Subject: Overstressing the Overvotes?
Re: ” Kausfiles: The Miami Herald Blows Its Pulitzer”
From: Martin Baron, executive editor, Miami Herald
Date: Mon Jan 22 12:17 p.m. PT
Mickey Kaus misinterprets what the Miami Herald has said on the matter of overvotes. The Herald has merely said that overvotes would not be part of the project currently underway with BDO Seidman. We fully understand why others might wish to look at overvotes, and we did not forswear doing so ourselves at some point …
Why didn’t we join the consortium? This was a story in our own backyard, and we were ready, willing and fully able to pursue it. … We felt the need to get started. We didn’t, however, feel the need for help from other news organizations on a story in our own state. And we didn’t want to get bogged down with cumbersome organizational meetings involving nearly every media group in America.
[Find an unedited version of this post here; read Mickey Kaus’ reply here.]
Subject: Criticism Is Free Speech Too
Re: ” Pop: Eminem, Free-Speech Lefty”
From: Benjamin Anderson
Date: Sat Jan 20 11:31 a.m. PT
“Liberal protesters” such as myself have long defended the right of folks from the Commies to the Klan, from the Fugs to Eminem, to speak their minds. However, in doing so, we haven’t surrendered the right to condemn the views of a misogynist, homophobic sociopath like Mr. Mathers. Righteous indignation does not a censor make.
[Find this post here.]
Subject: Bare Walls: Naked Power
Re: “Culturebox: The Case Against Meier”
From: Brian
Date: Thu Jan 25 3:31 p.m. PT
No normal human being likes vast, barren spaces or sheer, featureless exteriors. That’s why we enjoy filling our homes with plants, paintings, and other decorations. It’s why we love to look at the intricate facades of old buildings. It’s why the only people who will consent to live in loft apartments are daft college students. But it is the perfect symbol for the overextension of federal power. It seeks to dwarf into insignificance the citizenry that it draws its energy from, and is callously indifferent to its own stated purpose.
[Find this post here.]
Subject: God Blesses Revenge
Re: ” Readme: God Bless You and …”
From: Zeitguy
Date: Fri Jan 26 9:50 a.m. PT
The Tiny Tim-ization of political salutation isn’t religious in nature: it is sentimental, passive-aggressive, and immodest, which is to say supremely middle class. This is the revenge of the Wal-Mart crowd against the thesaurus-abusers who have tried to edge their dilettantish poseur antics onto the main stage over the last decade or so.
[Find this post here.]
Fray Notes:
Who deserves a Fray checkmark? The Fray editor thought this post did: “Why must all satanic abuse be ‘ritual’? Can it not be spontaneous and creative, rather than rote and imitative?” It passed the Fray irony test. But readers disagreed; see here. A very illustrious personage [possibly a pseudonym] came into the Fray to discuss related matters: “I created the stars in the heavens and the stars next to some Fray posts.” Well, someone gave them to Tony Adragna (a man with extraordinarily wide life experience: Follow this thread to find out more) and to Zeitguy—see above.
It was a good week for history: a great Fray on the ” History Lesson” on the South; a fascinating comparison between George W. Bush and Commodus; and after recent praise for John Quincy Adams’ inaugural address, a reminder from Pete Miesel of a lesser-known phrase from it: “We will not be palsied by the wills of our constituents.”
More Fray issues: “Ballot Box” Fray regular Pogue Mahone is claiming to have had the most replies ever to a Fray message: 203 (the post is here, without the replies).
There was a “Moneybox” post on Survivor (part of the choice Fray on this article) last summer which may have had more, but the numbers are gone forever.
And Andy Mahoney has concerns about Chatterbox’s new “Whopper of the Week” feature: “I can see the tug-of-war clearly already; Ballot Box vs. Chatterbox in the battle of the Bushism. Should the Prez tell a massive whopper, but in doing so, use garbled syntax, invented words and double negatives to blow the sentiment entirely—then what?” It’s a worry to us all, Andy.
