I sincerely hope Arthur Brisbane’s question of whether or not the New York Times should challenge “facts” (his quotes, not mine) is an art project. If not, there’s no more damning an article written that explains everything that’s wrong with traditional media.
Vanity Fair created a great response that I will not endeavor to outdo.
Whose job is it to decide what words look strange and what words just look fancy? And at what point does an exotic extra consonant become distracting?
It’s messages like this one that foment my anger toward politicians. Senator Tea Party didn’t support realistic debt ceiling plans by his Republican colleagues or President Obama and in subsequent tweets said we should privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after complaining about a failed liberal spending experiment.
Facts are, of course, not on his side. President Obama has created significantly less new spending than President Bush and privatization hasn’t worked in the past. We are now also aware that the downgrade occurred specifically because he and his Tea Party colleagues were unwilling to work with others. He also said we must pass Cut, Cap and Balance because it would have prevented a downgrade and would help us in the future, despite the fact that, again, the S&P said that’s a bad idea.
Raising taxes as part of a solution is naturally off the table, because that’s a job killer. I’d like some evidence that lower taxes encourage the wealthy to create jobs. I’ve never seen any.
This article in the New York Times is about how the Internet, and technology in general, is making children less able to focus and succeed. Many of the quotes used in the story are of children saying, “If it weren’t for the Internet distracting me I’d get my homework done.”
Bullshit.
Technology, video games and the Internet are convenient scapegoats for a larger societal problem. We don’t value education at all.
A column by Thomas Friedman highlights this problem effectively when you compare the United States to the rest of the world. Many of the top graduates of US universities are not from the US.
I’ll be on SCAD Radio’s Art and Design with hosts John Lowe and Len Cripe Monday at 11 a.m. We’ll be talking about Adobe and Apple’s positions on Flash.
