Unca Darrell

JUNE 24 / The experiment ends . . .

. . . and the real work begins.

"Unca Darrell" opened for business on May 24 for a one-month experiment to learn how to blog (verb) and to consider whether the blog (noun) might be useful to anyone other than DDH, Proprietor.

The mechanics of simple blogging, I learned, are not particularly difficult. High-end blogging, the sort that distinguishes the better national sites, is a different matter, but while I admire blogs with many moving parts, I'm not sure that's necessary for "Unca Darrell."

Most important of all are voice and content. What can another another blogger add to the virtual conversation that makes life so interesting these days? The one-month experiment has encouraged me to continue and given me some ideas about what to do and what not to do.

It's now time, as planned, to shut down, evaluate the experiment, and redesign the project. Accordingly, "Unca Darrell" will go dark today and remain off-line for about two weeks.

Lord willing, the site will reopen for business on July 6 with what, were this a business, might be called a new business plan. The next experiment will be to see whether the new and improved "Unca Darrell" can attract readers. I think so, but that remains to be seen.

Again, thanks for dropping by and for offering advice and encouragement.

Unca Darrell

JUNE 23 / Reading list

Extra credit

• Forget the planet, retrofit the earth -- "One began to suspect our public officials might be drifting toward the clouds when many started referring to Earth as 'the plant.'" (The Wall Street Journal)

JUNE 22 / Reading list

Extra credit

• Her career seems a rebuke to contemporary country -- "It could be that country as we knew it is gone" (The Wall Street Journal)
• Rockin' the right: The 50 greatest conservative rock songs -- "On first glance, rock 'n' roll music isn't very conservative." (An oldie from National Review Online)

JUNE 21 / Reading list

Extra credit

• Why we're gloomier than the economy -- "According to most broad measures of how the economy is doing, it's not all that grim." (From the Washington Post by way of RealClearPolitics)
• Losing El Salvador? -- "[T]here is a genuine risk that El Salvador could become another satellite of Hugo Chavez . . . ." (The Weekly Standard). (Unca D: Look for the Chronicle to dispatch its entire South America Bureau to El Salvador soon to report that the Marxist candidate isn't.)
• Obama goes soft on free trade -- "Republican John McCain is a most militantly pro-free trade presidential candidate. That fact, alone, should guarantee his defeat in Ohio and other industrial states . . . ." [UD: The Nation leans so far to the left that it has asphalt burns on its portside cheek. The concern here is that Senator Obama is going wobbly on his protectionism. If he is, of course, that's good, not bad.]

JUNE 21 / Russert on newsroom diversity

I am for having women in the newsroom and minorities in the newsroom -- I'm all for it. It opens up our eyes and gives us different perspectives. But just as well, let's have people with military experience; let's have people from all walks of life, people from the top-echelon schools but also people from junior colleges and the so-called middling schools -- that's the pagentry of America . . . You need cultural diversity, you need ideological diversity. You need it.

. . . .

There's a potential cultural bias. And I think it's very real and very important to recognize and to deal with. . . . Because of backgrounds and training you come to issues with a preconceived notion or a preordained view on subjects like abortion, gun control, campaign finance. I think many journalists growing up in the '60s and the '70s have to be very careful about attitudes toward government, attitudes toward authority. It doesn't mean there's a rightness or a wrongness. It means you have to constantly check yourself.

. . . .

[Closed-mindedness], to me, is totally contrary to who we're supposed to be as journalists. . . . If someone suggested there was an anti-black bias, an anti-gay bias, we'd sit up and say, "Let's talk about this, let's tackle it." Well, if there is a liberal bias or a cultural bias we have to sit up and tackle it and discuss it. We have got to be open to these things."

Tim Russert, quoted in Bernard Goldberg, "Russert Took Media Bias Seriously," The Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2008, Page A15 (emphasis in original).

At the Chronicle, the news side has its problems with ideological diversity, though there is the odd sign here and there that greater care is being taken to prune some of the ranker weed of observable bias out of the garden. 

But the liberal monoculture on the opinion side is truly disheartening. Not one -- repeat, not one! -- editorial writer or house columnist understands or has much sympathy for the religious, political, cultural, economic, and social beliefs, ideas, and sensibilities of Houston or Texas or, in some fundamental ways, the United States itself. Their bodies live here, but their hearts and minds live far, far away.

JUNE 20 / On public financing, change we can believe in

Senator Obama yesterday declared he would not accept public financing of his general election campaign. Two big cheers, at least on the substance of his decision.

The political class is perfectly capable of raising money to feed its own habit. Senator Obama, an extraordinarily attractive candidate, proves the point each day with another $1 million zipping through the Internet into his campaign bank account and with his campaign's less-publicized hat-in-hand receipts from traditional (that is to say, rich and powerful) donors.

Why were taxpayers ever forced to pay for campaigns in the first place?

JUNE 20 / Grist for the South America Bureau's mill

Caracas is, in many respects, a failed city, and it looks like a place that has spun out of control. The crime rate is shockingly high; there were an estimated five hundred and fifty murders in the first three months of this year. Indigents live openly in the public parks and along the embankments of the city's sewage trough of a river, the Guaire. Here and there are skyscrapers built in the boom years of the sixties and the seventies, their concrete carcasses discolored and crumbling. Hundreds of thousands of shanties scar the surrounding green mountains. Garbage lies uncollected, and the streets are choked with traffic -- and since Venezuela is flush with oil money, there are brand-new cars everywhere. Four hundred and fifty thousand new vehicles were sold here last year. Wealthy Venezuelans, meanwhile, live in gated communities and secure apartment buildings on hilltops with panoramic views over Caracas; a nouveau-riche class has emerged from the official ranks and is known, disparagingly, as the boliburguesia, for Bolivarian bourgeoise.

Jon Lee Anderson, "Fidel's Heir," The New Yorker, June 23, 2008

JUNE 20 / Reading list

Extra credit

• Time for Obama to slaughter some sacred cows - "[W]hen Obama is not delivering vague proclamations about hope and change . . . he's proposing standard liberal fare as a matter of policy."
• The coming population bust -- "The coming demographic winter will chill us all." (Boston.com by way of RealClearPolitics)
• Democracy in decline - "Is the world getting ready to give up its birth-right to self-government for a mess of pottage?" (Washington Times by way of RealClearPolitics)
• The daily shrinking planet - "By this time next year, there's a good chance that you won't recognize your local big-city newspaper." (Business Week)
• Obama and McCain spout economic nonsense -- "Messrs. Obama and McCain both reveal a distrubing animus toward free markets and success." (The Wall Street Journal)

JUNE 20 / Robert J. Samuelson

Robert J. Samuelson is one of a handful of columnists worth reading regularly. He writes for the Washington Post and Newsweek. His beat is economics, but he's a polymath, worth hearing on any topic. To avoid even the appearance of political bias, he does not vote.

A good introductory column for Samuelson newbies is "A Vote for McBama," published about two weeks ago. You won't find a better short critique of our two presidential candidates.

Here's what he said about Senator Obama:

On the one hand, he projects himself as the great conciliator. He uses the metaphor of his race to argue that he is uniquely suited to bridge differences between liberals and conservatives, young and old, rich and poor -- to craft a new centrist politics. On the other hand, his actual agenda is highly partisan and undermines many of his stated goals. . . .

. . . . From 2005 to 2007, he voted with his party 97 percent of the time . . . . But Obama's clever campaign strategy would put him in a bind as president. Championing centrism would disappoint many ardent Democrats. Pleasing them would betray his conciliating image. The fact that he has so far straddled the contradiction may confirm his political skills and the quiet aid received from the media, which helped him by virtually ignoring the blatant contradictions.

And what does the straddle tell us of him? Aside from ambition -- hardly unique among presidential candidates -- I cannot detect powerful convictions in Obama. . . . He strikes me as a super-successful graduate student: the brightest, quickest, most articulate guy in a seminar.

His critique of Senator McCain is equally blunt. "The trouble with McCain is that he often mistakes stubbornness for principle." "He has a hard time changing his mind, even when the evidence overwhelmingly suggests he's wrong." "Like Obama, he seems oblivious to the possible unintended consequences of endorsing an anti-global warming "cap-and-trade" program."   

Read the whole thing.

JUNE 19 / Camp Good News

   

A good way to help orphans and other children in the poverty-stricken country of Moldova is through Camp Good News, a Christian relief ministry led by my friend Sue Korthauer.