are now able to fund them. 

When you read something like this it really is tough to have much hope for the republic. 

The Obama Memos

An incredibly fascinating article from the New Yorker. But how on earth do they get this kind of information? It’s like they’re spying on the Oval Office….

Are they spying on the Oval Office?  

Also, there’s this line.. 

“Obama was learning the same lesson of many previous occupants of the Oval Office: he didn’t have the power that one might think he had. Harry Truman, one in a long line of Commanders-in-Chief frustrated by the limits of the office, once complained that the President “has to take all sorts of abuse from liars and demagogues… . The people can never understand why the President does not use his supposedly great power to make ’em behave. Well, all the President is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.”

The Open Secret: Criticism of Kristof

This article was pretty tough to swallow since I’ve been a Kristof fan for a long, long time. I even tell people that I dream of becoming like him in some sort of way.  If you read this article, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter. For now, I am going to let it sit.  

My initial response is that the writer seems to put way too much blame on Kristof. Kristof is a journalist that is in need of selling newspapers. There are a million other things that Kristof could be, but this is what he’s chosen to do. He’s only one man and therefore can’t be the problem. I agree that there needs to be more work in presenting the structures of violence, the linkages between political systems and the horrors on the ground.  But I can’t see how Kristof is somehow to blame. Kristof knows that intimate stories are important for creating narrative and therefore need to be personal and direct. Refashioning his column into a policy research document twice a week will do nothing but draw away readers.  It’s like the writer of this article wants Kristof to be more than he is, or more than he could possibly be: which is to somehow be able to completely solve the problems for everyone else and at the same time be popular in doing so.  

Here is Kristof’s page over at the New York Times. 

The Broken Contract

By George Packer.

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