Namely the windmill of the ever persistent complaint about biased and one sided the Main Stream Media is.

“My judgment is now clear and unfettered, and that dark cloud of ignorance has disappeared, which the continual reading of those detestable books of knight-errantry had cast over my understanding”-from Don Quixote

In my younger days, I subscribed to much of what passes for conservative orthodoxy today- I thought the New York Times was run by a liberal conspiracy, Richard Nixon was leading the US to victory in Vietnam, and any problems in the US were caused by those “effete liberals”. As I grew older though and branched out a little, experiencing more of what the world was really like-using my idle hours aboard ship to read more than just comic books- I slowly,  but surely, came to a better realization-most things are not clearly black or white, and the heavier shade comes a lot of times from the particular interpretation you yourself put on something that you see or hear.

That’s why whenever I hear someone whining about how unfair and biased the media is-and this year its been particularly pronounced in its repeated use as a reason Obama won the election-I just shake my head in disgust.

Because the answer is probably yes the media-all media- is biased in one way or another. The better question we should be asking is: “So what if it is?” I especially find the complaint interesting from bloggers -who pride themselves are how smart they are-as they take that easy excuse time and time again.

Especially in today’s world with a glutted market of different media products. The simple truth is that most of what people are complain of as bias, is not bias at all. Its a recognition of the fact that having examined a particular set of facts-the writer or broadcaster of a particular story or column-has arrived at a different conclusion than you.

I’ve got a news flash for all the Hannity’s, Malkins, and devout Sarah Palin fans out there:

That’s exactly what the media is supposed to do.

Now I have no doubt that a certain type of person goes into and achieves success in today’s big TV and print companies have a probably more liberal bent, than say-Joe the Plumber. Perhaps that means though-that unlike Joe, they may have actually used the education they got.

Journalists-all journalists- take basic data and draw conclusions from it. When that happens, some degree of bias slips in. But unlike bloggers who can and print any old lie that comes down the pike-media outlets have to live with libel laws and copyright laws. Happens on both sides of the political sphere. To blame it all on a biased media is to shift the blame from where it really belongs, the lack of a discerning reader.

When you turn to certain media products you are buying a particular slant or viewpoint. I submit to you that’s quite all right. For example, when I turn to MSNBC I know their interpretation of facts reflects a certain viewpoint. I’m Ok with that-the odds are out of all the things I’m not happy hearing, there will be at least one or two things, or points of view that I had not considered. And probably ought to at least give a second thought to.

Its a lazy man’s argument, to simply decry the media. And its not supported well by the facts. If the media wanted to be really biased-it would help their overall  bottom line- a lot:

Have I got skews for you

Showing that newspapers have a political slant that is economically rational does not necessarily answer the question of whether ownership or demand determines bias. Here, the academics are helped by the fact that large media companies may own several newspapers, often in markets that are politically very different. This allowed them to test whether the slants of newspapers with the same owner were more strongly correlated than those of two newspapers picked at random. They found that this was not so: owners exerted a negligible influence on slant. Readers’ political views explained about a fifth of measured slant, while ownership explained virtually none.

Which brings us back to the where the blame lies-the fault dear Brutus, is with ourselves.

Footnote:

Continue Reading »

The Asia Sentinel pointed me to a long, but very insightful and sobering article about the background causes, from some insiders’ viewpoint, of the US financial turmoil. The author of the article entitled “The End” is none other than the famed Michael Lewis, author of bestselling books like Liar’s Poker and The New New Thing, who incidentally is also one of my favorite authors. Before taking up his writing career, he had worked for Salomon Brothers in the 1980s, which job prompted him to write Liar’s Poker, a book that exposed the darker side of Wall Street two decades ago.

From the Sentinel:

I think Lewis hit the nail on the head when he said the problem with Wall Street is with the system of incentives that channeled the greed. I’ve read somewhere that on average each Goldman Sachs staff earned US$600,000 last year. And at AIG Financial Products in London, where the head count was 377, each staff on average used to earn more than US$1 million a year before the bailout. It goes without saying that the most obscene compensation packages went to the CEOs.

Obscene? Criminally so. I’ll never see that much money ever. When I was 24, I was beginning a long slow slide to the financial bottom, that I spent the last decade crawling out of. Even at that, its pretty much guaranteed, short of winning the lottery, I will never, ever, see that much money. Neither will most other normal people. This kind of thing is one reason I can’t side with the people who passionately defend such salaries as being in the country’s best interests.

One big lesson that the last decade taught me, is that its not how much money you make-its how little you spend. I lived a pretty nice life in Asia for relatively little money. Now back in the land of the free and the home of the brave-not so much. Every time I turn around its always something.

It does show though that the money is out there to jump start the world for the rest of us-if it can be pried from their greedy little fingers. I’m not holding my breath waiting for that.

Specifically, any job in the Obama administration. So much for that Ambassador to Thailand gig……….

The questionnaire includes 63 requests for personal and professional records, some covering applicants’ spouses and grown children as well, that are forcing job-seekers to rummage from basements to attics, in shoe boxes, diaries and computer archives to document both their achievements and missteps.

Only the smallest details are excluded; traffic tickets carrying fines of less than $50 need not be reported, the application says. Applicants are asked whether they or anyone in their family owns a gun. They must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages.

The application also asks applicants to “please list all aliases or ‘handles’ you have used to communicate on the Internet.”

That, last bit of course, depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is. Surely they could not be talking about innocent blog posts like this, could they? Or this? What happens if you answer yes to the “Do you really like drinking?” question?

Give it up pal-there are not enough Skycaps in the world to get all of your baggage to the curb!

Seems to me, under those criteria, some of America’s greatest leaders would never have gotten on the stage.

Evidently, stocks are not the only thing that is down these days. It would seem times are tough for gold-diggers too:

Haruna Hiraki pokes at the melting ice cubes with a perfect fingernail and frowns. She has never had to make a ginger ale last this long. It is 9.30pm, she is in an outfit that cost two months’ salary and nobody has yet bought her a proper drink.

“Another 10 minutes, then we’ll go?” pleads her friend Etsuko Shirasu, 25, from across the bar table.

“Waste of time. I told you this place was finished. Lehman, Goldman: they’ve all been sacked or gone back to America,” says Haruna, 25.

It is Thursday night and Roppongi romance – or at least, the calculated brand of romance that used to be the currency in this Tokyo bar – is at death’s door. Heartland, with its low lights and brushed-steel tables, has made its name as a favourite with the financial great and good and the occasional Japanese celebrity. In the warm months drinkers spill out on to the street. However, the bar that once boomed with British brokers, Australian traders, American hedge-fund managers and those Japanese women who would love them has fallen eerily silent. More damningly, says Heartland veteran and former Roppongi barmaid Eriko Masabuchi, it has gone “image down”.

The well-rehearsed choreography of girls coming in from the suburbs in their finery, tasting the good life, then snagging an investment banker to prolong the party, is yesterday’s dance. An entire segment of downtown Tokyo, which rose to fame and fortune with the 2003-07 bull market, has now been spectacularly snuffed out by the crash.

From the moment it opened in 2003 until just a few weeks ago, Heartland used to be the throbbing soul of the huge, glittering Roppongi Hills development. Everything that the investment banks, luxury apartments and high-end boutiques represented was nightly squeezed into that small space in one corner of the complex boisterous with money and ambition.

Sigh-twas once the opposite. A sojourn in Roppongi was like going to a well stocked fishing pond-you still had to know how to cast a line-but the number of fish in the pool made the odds of getting a strike pretty good. Or at least they were until I went and met the S.O. and screwed up the local fishing program. ( I met her in an entirely different, and accidental, way.)

The really sad part is ……how are they going to pay for those Coach bags now?

The 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month of 1918, World War I ended. The long era of European “peace” and the European world order was shattered. The seeds were sewn for the rematch some 20 years later.

I agree with those who view World War I and World War II as simply chapters in the same war-with a 20 year intermission. A good over view f round 1 is presented below. Click on the image to see it better:

The end of the World War laid the seeds for many of the problems we live through today. Take the Middle East for example-Ottoman domination was replaced for a while by European colonial domination-but round two undermined the linchpins of that. As a result the Arabs were eventually left unto themselves to to try to make a governance. We’ve all seen how well that worked out, didn’t we?

World War I created the pre-conditions that brought the Slavic horde into the heart of “real Europe”. It took 50 years to undo that damage.

The weakening of Europe led to the rise of Japan in Asia. During the interwar years, Europe’s Asia colonies rested on the illusion of power-without the underpinnings of substance. Even America could not sustain its sole Asian colony-and so the current era of “exporting labor” for the Philippines gloomily dawned.

At the end of the First World War though, as Churchill said, ” We were so glutted with victory that we cast it away”.

Smart man.

And the cost was borne by 70 million dead, in rounds 1 &2, not to mention the soldiers who had to fight and die in the wars that came as an aftermath. Where might the globe be if it had never occured?

We’ll never know. The question for this century though is this: Will we walk down the same paths or will we choose to improve ourselves and our world?

The answer is TBA.

And the folks who subscribe to my college e-mail discussion group. Turns out-the sky is falling!

To Richard for reminding me about Yuna Ito. Turn up your speakers and listen to this as you go about the morning routine today:

Most men knew this already!

Foreplay is overrated, researchers claim

Good advice from Dave Barry:

You know what I miss? I miss 1960. Not the part about my face turning overnight into the world’s most productive zit farm. What I miss is the way the grown-ups acted about the Kennedy-Nixon race. Like the McCain-Obama race, that was a big historic deal that aroused strong feelings in the voters. This included my parents and their friends, who were fairly evenly divided, and very passionate. They’d have these major honking arguments at their cocktail parties. But unlike today, when people wear out their upper lips sneering at those who disagree with them, the 1960s grown-ups of my memory, whoever they voted for, continued to respect each other and remain good friends.

What was their secret? Gin. On any given Saturday night they consumed enough martinis to fuel an assault helicopter. But also they were capable of understanding a concept that we seem to have lost, which is that people who disagree with you politically are not necessarily evil or stupid. My parents and their friends took it for granted that most people were fundamentally decent and wanted the best for the country. So they argued by sincerely (if loudly) trying to persuade each other. They did not argue by calling each other names, which is pointless and childish, and which constitutes I would estimate 97 percent of what passes for political debate today.

What I’m saying is: we, as a nation, need to drink more martinis.

Another Saturday-another round in circling the shopping malls. I’m beginning to feel like they should just call it “Groundhog Weekend” here in sprawling Shopping Mall USA and get it over with. At least when I alighted from the Star Ferry, I was a man on a mission. And with luck ( or lack of it)  as I bestrode the steps toward central there would be some weird ass Indian guy to tell me what luck had in store for me.

Here,  I know what’s in store for me when I wake up on a Saturday-the script always remains the same. It’s definitely time to go shoot this movie on location.

Or maybe get a new leading lady.

Sigh……………….. Then again, I did play golf this last weekend. Now its just getting more than a little chilly.

Still, today had its ups and downs-and in a way is kind of a good analogy for my current existence. There are lessons to be learned from it.

So lets recap it!

Continue Reading »

So you can either go out for Chinese:

Xu-Lau!

Or Japanese:

Riga Chigasaki

Whichever you are hungry for!

Just don’t forget the beer!

Reprinted from the Britannica Blog. I especially agree with bullet 1-a well timed veto of a Pelosi or Harry Reid pet project would be a good way to break away from the so called “liberal” moniker. Maybe veto Card check perhaps?

In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Barack Obama revealed an ambitious plan that has always been implicit in his campaign but now stands both openly avowed and suddenly plausible:
he plans to remake the Democratic party.

He should waste no time getting started.

And this is from Fox News-not exactly a hotbed of liberal thought:

Out of pocket for the next couple of days. Work is very busy and at night-I’m in the middle of writing a “mission statement” for myself: to remind of me of my goal to be where I want to be before the sun dawns on my birthday in 2010. ( God willing). I’m going to frame it and put it over my desk here to remind me of my goal. The election last night reminded me its time to jump start that process. If others can do it why can’t I?

Plus Spike wrote something the other night that struck a chord with me-I’ve been gone too long from it:

Yet none of this stuff is attractive to me on anything other than a “once or twice a year for a few days is nice” basis. This is a good life I suppose for a family man or a hermit, someone who doesn’t need or want to go out at will for a bit of excitement. I can live without a dozen varieties of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups a lot more easily than I can live without Wanchai, Lan Kwai Fong or Soho right now.

Ja ne…………..

It’s hard to imagine a more inspiring back-to-back of political addresses than McCain’s concession and Obama’s victory speech.

Is this a great country or what?

I’ve gotten a lot of e-mails from friends tonight bemoaning how the end of the world is upon us and Obama will take the nation over the proverbial cliff. I do not agree.

Love Obama or hate him-this is a great day for America. John McCain said so in his concession speech and for the short run at least-I would submit that he is right. It was kind of a sad in a way-his concession speech sounded like the McCain I loved in 2000, the guy who actually represented a great future for the Republican party and not the guy who he morphed into this year. In defeat, John McCain found the John McCain that most of us remember. McCain’s campaign has been pretty indefensible through much of the general election, with its ridiculous attempts to pander to the nuts costing him a lot of votes in the middle he would have otherwise gotten. Whether people realize it or not, this election is as much a repudiation of George Bush and what he has done to this country, and if this is what it takes to make people recognize that his kind of governance and politics was neither required or desired-well, I’m Ok with that.

Rather than bemoan this development, why not celebrate what it really represents? I stood in line for an hour today to vote in person for the first time in 30 years. When I went to work this morning the cars were lined up around the block from the school where I voted. Anecdotally, more people participated in this election than in any one in our recent memory. That’s a good thing. The exact percentage of voters who cast ballots won’t be determined until final tabulations of all votes are completed. That will be days or weeks away, but nearly every indicator signaled that a historically high percentage of Americans participated. Its about time.

Was Obama lucky? Sure. But as Ross Douthat wrote: “great politicians are almost always lucky politicians, and Obama’s good fortune does not diminish the magnitude of his triumph tonight, and the credit that he and his campaign deserve for the race they’ve run.

And then, of course, there’s the fact that Obama has just been elected President of a nation in which he could have been bought and sold as a slave just seven generations ago. I don’t think there are any words adequate to the occasion of America electing its first black President, so I’ll just say this: This may be a bleak day for the Republican Party, but come what may in the years ahead, it’s a great day for our country. Barack Obama deserves congratulations, tonight, but so does the nation he’s about to govern: We’ve come a long, long way.”

I truly believe that. And I’ll echo the words of John McCain: Barack Obama is my President.