Today's Blogs

Surrender

Bloggers are reacting—mostly negatively—to Time’s decision to turn over subpoenaed notes in the case of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame. The legalization of gay marriage abroad is also getting attention, as is the much-anticipated premiere tonight of Bobby Brown’s reality show on Bravo.

Surrender: Under the threat of jail time for reporter Matthew Cooper and substantial fines on the magazine, Time announced that it would relinquish documents regarding Cooper’s confidential sources in the Plame case. The decision marks a turning point in the standoff between the special counsel investigating the Plame case, and Cooper and the New York Times’ Judith Miller, who also had refused to identify her sources. Cooper reportedly objected to Time’s decision but may now avoid incarceration.

His employer, however, is not escaping criticism. Gawker’s headline pretty much says it all: “Time Inc. Caves.” At Phlip’s Rants, Ohioan Phlip wonders whether sources with sensitive information will ever speak to the magazine again. “By doing this, Time has effectively become People magazine because their investigative days are done,” he writes. Pat Rogers at LeftIndependent, however, saysTime did the right thing since whomever leaked Plame’s identity may have committed a crime: “It is inappropriate to use the confidentiality shield this way. … (Time and the Times) diminish public respect for the journalist shield by continuing to use it to protect a continuing criminal enterprise in the Bush administration,” Rogers writes.

Naturally, any mention of Plame riles up the debate over why columnist Robert Novak isn’t facing the slammer. At Gibberish, sci fi writer Jayme Lynn Blaschke ponders this, noting that Novak “is the first-hand source, the epicenter, if you will, of the whole scandal and illegality.” On the Washington Monthly blog Political Animal, Paul Glastris is just glad that his friend Cooper may avoid jail time—and mentions that the Time reporter’s handwriting is unreadable anyway.

For its part, the Times hasn’t given in, but then, as D.C. gossip Wonkette points out, the Times—unlike Time—isn’t named in the suit. She takes a shot at paper-of-record publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. in the process. “And if (Miller) has to go to jail?” she sarcastically asks. “So what?”

Read more about today’s Plame developments here.

Today Spain, tomorrow, the world?: Spain legalized gay marriage today, becoming the fourth country to do so. Canada passed similar legislation Tuesday. Here’s a worldwide breakdown.

Both those for and against this week’s gay marriage developments consider Spain and Canada dominoes in a continuing trend. Conservative Andrew Sullivan says “(t)he marriage movement continues to accelerate across the civilized world” and wonders how the United States will deal with married same-sex immigrants from the aforementioned countries. The liberal Expansionist L. Craig Schoonmaker can’t believe the legalization of gay marriage is taking so long here. “To think that 30 years ago, Spain was ruled by the arch-conservative dictator Francisco Franco (and yes, Franco is still dead),” writes Schoonmaker, who lays claim to coining the term “gay pride.” “The Stonewall Riots in New York were in June 1969, 36 years ago, but we don’t have gay marriage here.”

Christian blogger Kane Rydell, however, is stunned that a largely Catholic country would make such a move. Left-leaning UncommonSense finds the American political angle, opining that the push for a constitutional defense-of-marriage amendment will increase and become an electoral litmus test in 2006 and 2008.

Read more about the issue.

It’s your prerogative: Bravo, the cable channel that brought us Queer Eye and Celebrity Poker Showdown, is now set to foist Being Bobby Brown on the public. The series chronicling the famously troubled singer (and his more famous, arguably more troubled wife) premieres tonight at 10 ET. The Boston Herald has a review.

If this genre’s barrel has a bottom, TVGeekdom says this is it. “Somewhere, Ike Turner is pissed at being three decades ahead of his time and missing out on his reality show,” writes the anonymous blogger. Seattle-based Rezanow thinks this show would’ve been interesting about 15 years ago.

Pop-culture blogger Heckler Spray blames the first family of reality TV for shows such as this: “The Osbournes really do have a lot to answer for. Apart from making car-crash supermarket commercials and having twice-failed pop careers, they’ve let other celebrities think that they too deserve a reality TV show.”

But if you just can’t get enough of Bobby and Whitney, click here.