Marjorie Williams and Tucker Carlson
Budweiser State University
By Marjorie Williams
Posted Thursday, Nov. 2, 2000, at 11:22 AM ETDear Tucker:
Whoa! The opening graf of my last dispatch wasn't in the least meant to be stinging. By "I tend to forget who owns you. ..." I only meant you-the-Standard, not you-the-guy. It never crossed my mind that this could be construed as a criticism. I don't have much difficulty, in my own life, separating my larger thoughts about whether media conglomeration is a bad thing for the free flow of information in a democracy from the reality that someone's gotta write me checks. This has its uncomfortable moments, which will probably increase in frequency as everything converges toward the Internet porn industry, which will apparently end up owning everything. But geez, Tucker, of course you didn't want to write ill of Rupert Murdoch, and if I'd had my wits about me I wouldn't have invited you to. In my book, that doesn't make either of us a weasel.
And I can't even pretend that my warm recommendation of yesterday's Wall Street Journal piece was part of a larger principled objection to Murdoch as a businessman or Corruptor of Journalism. It's unclear to me that keeping the New York Post alive is a huge gift to humanity, and I think it's vicious as often as it's lively. But I give him a lot of credit for funding the Standard, which I read with huge pleasure, despite almost never agreeing with anything I read there. (I would read it for Andy Ferguson's book criticism alone.) No, I was just enjoying a juicy read--an impulse that Murdoch of all people knows something about. I don't think that a pragmatic tact about the people who pay us requires that we all high-mindedly refrain from laughing (if only in private) at their midlife black turtlenecks.
On another subject entirely, which circles back in a way to that anti-drug ad we were talking about yesterday, the Journal (again with the Journal! I'm starting to worry that I should be working in more plugs for my paymasters at the WaPo) has a front-pager about the new move on college campuses to abandon the scare tactics with which they've tried in the past to discourage binge drinking and promote instead the idea of moderate drinking. This issue has been covered elsewhere and poses an interesting question. The last story I read about it offered some pretty persuasive evidence that all the ads about binge drinking tended to persuade students that binge drinking was the norm and that students, being a suggestible bunch, behaved accordingly. On the other hand, promoting moderate drinking obviously signals resignation to the reality of underage drinking.
But the Journal piece has a new wrinkle, which is that the booze industry is now cozying up to universities--the University of Virginia is the story's main guinea pig--with funding for the new programs, which go by the icky name of "social norms marketing." The dean of students at UVa is quoted as saying, "We could have a very interesting conversation about what [Anheuser's] motives are. But I guess I'm a pragmatist." (Gee, maybe this isn't another subject entirely after all.)
I guess I'm with the Florida State University official who says, "In the end, you end up working for Budweiser and giving them publicity." So up with the new experiments in subtler advertising; down with industry funding. What do you say?
Soberly,
Marjorie
Budweiser State University
By Marjorie Williams
Posted Thursday, Nov. 2, 2000, at 11:22 AM ETMarjorie Williams is the author of a weekly opinion column for the Washington Post
, a contributing writer at Talk
magazine, and a member of Slate's "Book Club." Tucker Carlson writes for the Weekly Standard and Talk
magazine. Reader Comments from The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: The first two posts below comment on different Breakfast Table topics, but we can't help sensing a connection, and a rather cruel blow at the BT participants.
The other important topic is of course Jeopardy. David Franklin's post is here. Kevin Bertsch gives a detailed analysis (we feature the conclusion below) and says "Tucker you still don't understand"--though it seems to us at The Fray that Mr Carlson's words "Blow yourself up before you let yourself squeak by" make it clear he doesn't need to understand strategy. Meriadoc points out that "knowing the answer" doesn't seem to feature in any of this discussion, and there are other comments throughout The Fray.
Elsewhere, Lisa Hancock-Jasie generously gives Tucker Carlson two reasons not to like Rupert Murdoch, and then another two later on.]
I'm aghast at what Carlson and Williams say about their college days. My years at Brown, in physics and then computer science, were the most intensive periods of sustained learning of my life. I guess it's true, very few people go into quantum physics because they can't make it as journalism majors.
--Bob Munck
(To reply, click
here.)
Sure, space colonization isn't getting as much attention as, say, Al Gore's earth tones, or the latest Oprah appearance. No surprise. Columbus' voyage wasn't thought of as important at the time either. That's because the chattering classes, then and now, are more interested in gossip than news. They like to talk about each other, and about the people they fondly imagine they're like, or will be like some day, or at least will have influence over some day.
In all of this, of course, they're mostly wrong. But a close connection to reality has never been the strength of the chattering classes. That's for the boring geeky types who actually change the world.
--A.G.Android
(To reply, click
here.)
[Reaction to
Wednesday's entry:]
In third place, sometimes the right move is to bet everything, sometimes it's to bet nothing, and sometimes you bet part of what you have. David's strategy was perfectly rational, and to have bet everything to avoid appearing 'wimpy' would have been to substitute macho stupidity for brains, which is generally not a winning move on Jeopardy.
--Kevin Bertsch
(To reply, click
here.)
[Reaction to
Tuesday's entry:]
Why do issues like a kiss or Oprah dominate? The answer is because the press, and by this I mean the working press not the pundits, have been reduced to recycling AP wire stories churned out by the same five writers for the same five major papers every day. Facts that don't fit preordained story lines are jettisoned. Al Gore is a liar, that's the story, run with it. George Bush doesn't lie, he's stupid, and his misstatements are just good natured mistakes. This is what passes for journalism. The punditocracy, by which I mean those highly paid folks like your own Tucker and Marjorie who take it upon themselves not to be journalists, but to provide their opinion on everything, whether they are qualified in the subject matter or not, have completely punted in this election. It is they who declared that going on Oprah was a good idea. It is they who decided Bush was a frontrunner before the first vote was cast in Iowa. It is they who have declared Clinton-fatigue a factor. It is they who refuse to delve in any depth into the issues of the day.
Ask not for whom Al Gore kisses, he kisses for thee.
--John Burns
(To reply, click
here.)
[Reaction to
Monday's
entry:]
One key sign that it doesn't look good for Gore is Joe Lieberman's decision to remain in the Senate race in Connecticut. Based on that decision, I suspect that the Dem's internal polling numbers look worse than the public tracking polls. If Lieberman either loses the Vice Presidency or withdraws from the Senate race, the seat would be a shoe-in for the Democrats, while if Gore/Lieberman win, it will be assured for the Republicans. If it looked like Lieberman might be the next Vice President, there would be a lot of pressure on him to withdraw from the Senate race.
--J.Travers
(To reply, click
here.)
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Reader Comments from The Fray:
[Notes from the Fray Editor: The first two posts below comment on different Breakfast Table topics, but we can't help sensing a connection, and a rather cruel blow at the BT participants.
The other important topic is of course Jeopardy. David Franklin's post is here. Kevin Bertsch gives a detailed analysis (we feature the conclusion below) and says "Tucker you still don't understand"--though it seems to us at The Fray that Mr Carlson's words "Blow yourself up before you let yourself squeak by" make it clear he doesn't need to understand strategy. Meriadoc points out that "knowing the answer" doesn't seem to feature in any of this discussion, and there are other comments throughout The Fray.
Elsewhere, Lisa Hancock-Jasie generously gives Tucker Carlson two reasons not to like Rupert Murdoch, and then another two later on.]
I'm aghast at what Carlson and Williams say about their college days. My years at Brown, in physics and then computer science, were the most intensive periods of sustained learning of my life. I guess it's true, very few people go into quantum physics because they can't make it as journalism majors.
--Bob Munck
(To reply, click here.)
Sure, space colonization isn't getting as much attention as, say, Al Gore's earth tones, or the latest Oprah appearance. No surprise. Columbus' voyage wasn't thought of as important at the time either. That's because the chattering classes, then and now, are more interested in gossip than news. They like to talk about each other, and about the people they fondly imagine they're like, or will be like some day, or at least will have influence over some day.
In all of this, of course, they're mostly wrong. But a close connection to reality has never been the strength of the chattering classes. That's for the boring geeky types who actually change the world.
--A.G.Android
(To reply, click here.)
[Reaction to Wednesday's entry:]
In third place, sometimes the right move is to bet everything, sometimes it's to bet nothing, and sometimes you bet part of what you have. David's strategy was perfectly rational, and to have bet everything to avoid appearing 'wimpy' would have been to substitute macho stupidity for brains, which is generally not a winning move on Jeopardy.
--Kevin Bertsch
(To reply, click here.)
[Reaction to Tuesday's entry:]
Why do issues like a kiss or Oprah dominate? The answer is because the press, and by this I mean the working press not the pundits, have been reduced to recycling AP wire stories churned out by the same five writers for the same five major papers every day. Facts that don't fit preordained story lines are jettisoned. Al Gore is a liar, that's the story, run with it. George Bush doesn't lie, he's stupid, and his misstatements are just good natured mistakes. This is what passes for journalism. The punditocracy, by which I mean those highly paid folks like your own Tucker and Marjorie who take it upon themselves not to be journalists, but to provide their opinion on everything, whether they are qualified in the subject matter or not, have completely punted in this election. It is they who declared that going on Oprah was a good idea. It is they who decided Bush was a frontrunner before the first vote was cast in Iowa. It is they who have declared Clinton-fatigue a factor. It is they who refuse to delve in any depth into the issues of the day.
Ask not for whom Al Gore kisses, he kisses for thee.
--John Burns
(To reply, click here.)
[Reaction to Monday's entry:]
One key sign that it doesn't look good for Gore is Joe Lieberman's decision to remain in the Senate race in Connecticut. Based on that decision, I suspect that the Dem's internal polling numbers look worse than the public tracking polls. If Lieberman either loses the Vice Presidency or withdraws from the Senate race, the seat would be a shoe-in for the Democrats, while if Gore/Lieberman win, it will be assured for the Republicans. If it looked like Lieberman might be the next Vice President, there would be a lot of pressure on him to withdraw from the Senate race.
--J.Travers
(To reply, click here.)