Jeff Jarvis delivers a longish fisking of an anonymous journalists pleas for job security. He’s seeing his dead-tree media job swirling down the porcelien bowl and he doesn’t seem to be prepared to actually get up off his butt and do something that would actually make what he does valuable to the people who really do need his expert services.

Jarvis begins:

Though I don”t know, it appears that I may be speaking here with a journalist on a big-city paper. Now onto his or her comment:

Moving papers online, as you encourage, leaves behind an enormous number of citizens who are not online in a society that doesn”t support universal computer literacy or universal public access to the Internet.

Well, a daily newspaper is also an expensive thing that not everyone can afford… except, of course, for the free papers that are now cutting into big newspapers” expensive paid circulation, just the way the internet is.

The New York Times costs $9 a week on the newsstand (and I dare you to find their regular home delivery rate – not their introductory, temporary, discount, special – anywhere on their site.) Netzero, on the other hand, costs $9.95 a month. So for less than a dollar a month more – call now! operators on duty! – you get not just the news from one source but the entire world of information, interactivity, consumerism that is the internet! Call in the next 15 minutes and we”ll throw in naked ladies and free porn!

My library has the internet for free. Soon Philadelphia – whose Knight Ridder papers are among those doomed to resale and uncertain futures – will have inexpensive universal broadband.

So I don”t buy your argument anymore; neither does this fellow commenter. Your argument says we should hold back progress to wait until the last person is on the rocketship: ‘If we can”t all afford to go to the moon, then no one should go.” That attitude will get you precisely nowhere.

And I”m not moving papers online. The public is online. the question is whether newspapers want to be there with them.

The rest is just as good.

My Soundtrack: Stand Up Comic by Ray Davies on WOXY.

Via Andrew comes this hilarious website dedicated to scamming all the idiots claiming to be from some third-world country who flood our email inboxes with promises of vast hordes of cash if we would only front them $500 (or whatever). Reading the email exchanges is hilarious. And the pictures of the criminals holding up signs are a riot.

And with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy:

You may be a Nigerian scammer if…

1. YOU WRITE IN ALL CAPS.

2. You refuse to use spell check and think that Courier is the only font in the world.

3. You hate Americans.

4. You confuse American last names with first name. Ex. Smith Adam or Williams Brian

5. When someone asks you for a picture, you look for the nearest magazine.

6. You work at a bank.

7. You always put DR. in front of your name, no matter what the situation. Even if you are not a doctor.

8. You become extremely angry when you catch someone lying, even though everthing about you and what you are doing is a lie.

9. You have trouble keeping your lies straight.

10. You probably weren’t the brightest person in world. You most likely rode the small yellow bus to school while your peers were on the bigger bus. Your class room wasn’t attached to your school, but was actually a mobile unit that was 100 yards away.

11. You are a Prince or a King.

12. Your father or husband was a Nigerian General.

13. The new President of Nigeria is seeking vengence on your family because your father or husband confirmed a life prison sentence on him when he was in charge.

14. People around you tend to get assassinated, poisoned, or killed in a plane crash.

15. You write in the most contrived, archaic, and atrocious English.

16. You use inappropriate CLICHES (e.g. “gave up the ghost” for a supposedly sad event).

17. You try to capitalize off human misery (e.g. mutilations in Sierra Leone, the September 11

18. You have $25-$100 million dollars just laying aroundatrocity, etc).

19. You address everyone as “friend.”

20. Everything is “confidential.”

21. You are a prestigious International Banker and you have a Yahoo or Hotmail email address. Even if you are trying to be secretive, the best you can come up with is a yahoo email address because you aren’t smart enough to log into register.com and register a fake domain name.

22. You are an ex-general who got converted to Christianity and now wants to make amends to God by sending a stranger the $ 25 million you stole from your country.

23. You are the wife of the deceased state employee whose husband stole all this $11, 000,000. but got converted to Christianity before his death and wants you to “invest it all in Christian work in the US to make amends for his sins against God.”

24. Your last name is Abacha.

25. Your first name is Barrister or Mohamed.

26. A contract was over invoiced/overcharged by $25 million and the money is now “floating” in a suspense account at the Central Bank of Nigeria under your sole control.

27. You have resolved to share 35% of your fortune with a complete stranger for taking absolutely no risk whatsoever.

28. You are The Chairman in charge of Minting and Printing at Central Bank of Nigeria and you control the Nigeria Remittance Office. Not only can you supply any document needed to prove these funds exist, you can also print any document needed to authorise release of the funds to a complete stranger.

29. All you require to make someone rich is YOUR NAME, COMPANY`S NAME, ADDRESS , TELEFAX NUMBER. YOUR BANK NAME ,ADDRESS, TELEFAX NUMBER. YOUR BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER AND BENEFICIARY NAME.

30. You have allocated 5% for expenses.

31. You are a high official at Nigerian Petroleum holding on to millions in over-billings.

32. You are deeply religious.

33. You have a motorcycle for sale on EBAY for an extremely low price and your will to ship it for free for a small deposit of $2000.

34. By some strange coincidence You and your trusted barrister and/or other associate always read and write your emails mere minutes apart on the same computer.

35. You are a destitute political refugee living in a camp on the boarder of some country, but you still manage the daily trip to a cyber cafe in Logos, Nigeria in order to check your email.

36. When you get caught trying to scam someone, you use the “I’m doing this because the white man robbed me and made us Africans slaves” excuse. Even though you have no idea of the ethnicity of the person you are robbing, disregarding the possibility that you could be stealing from someone who has African ancestry.

37. Pose for a photo with a loaf of bread on your head and dont know what these mean:

Ivannastiff Kockupmianus
Iama Dildo
Bendme Overand Dome
I Love Juanking
Will U Phystme
Iblowdudes
Anita Cox
Humpin Bois
Butt-Plugg

38. Monitor emails rather than read them.

39. Can’t read.

40. Need money urgently so your child can have an vital operation tomorrow, for weeks.

41. Work for a African bank and can rip them off with just a USA bank account and $200.

42. Ask a stranger to help you secretly rip off a bank etc.

43. Send your photo to someone you are defrauding, while breaking the laws of your country.

44. These people want me to believe that they work in a classy bank or the government, but… if they were, why would they be sending me e-mail from a Hotmail or Yahoo! address? That’s nothing at all like what it’s like in real life! Regular banks buy domains, normally in the country they’re from too — so, you might be a Nigerian 419 scammer if the bank you work in is using Hotmail addresses.

Don’t you wish you’d thought of this? I sure do.

My Soundtrack: Lily And Parrots by Sun Kil Moon on WOXY.

Stories are Universal. The place of each telling, however, turns a different facet to the reader’s eye. I’m currently working on a novel set in 1867 Charleston, South Carolina. The setting and time are critical to my story, but my character in his need for redemption is Everyman; I could have placed him in any time, any place.

This morning I read about another writer, Ben Okri, who expresses it well:

Literature doesn’t have a country. Shakespeare is an African writer. His Falstaff, for example, is very African in his appetite for life, his largeness of spirit. The characters of Turgenev are ghetto dwellers. Dickens’ characters are Nigerians. Do you see what I mean? Literature may come from a specific place but it always lives in its own unique kingdom.

Oh, to find the keys to the Kingdom.

My Soundtrack: Lightning Strikes Twice by Saint Etienne on WOXY.

More than 150 rabbis from the Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative and Orthodox movements of Judaism came together with one member of Congress and a witness to the Darfur genocide at the United Nation’s Dag Hammarskjold Plaza yesterday to protest and call of immediate action by the world to stop the slaughter.

Following the rally, the rabbis met with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. The Religious Action Center provided these excerpts:

Rabbi Robert Levine, President of the New York Board of Rabbis, looked to the words Jewish tradition: “Our Torah [Bible] explicitly commands us, ‘Thou shall not stand idle while thy neighbor bleeds.” This country must take the lead. Stopping genocide is not a Democratic or Republican issue. It is a moral issue.”

Rabbi Amy Small, Immediate Past President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Assembly expressed the immediacy of the situation, “The lives of thousands, even millions of the men, women and children of Darfur are at stake…We, Jews who believe in the ultimate goodness of humanity, stand here today to ignite sparks of passion in our country to rally all of our resources for good, to protect the innocent and vulnerable people of Darfur.”

Rabbi Joel Meyers, Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Assembly (Conservative Movement), voiced the historical imperative to act, “The horrors we have witnessed and continue to see in Darfur are well known to us…how frustrating it is to once again see good nations of the world saying the right words but doing little to stop the destructions.”

Rabbi Richard Jacobs, a member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform Movement) who traveled to Chad this past Fall to bear witness to the refugee camps and humanitarian crisis, remembered listening “to the chilling stories of the survivors…These attacks were not the spontaneous acts of desert marauders acting alone, no this was the coordinated state sponsored genocide of the government of Sudan.”

Rabbi Dale Polakoff, President of the Rabbinical Council of America (Orthodox Movement) reminded, “Mr. President [Bush], it was you who penned the words ‘Not on my watch” regarding the Rwandan Genocide. Mr. President, we join with you and pledge regarding the Genocide in Darfur: ‘Not on our watch, either.””

The full text of the rabbis speeches is available from the RAC.

My Soundtrack: Marvelous Truth by Hotel Lights on WOXY.

Ï€ is our most irrational of numbers.: it never ends and it never repeats. If I’d planned ahead I’d have a copy of the movie Ï€ to watch this evening but I don’t, so I’ll have to spend sometime this evening writing piems. Here’s one example: How I need a drink, alcoholic in nature, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics. Get it?

A few months ago Jill Miller-Zimon and a few other intrepid bloggers accepted an invitation from the Pee Dee to sit in on the morning story conference. It was a positive experience and, I hope, helped to build bridges between the two journalism communities. Now The Guardian is going one step better. (Via BuzzMachine.)

Beginning today it is putting the notes from its editorial meetings online in an editor’s blog.

From the morning post:

The 10 o’clock conference, the first collective event of the day, was attended by today’s duty editors, of course, and the numbers swelled to around 50. It was chaired by the editor, Alan Rusbridger and attended by three guests, Saudi Arabian journalists from Al Arabiya the TV news channel, the daily paper Al-Riyadh, and the Al-Madina press agency.

An autopsy on this morning’s paper was, as usual, first item on the agenda. The statin anti-cholesterol drug story came late and was moved from the finance pages to page 3 for the last edition. Pictures for the Crete murder story came in on time for the final edition and were added to the page 7 story. The night editor had put the last touches to the last edition by 1.30am.

Early items on today’s news agenda are 100 days of David Cameron as Tory leader, the opening of the inquest on the military policemen killed in southern Iraq, and the white paper on the BBC. On international news there’s the row of the funeral of Milosovic, more deaths in Baghdad, and 100,000 protestors on the streets in Thailand. There will be more on gas supplies and Vodafone in the business news. In sport, there’s the FA Cup replay tonight and the first day at Cheltenham Festival races. Let’s see how those stories shape up as the day unfolds…

While the Guardian is not posting a transcript or even a podcast of the meetings (both of which could be interesting) this still is another leap in media transparency.

[Update — 1838, 14 March 06 — Also take a look at The Guradian’s CommentIsFree.]

My Soundtrack: Seems So Far by Jets Overhead on WOXY.

I’m a bit of a nudge when it comes to telling people that all change begins with an individual deciding that they’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. Margaret Mead was absolutely right when she said: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

So, I was not the least surprised when I read about Sam Bell and Mark Hanis in The New Republic:

We treat genocides like natural disasters, and we throw bags of rice at the problem, says Hanis, who, like Bell, graduated last spring. We wanted to treat genocide as a security issue.

It was an out-of-the-box, arguably ludicrous idea — college students passing the hat to support a military force for a foreign intervention — but the idea got people’s attention. After pitching the concept to a host of foreign policy luminaries — I’d pull all-nighters e-mailing former secretaries of state, says Hanis, whose prior political outreach experience included running for Swarthmore’s student council — a number of them, such as Roméo Dallaire and Samantha Power, gave GI-Net their endorsements, as did several members of Congress.

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, gave the group office space. And, most importantly, hundreds of people started giving GI-Net money. Students at Cornell University hosted a special showing of Hotel Rwanda, raising $5,000 for the group. A Mamaroneck, New York, high school held a battle of the bands. And a Salt Lake City piano teacher donated two weeks’ worth of earnings.

A year after Hanis and Sniderman first conceived of the idea during an International Club dinner in the college dining hall, GI-Net had collected $250,000 to support the Darfur peacekeepers (and an additional $250,000 to support GI-Net’s operations). Now the group’s members just needed to figure out how to spend the funds. But, as they soon discovered, raising money to stop a genocide is a lot easier than giving it away.

So, put your television on the tree lawn and go do something, no matter how small. We all matter.

My Soundtrack: Vodiak by Stereolab on WOXY.

In the most powerful nation in the world, how can it be that only six states — North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska and Pennsylvania* — graduate more than 80 percent of students from high school six others graduate less than 60 percent? Via Pho comes this report from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on our Silent Epidemic.

[*Update — 1321, 14 March — Molly points out in the comments that there are seven, not six, states in the highest category.]

For the past two years I’ve spent 16 weeks during the winter teaching math to inner-city 6th graders. My experience has been heart breaking. While I have had moments of intense joy when a student got it, most of the time I experience frustration with students who could not add and subtract, let along multiply or divide. That most of these children might see the 7th grade seems a hurculean challenge. That they might finish the 12th grade seems a miracle.

The answers provided by the report seem naively simplistic to me. How do we graduate more students? We must:

Improve teaching and curricula to make school more relevant and engaging and enhance the connection between school and work.

Improve instruction, and access to supports, for struggling students.

Build a school climate that fosters academics.

Ensure that students have a strong relationship with at least one adult in the school.

Improve the communication between parents and schools.

Why do I think the above excellent suggestions are naively simplistic? Because there is nothing there that hasn’t been recited again and again by every study of education ever reported. We know what needs to be done, but we do not know how to do it, or, I think, have the political will to make it happen.

The math students I worked with were in a constant state of high guard. School, the place that should be second to only their home in terms of saftety was instead a place where police officers wtih loaded sidearms partrolled. A place where those officers, when called upon, used headlocks to extract students after teachers could no longer control the violence.

How can we ever expect to meet the educational needs of children when we have not yet met their most basic physiological and safety needs?

My Soundtrack: On The Radio by The Concretes on WOXY.

Where were you on Wednesday, 11 May 2005? It was an unremarkable day and I don’t remember where I was either. Thanks to archives, however, I do know what I blogged about. They didn’t ask me, but the report The State Of The News Media 2006, did figuratively ask seven other bloggers what they had been doing that day.

What the report found was uninteresting.

Who they asked, however, is telling. They looked at bloggers that were most like what they thought Journalism ought to be. Of course the report is focused on The News Media, but I think what we define as news is many times more nebulous than journlists in the dead-tree meda want it to be.

Is it possible to contain the important news of the day within 24 or 48 or even 96 pages of newsprint? Can any news organization inform us about what is most vital to us in any 24-hour news cycle? Of course not. Only we know what we want to know. What can looking at seven blogs out of a blogosphere of around 14 million blogs in the Spring of 2005 tell anyone? Not much.

The report is a long and detailed. I’m going to sit down this evening with an apporpriate adult beverage and see what the whole things has to say. Let me know what you find when you get a chance to read it.

My Soundtrack: Kidney Bingos by Wire on WOXY.

Happy Sunshine Week. No, this has nothing to do with Cleveland and Spring. Rather it is all about recognizing that government officials at all levels are making it increasingly difficult to obtain public documents. They don’t want their employers — us taxpayers — to know how they’re conducting business and spending our money.

According to Sunshine Week:

This is not just an issue for the press. It”s an issue for the public, says Cox Newspapers’ Washington Bureau Chief Andy Alexander, chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Freedom of Information Committee. An alarming amount of public information is being kept secret from citizens, and the problem is increasing by the month. Not only do citizens have a right to know, they have a need to know.

Our goal, Alexander says of Sunshine Week, is to raise public awareness of this horrible trend that is hurting democracy.

While Sunsine Week is sponsored by the dead-tree media and its associates, I think this would be a fine opportunity to demonstrate the power of blogs. How wonderful it would be if every single NEOblogger were to go down to their local city hall and file a request for a single document that ought to be a matter of public record?

Would you like to know how much your mayor spent last month on lunches at public expense? Ask to see his expense accounts.

Would you like to know what was discussed at the last city council meeting? Ask to see the transcript.

Would you like to know how that contract for city recycling services was awarded? Ask to see the request for propsals and the bids.

There are lots and lots of public documents that can throw open the shutters and let the sunshine in to brighten those dark little corners where deals are all too often made.

What documents are you going to request?

My Soundtrack: Tell Me I’m Wrong by Longwave on WOXY.

As something of a counterpoint to my Pete Panse post yesterday, I offer this front-page story in the Los Angeles Times this morning about icon Bettie Page. At 82 she’s still signing her photos and prints from the ’50s. The month I was conceived she was Miss January. I think I’d rather have her centerfold as a collector’s item than Marilyn’s.

Still lifes and landscapes are wonderful, but the ultimate challenge for any artist is the human form. I’ve watched artists drawing in a self-absorbed frenzy-like ecstasy as their arms leapt across their sketch pad to capture the life model in front of them. If you want to be an artist, this is one thing you have to do.

But not if you’re a high school student in Middletown, New York.

From The Art Renewal Center:

Pete Panse is a talented and popular high school art teacher in Middletown, NY who uses traditional techniques to train his students. In December 2005 Mr. Panse was suspended from his job for recommending that some of his advanced students consider taking figure drawing courses that included nude figure drawings.

Mr. Panse is suspended from his job pending hearings after which he may be permanently fired, ending a 25-year teaching career. In the meantime, his students are sitting in study hall learning nothing and failing to prepare the materials necessary for their receiving scholarships.

In his discussions with students Mr. Panse mentioned several options for advancing their figure drawing skills; the local community college, a nearby frame shop that sponsors art classes, and the prestigious New York Academy of Art. He also described pre-college figure drawing programs at several other New York City art schools, and a highly successful art college prep program called the Mill Street Loft.

I remember my 6th grade teacher, Mrs. Campbell talking to us all one day about a set of art books she’d brought in. Among the works of art in the books we would find, she told us, nudes. This was Art, she said, and it was not something to be snickered at.

We looked, of course, and some of us snickered, but because of her no-nonsense approach, we got over that very quickly.

If only the world had more teachers like Mrs. Campbell and Mr. Panse.

My Soundtrack: Carrion by British Sea Power on WOXY.

Speaking as someone who has rewritten more than his fair share of corporate press releases, I have to say that there is nothing new in the whole Wal Mart/Blogger flap. The hardest part for me was searching for some kernal of news in the three pages of single-spaced type from the flacks that would genuinely interest my readers.

And I always attributed any statement of fact to the company making the claim.

Jeff Jarvis has a similar set of rules that he’s throwing out for everyone to consider. I think they’re reasonable.

…I will repeat my rules for dealing with PR, rules that bloggers already tend to uphold but journalists do not. So this is suggestion to bloggers and a call to all journalists and news organizations to follow three simple guidelines for transparency regarding PR:

1. If a story starts as a pitch from PR, say so.

2. Any information in a story that comes from PR or a source with a vested interest should be identified as such.

3. Reveal any help you got from PR and official sources in doing a story: setting up interviews, lunches, digging up information.

If you don”t do that, we will trust you less.

I also like the fisking Jarvis offers of a flack mogel Richard Edelman. Edelman thinks he understands blogs. He doesn’t. Writes Jarvis:

Now I”d also say it”s frightening that the flacks think they are in control and ready to replace God. Plesser says flacks are the gatekeepers. He doesn”t see that this era is all about tearing down the gates and their keepers with them.

And I think Edelman”s off on his contention that PR plays much better in a world that lacks trust. No, I think it only becomes another cause for distrust: We wonder who”s behind the spin.

Whom do you trust?

My Soundtrack: The Marchers Are Coming by Dead Heart Bloom on WOXY.

With This?

I’ve been reading about psychologist Carl Jung and I found this reference to his first visit to the United States in 1909. Jung makes an observation and when I read it I stopped and asked: when did this change? Why did it change? What does it mean to live in a society where people politely ask and expect to have their wishes respected?

Another thing that struck me [Jung] was that in the USA nothing seemed to be verboten: instead people were politely requested to not do such-and-such. He concluded that in North America civil life was designed to appeal to the intelligence, not, as in Europe, to stupidity. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 17, page 135.

Wouldn’t you much rather live in the former, and not the latter world?

My Soundtrack: New Messiah by Dead Heart Bloom on WOXY.

I’ve noticed a serious up-tick of late in the number of Phishing emails I’ve been getting. It’s gotten so bad that I might be at risk of missing a legitimate communication from someone. Anything I get that’s a warning, I delete without even looking at it. Businesses need to get serious and shut these guys down because they’re worse than spammers.

[Update — 1657, 9 March — Tish thinks it’s about the money. I didn’t have a really good argument for that until I came across this little tidbit on The Daily Dish…

Religious conservatives are unapologetic; not only do they believe that mass use of an HPV vaccine or the availability of emergency contraception will encourage adolescents to engage in unacceptable sexual behavior; some have even stated that they would feel similarly about an H.I.V. vaccine, if one became available. ‘We would have to look at that closely,’ Reginald Finger, an evangelical Christian and a former medical adviser to the conservative political organization Focus on the Family, said. ‘With any vaccine for H.I.V., disinhibition’ — a medical term for the absence of fear – ‘would certainly be a factor, and it is something we will have to pay attention to with a great deal of care.’ Finger sits on the Centers for Disease Control’s Immunization Committee, which makes those recommendations.

These people are so sick as to think that cures for sexually transmitted diseases just encourage more sex. After all, their diety of choice must have created STD’s for a reason right? How better to teach a lesson to all those sluts out there.]

The Taliban may hate us for our freedom, but our home-grown version hates us for our sex. I’ve written about this before. If the NEO/Theocons (are represented by the Council For National Policy) get their way, sex will be restricted to covenantly married couples in the missionary position solely for the purpose of procreation.

Everything else will get you the death penalty. (Or at least a public flogging and time in the stocks.)

This morning Salon’s Lynn Harris writes in Broadsheet:

Hot off the Money Is More Important Than Women wire, this just in from Planned Parenthood:

Today the United States Senate is considering a bill that would have a serious and damaging impact on health coverage for women across the United States. The Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act (HIMMAA), introduced by Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), would allow insurance companies to ignore nearly all state laws that require insurance coverage for certain treatments or conditions, such as laws that require them to include contraceptives in their prescription plans. [Emphasis added by irate Broadsheet poster.]

Roe v. Wade has never been the principle target of the knuckle-dragging religious wrong. Just as abolitionists used the image of women and children trapped in slavery to solicit the support of women in the North in the 19th century, so too has the image of innocent children murdered in the womb been used over the past 35 years to garner women’s support in the United States.

Now that the train wreck is looming closer and closer, the message is becoming clearer. It is Griswold v. Connecticut that they really want struck down. Are we ever going to have a Charlton Heston moment?

My Soundtrack: To Fail You by Low Skies on WOXY.

If I had a nickel for everytime I typed it’s all about the conversation, I’d have a lot of nickels. Jeff Jarvis this afternoon highlights one of the reasons the rich and powerful hate Meet The Bloggers: they don’t want to cede power by having a conversation. Jarvis is talking about a set of forums, but the message is universal. He writes:

When I was still working in the company that started those forums, I suffered no end of complaint from editors and politicians as well as some cops and coaches because a few people in those forums could get a little rude. But you know what allowed that to happen? The people in these forums feel as if they are shouting at the castle wall and if no one listens, they will shout louder.

If any of those editors or pols actually came into the forums and spoke with their constituents, I guarantee that once the shock wore off, the tone of the conversation would improve (excepting a few folks who forgot their meds). But after a forever of owning the conversation, this is precisely what scares the powerful about the internet. Conversation alone is a ceding of power.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

My Soundtrack: When They Were Young by Taxpayer on WOXY.

We panic to do more for them,
And especially when it’s your father,
And his eyes are far away, and your tears
Are all down your face and clothes,
And he doesn’t see them now, but smiles
Perhaps, just perhaps because you’re there.
How little he needs. Just love. More Love.

From Bedside Manners by Christopher Wiseman.

It’s been a busy few weeks in Wally World: the universe’s source for cheap plastic crap. The biggest news of the past few days is, of course, that sufficient social and economic pressures were brought to bear to convince Wal Mart to begin at least stocking Plan B in all of it’s pharmacies. And don’t miss the Wal Mart emails. This time to bloggers.

YOU, YOU, YOU… WALMART…! Jeff Jarvis fields a post from Ted Redmond from the San Francisco Guardian branding Craigslist as a **GASP** digital Wal Mart. It funny because I was just talking up Craig”s List to two real estate guys at Panera”s yesterday. Keep reading…

IF YOU PUT LIPSTICK ON A DONKEY… …It”s still an ass. Wally World”s No. 1 competitor is Target, the hip place where the cool kids like to shop. Target has plenty of problems of its own, but image isn”t one of them. Lee Scott must have a lot of lipstick saved up. Keep reading…

THE WAL MART EFFECT ON DIANE REHM… Charles Fishman was on The Diane Rehm show ths morning. Rehm, possibly the most even-handed of all radio voices, invited Wal Mart to be part of the show but it declined. Fishman”s fisking of the letter declining the invitation alone is worth a listen. Keep reading…

A WAL MART ASSOCIATE BLOGS… An annonymous Wal Mart asscociate has been blogging for about a month now at Working At Wal Mart. The blogger is not just your average Bentonvile Behemoth employee however. This is a person with a mission, a mission to: Keep reading…

LIKE HANGING GUERNICA AT THE PENTAGON… I”ve mentioned Alice Walton”s purchase of Asher B. Durand”s 1849 painting Kindred Spirits several times in this blog. Purchased for $35 million (twice the annual healthcare costs of Wally World”s Arkansas employess) the painting is now headed for the Walton Museum. Keep reading…

BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMB… … Something Wall Mart This Way Comes. That was the title of South Park episode No. 120. First aired on Wednesday, 3 November 2004, the rerun this month caught the eye of poster Sawdust on thomhartman.org Keep reading…

CLEVELAND”S ROLDO ON ANDEW YOUNG… Here in Cleveland we have a social conscence that has kept the squeaky wheel turning for nearly 40 years. Roldo Bartimole today calls civil rights leader Andrew Young a disappointment for agreeing to shill for the Bentonvile Behemouth. He writes: Keep reading…

THE SILLINESS OF FINING WALMART… Last week a court in Lake County Illinois levied a fine of $80,000 against Wal Mart for allowing construction run-off to pollute East Loon Lake in the community of Antioch, Illinois. My imagined response from the Bentonvile Behemoth? Yeah, right, whatever. Keep reading…

ANDREW YOUNG ISN”T ENOUGH…? I”m laughing so hard right now, the people around me in the coffee shop are starting to stare. I”ve had to wipe the computer screen off three times so far. Jay Leno could have written this as a punch line. According to the Cox News Service, Wal Mart wants to hire… Keep reading…

ANDREW YOUNG… SOCK PUPPET…
This is harsh. Seriously harsh. But I can”t say I blame Bruce Dixon, editor of Black Commentator for labeling a former Martin Luther King Jr. aid who chose to shil for Wal Mart in the final days of Black History month. Writes Dixon: Keep reading…

WAL MART DOES GOOD… NEVER MIND… For a brief moment I was going to stand up for Wal Mart and applaud it”s decision yesterday to stock Plan B in all of its pharmacies. Then I read a comment from reader Samantha and sat back down. I”d been spun again. I hate when that happens. Keep reading…

My Soundtrack: Faded by The Afghan Whigs on WOXY.