Category: media

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L.A. Times: Fire Cheney, Rumsfeld

This was a refreshing unsigned editorial:

The secretary should go not because he has been criticized by a group of retired generals but because he embodies the smugness and inability to acknowledge error that has characterized both the Iraq war and the wider war on terrorism. Rumsfeld has been the pinched public face of an administration that has cut legal and humanitarian corners in dealing with people ? including U.S. citizens ? suspected of involvement with terrorists.

more at technorati, Reuters, E&P.

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Air Force One Graffiti Stunt

Mega-rich clothing designer Marc Ecko pulled off the unbelievable staging of a two minute video in which what appears to be Air Force One is slathered with the spraypainted phrase “Still Free.” The phrase comes from Ecko’s latest video game, “Getting Up.”

AP via Wired:

President Bush’s jet looked so authentic that the Air Force wasn’t immediately certain whether the plane had been targeted.[…]

“I wanted to do something culturally significant, wanted to create a real pop-culture moment,” said Marc Ecko of Marc Ecko Enterprises. “It’s this completely irreverent, over-the-top thing that could really never happen: this five-dollar can of paint putting a pimple on this Goliath.”

Ecko later explained the stint here. The video was staged covertly using a rented 747 at a hangar at San Bernadino airport.

Click on image to watch video.

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Blogosphemers

I always think articles like the one in today’s Wall Street Journal are a kind of jinx. Can Bloggers Make Money?

The old guard says no way, new guard says why not. Some interesting opinions to peruse, but overall, isn’t it a jinx to go about your business thinking only of the green potential?

Of more interest, the ever-optimistic web innovator and Technorati founder David Sifry has released Part One of this month’s State of the Blogosphere report. “The blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months,” is just one of the findings in his research.

Possibly the most useful item floating through the Blogosphere this week (aside from, on a local level, the 225 things to do in L.A. meme – in celebration of the city’s 225th anniversary) is Buzz Machine’s Jeff Jarvis publishing this questionniare, given to any freelancer who intends to write for the New York Times.

Jarvis “suggest[s] that bloggers should answer the questions as well and post them online to pressure mainstream journalists into such open disclosure.”

He answers the questions on his disclosures page, and Vaughn Ververs at Public Eye responds, as does Regret the Error.

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Post: Iraqi Reporter Killed in Controversial ‘Mosque’ Raid

Kamal Manahi AnbarA 28-year-old reporter, enrolled in the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting was one of the casualities of the March 26th raid by Iraqi and U.S. troops that killed at least 16.

“All that he was carrying was a notebook,” a friend of the victim, Kamal Manahi Anbar, told the Washington Post.

The Pentagon reported that insurgents were killed and captured in the raid and U.S. military photos show several armed victims, while al-Iraqiya television aired photographs of unarmed civilians slain at a mosque.

Jonathan Finer and Naseer Nouri’s report on A12 of Saturday’s Post is the most complete account of the raid and is a necessary follow-up read for everyone who, like myself, was utterly confused by the conflicting reports of the attack.

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Also of note in the much-ignored Saturday papers, is this article in the Los Angeles Times by H.G. Reza. The story sucks you in the moment you read this deck:

The airport worker enjoyed Hollywood’s club scene. His hand was found chained to the steering wheel in Iraq’s deadliest attack.