G as in Good H as in Happy

Fan Swoon

January 31, 2005

All of us Good&Happy folks are huge fans of Grant McCracken and his outlook at This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics.  His musings are provocative, idiosyncratic, and learned, also well-balanced as to acerbity, good will, and confidence dusted with bemusement. Further, unshackled by political correctness in any direction.

For a brief, shining moment, he notices our ancient pink self [see comments].

"Stray impressions" c'est moi, around here.

OK, the heart is slowing from pounding to merely racing. Such a verbal sock hop, the blogosphere sometimes. When it's not a catfight. Both, of course, decently resolved with adult moderation all round.

Update:  Someone else sits at Dr. McCracken's feet, asking questions we too want explored.

Come On In, the Water's Fine

Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one [citing A.J. Liebling], and blogging means anyone can own one.

Jay Rosen, Chairman of the Department of Journalism, New York University.

The power is not only in the megaphone, it is in the muzzle. Stephen Den Beste, popular blogger recently retired, observes that the  power that matters has lain in sustaining public ignorance and conveniently discreet silence, eliminating accurate data that contradict a particular point of view.  No more:

The key power of a gatekeeper is the ability to keep the gate closed. When a relatively small number of reporters and editors in the legacy media were the gatekeepers regarding what was "news", their most important power was their ability to decide that certain stories were not"news" and to not report them.

That's the power they have now lost. They still have a voice, and it's a loud one. They have resources and experience in finding stories and a tall platform from which to announce those stories. But they no longer have the ability to suppress stories they feel should not be reported....That doesn't deprive the legacy media of their voices. They still have them. But it means they no longer have the ability to refuse to talk about the things they don't want anyone to know about.

Some things might be better left unsaid.  But who is to say?

Service Error

Typepad has intermittently been "down" and posting consequently scattered and trivial.  Not entirely an excuse.

Archives

For anyone who cares, or anyone who believes Good&Happy has gone downhill

 

since its salad days almost four months ago, please note that archives are now enabled in a right-hand column for well-preserved Goodness & Happiness. On slow days, page back through.  Time Past has its moments.

Memory Lane, sometimes bumpier than you remembered....

Updating that era of tasty green fronds:
Schadenfreude, more venial than mortal. Richard John Neuhaus in January 2005 First Things sets a more generous standard than I would have expected.

There is a thin line between Schadenfreude, which I take to be measured satisfaction in the discomfiture of opponents, and the sin of morose delectation.

Thin line or not, it's reassuring to discover one may without permanent character damage linger occasionally on the lee side of measured satisfaction, well to the east of morose delectation.

Enhancement with archives thanks to Seattle's fine Marbledog web studio, which enjoys the administration of Laurie Jones, yet another lawyer who has leapt the fence and bolted for the border. Candor, imagination, experience, and skill dwell there, I've found so far.

Please don't blame Marbledog (yet) for this undistinguished template from TypePad. Adequate, not too depressing, it has been de-prioritized in favor of reflective pondering. Plain white crockery for a while, the chef is busy in the kitchen and hasn't chosen curtains for Chez D.

When we redecorate, you'll be the first to know. Assuming you visit.

Update:
To celebrate the New Year, and in response to certain international pals and readers, I will open up the comments section henceforth (might forget, but intend to).  Interest will be weighed against inconvenience.  Y'all comment, now, y'heah?

The Year of Distributed Intelligence

January 1, 2005

Dilys.  Blogging Dinosaur of the Year. Or at least a phoneme in ABC's Word of the Year. [Query, if a blogger has a co-author is the blog then a diphthong?]

Dilys gingerly lumbered, blinking, onto the blogosphere stage September 12, 2004, inspired by characterizations of "guys in pajamas" and exposures of "dinosaur media."  That was in the heat of the unmasking of Rathergate, and in the wake of blogs', well, shall we call it, amplification of the coverage of the Iraq invasion,  the 2004 election campaign, and the Unresolved Unpleasantness in the Anglican Communion.

Well, she said to herself, I wear white linen pajamas, I too am a dinosaur, I have some things I think, and I possess a keyboard and a new Road Runner connection. What more could a not-yet-extinct gal ask?

In that arena, she has had a delightful 2004, and will never be the same. Thanks to all for the conversation. And, like the four Beatrix Potter bunnies, she is about to run along and not get into any mischief in 2005.

Not.

Much to her baby-author's shock, one cliche turns out to be true. Her favorite post?  The one she is writing at any given moment.  Her best one?  Only you can tell.

Comments

Slashdot reports a comments-spam problem for Moveable Type. Really too bad, since finding kindred spirits through comments is one of the strengths of the blogosphere. 

Please, if you have a response or observation, feel free to e-mail good_and_happy at yahoo dot com.  There's a good chance they can be posted separately as comments if they are relevant, with the usual embedded e-mail address.  And please forgive us for not being willing to undertake full-time defense in the comments arena.

If we ever get traction on the trolls and thieves who seem poised to exploit every opportunity to pollute the internet commons, we'll be glad to turn our team's considerable imagination towards punishment that fits the crime. For starters, some of us know a lot of stomach-turning 19th century masochistic religious music.  Spread the word on the streets. They'll do the time.

Link via Instapundit.

Update: Another Instapundit link raises the question of how to sit on the front porch, ready to chat, without being chased in by the mosquitoes, especially for a blogger with a large audience.  Before Good&Happy, I didn't realize how much of one's persona is necessarily exposed to the world by blogging.  Not to mention the intention and semi-responsibility to post regularly. It's a pleasure, and I can see how it might become not-one.  And that doesn't mean we must "be nice." What a dreary thought! But, as the French teach their children, "be wise."  About the consequences of our interactions. Don't drive off such resources as, with care, might be sustained.

Thank you, Steven Den Beste.  I believe bloggers kept US readers honest and informed (or more nearly honest and significantly better-informed) at a point in history where we'd like to try to get it right.  At this site we operate in a different, non-political arena for the most part, but keep scanning the horizon like everyone else.  Thanks, Steven, you've helped interpret the signals.

Another Obituary

December 18, 2004

Pauline Gore, Al Gore's mother, and wife of the grand old political orator from Tennessee, Albert Gore Sr., died on Wednesday.  May she rest in peace, however, we wouldn't be blogging the event but for one of the unique functions of this blog.  Any blog.

The Times reports that Mrs. Gore was a familiar figure in the campaigns of her husband and her son. One of the regular correspondents of Good&Happy, indeed, a real Contraption-Savvy working journalist for many years, sends this recollection of a moment with Mrs. Gore and others.

I made [some notes] in my journal about the death of Pauline Gore. Her death struck me forcefully about the passage of time and the dinner I had with Pauline Gore and Lyndon and Lady Bird in the Hogg Room of the Driskill so long ago in the Sixties.  After dinner, LBJ got down to brass tacks:  "[Name of reporter], I don't want to read in the paper tomorrow about how handsome Albert Gore is.  I want to read about the dangers of strontium 90."  (And, of course, LBJ got what he wanted!)  Mrs. Gore had flown on Air Force One with the Johnsons, and her husband came the next day to speak at some event here.)  Mrs. Gore was young and beautiful then.  Now she's dead at 91.

So, the blogging enterprise is about both the passage of time (even the least personal of blogs being a kind of on-line diary); and the opportunity to gather and publish [here by permission] otherwise lost morsels of accomplishment and memory, from those folks out there who are a treasure of past treasures, with, even now, perhaps, more and even better things to do.

Contextual addendum: 
Strontium-90, an unhealthy metal constituent of nuclear waste and fallout, was a key meme in the Johnson campaign against Barry Goldwater, as recorded in descriptions from political ad archives.

LYNDON JOHNSON FOR PRESIDENT: little girl eating an ice cream cone while a woman voice-over explains that Cesium, Strontium-90, and other radioactive compounds will reenter the food chain if Goldwater is elected and [revokes] the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Associated with the much-remarked:

LYNDON JOHNSON FOR PRESIDENT: the "Daisy commercial"―little girl plucks petals from a daisy and H-Bomb explosion occurs.

Update:
According to a 1999 report, halting nuclear testing seems not to have affected  strontium-90 absorption levels.

Baby teeth from children born in New York, New Jersey, and Florida in the 1980s have been found to contain a radioactive element at levels similar to those seen in the 1950s, when aboveground atomic bomb testing was taking place.

History is important. Thanks for the memories.

Second update: 
Non-performance of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization monitoring staff, absent, in the face of warning information on the disastrous 2004 tsunami.  Those computers are for, what?