As if we needed still more evidence that financial authority over national political campaigns is increasingly wielded by fewer and fewer really rich people, consider this exhibit:

Super PACs raised about $181 million in the last two years — with roughly half of it coming from fewer than 200 super-rich people.

That’s the news from a study called “Auctioning Democracy” jointly conducted by Demos, an organization that says it practices “advocacy to influence public debate and catalyze change,” and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. Both groups seek to strengthen, if not compel full disclosure and expenditure rules.

Super PACs’ power stemmed from the U.S. Supreme Court’s July 2010 SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission decision. The Court’s Citizen United decision further strengthened corporations’ claim to personhood and weakened the requirement for full disclosure of donations to super PACs.

Politico’s Ken Vogel and Abby Phillip’s analysis of the study noted that

A relatively few wealthy backers are keeping super PACs afloat — and they’re saying so. Last year alone, individuals gave super PACs $63 million.

The news only worsens.
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Gillian Tett, normally a font of level-headedness and good judgment over at The Financial Times, had a very odd column this past weekend. She was at Davos (of course!) and was vaguely unhappy about Unilever’s presentation about all the good works it was undertaking in the name of Social Responsibility.

I know, I know, who is going to believe Unilever, one of the largest food and consumer products companies in the world, is Socially Responsible? What does that even mean, anyway? Well, leaving that aside for the moment, I’ve been following this area for a while, and in fact Unilever does spend a fair amount of time and money (relatively speaking) in this area. Why? Because there are an increasing number of investors that are demanding it. Full story »

Orwell, George. The Road to Wigan Pier. (1937) — Orwell is best know for his dystopic 1984 and Animal Farm, but Orwell cut his chops as a journalist, and he understood the power of his pen. In Wigan Pier, he looks at the abominable Depression-era conditions of northern England’s working class. “I have seen just enough of the working class to avoid idealizing them,” Orwell says, yet he obviously admires them for somehow making due, lowering their standards of living rather than giving in to despair.  He also realizes their value in calling out the hypocrisies of the country’s middle class. Full story »

When you come down to it, we’re surrounded by morons and fools, many of whom are our leaders–political, cultural, media, whatever. Opening a newspaper or turning on the television in modern America often is like diving into an oil spill. So it’s time once again to remind ourselves of their transgressions, which we have the Buffalo Beast to do for us, so we don’t have to waste time trying to keep track ourselves. Once again, here is their annual list of the 50 Most Loathsome Americans in 2011. It’s got Megyn Kelly (pictured, number 45) on it, and all the Repubican presidential candidates, and Rupert Murdoch is way up there at number 2, bless his heart. And The Donald, of course.

Yesterday I attempted to shed a little light on the PR crisis strategy behind the Komen Foundation’s sudden Planned Parenthood “backtracking.”

Contrary to what Komen’s highly-paid PR crisis hacks and gullible headline writers at newsdesks around the nation would ask you to believe, The Susan G. Komen Foundation does NOT promise to fund Planned Parenthood in the future. They promise to let PP APPLY for grants in the future. Applying and receiving are different things, as anyone who ever applied and got rejected for a job ought to know. Full story »

After feeding twenty-six books into my head in thirty days, I’d like to say that I’m letting my brain decompress, but I’ll be honest: I’m still reading. In fact, I have two books going right now, Bill Bryson’s I’m a Stranger Here Myself and Barbara Kingsolver’s High Tide in Tucson. I want to hit up Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams and Wendell Barry’s agrarian essays, too, and I want to spend some time with David Cushman’s book on The Wilderness, Bloody Promenade. Maybe then I’ll be done. Maybe.

But there’s David Gessner’s Sick of Nature. There’s Susan Jane Gilman’s Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven. There’s George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier. And there’s still John Muir looming over everything, a backdrop to much of what I’ve read, as significant as the Sierra Nevadas, as significant as Thoreau and Walden.

So many books, so little time. Full story »

I’m in my second term in the U.S. House of Representatives. I’m a Republocrat. I like the job. It pays $174,000, has great medical benefits, provides a really nice private gym to use, and lots of people have to be nice to me. And there are those $110,000 in taxpayer-funded fringe benefits I get (including plush retirement plans, paid time off, and contributions to Social Security and Medicare taxes). I’ve got a staff to answer the phone and email, run my Twitter and Facebook stuff, and deal with those damned constituents. And I’m in a relatively safe district, thanks to that Republocrat-friendly redistricting bill passed in my state last year. Hey, sometimes people let me use their corporate jets! (Well, as long as I keep quiet about those trips and pay commercial airfare for it.)

Yeah. This is a sweet gig. I want to stay here. In fact, I want to … move up. Be in the leadership. Be a mover and shaker. Now how am I gonna do that beyond kissing the speaker’s ass (and those of his damn deputies, too) and voting however he (or she) tells me to?

It will take money for that Republocrat to ascend higher in the House’s toadying ladder of leadership. Lots of money. And as we know, House members (and senators) have a vehicle to collect and dispense money to other House members — the leadership political action committee. A principal reason for the existence of leadership PACs to is buy friends and influence on Capitol Hill. Apparently, hard work and intelligence are insufficient.
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#26: Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism by Thomas B. Kohnstamm (2008)

I don’t know much about Brazil beyond the fact that the Creature from the Black Lagoon lived there on some branch of the Amazon. I also know that a different branch of the Amazon, the River of Doubt, nearly killed Teddy Roosevelt. And I know Rio is there, but what happens in Rio stays in Rio, so I don’t know many details.

So when I stumbled across Kohnstamm’s book about being a travel writer in Brazil, I thought it would be a good chance to learn something about the country. The book looked interesting, too, because it implied a good ethics lesson: Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?

Well, I didn’t learn much about Brazil, and I didn’t get to ponder writerly ethics so much as a get a pretty explicit lesson on what not to do, but Kohnstamm kept me entertained with his Thompsonesque antics. This was “travel hedonism” at its gonzoest. Full story »

New trouble is brewing at Penn State, though the school is operating within the state’s Right to Know law. ABC News has reported that the five current and former Penn State employees enmeshed in the Sandusky abuse scandal are all still on the school’s payroll.

The five are fired football coach Joe Paterno, former president Graham Spanier (who remains a tenured faculty member, as does Paterno), assistant coach Mike McQueary (who is on paid leave), former vice president for finance Gary Schultz (who resigned), and former athletic director Tim Curley (who is also on leave). The latter two are facing criminal charges of perjury and failure to report alleged sexual abuse. Penn State is reportedly paying for their legal defense, as well. Full story »

I still read the print edition of the Plain Dealer, every day. Have had a subscription since I moved back to the Cleveland area in 2004. I read the sections in order and save the comics for last (my habit since I was in my teens). So I was taken aback yesterday when I found this on the comics page:

“Editor’s note: Today’s “Non Sequitur” strip was withheld because it was deemed objectionable by Plain Dealer editors. A replacement strip was unavailable by press time.”

I knew I was going to find that message–my husband had already seen it (and written a letter to the PD editor, Debra Adams Simmons). I asked what the problem was and I expected something about religious or political content. He described the cartoon: two men and a rabbit sitting at a table with a police line-up in progress. On the other side of the two-way mirror: a cat, a bear, a wolf, and a snake. The rabbit’s line, “OK, I know how bad it sounds, but they all really do look alike to me.” You can see the original here on the Seattlepi.com website.

The contents of the rest of the PD, including the comic section, make that bit of censorship seem ludicrous. Full story »

#20: selections from The John McPhee Reader (1976) and The Second John McPhee Reader (1996) by John McPhee

No one seems to know when “creative nonfiction” emerged as a genre, but John McPhee’s name is frequently cited as one of the seminal figures. I decided I should check out his work. Rather than hit up one of his twenty-five-plus books, I decided to dip into a pair of John McPhee readers so I could get a wide sampling, looking at essays that specifically dealt with places.

I first came across McPhee’s work while I was waiting for an oil change. A member of the university’s English faculty happened to come in, and we started chit-chatting. This colleague’s particular expertise rests with Milton, so I was surprised when the conversation turned to McPhee. “Your work reminds me of his,” he told me.

I had no idea at the time what an immense compliment that was. Full story »

#19: The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger (1997)

I never read The Perfect Storm until I saw the trailer for the 2000 movie. There, on the big screen, a fishing boat tried to bull its way straight up—literally straight up—a gigantic wall of water. “Did you see that?” I said to my wife, smacking her lightly on the shoulder. “Did you see that? Straight up a wall of water!”

That same image would appear on movie posters when the film finally came out a couple months later.

I had to get the book.

By then, The Perfect Storm had been released in paperback, and I was able to find a copy whose cover had not yet been co-opted by the movie studio. The edition did benefit from a new afterward by the author, Sebastian Junger, which has proven to be one of the most useful “case studies” on literary journalism that I’ve ever read. Full story »

#17: Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz (1998)

If there’s one book I’ve wished I’d written, it’s Confederates in the Attic. Of course, Tony Horwitz already wrote it, nearly two decades ago (I can hardly believe it’s been that long). Here’s a guy who wandered around the South, talking to people about the legacy of the Civil War. He asked questions, had conversations, observed, listened, and explored the landscape for himself. He immersed himself in the story.

This, I tell my students, is what good feature writers do. They take the time to do the story justice—and a story as complex as this one requires a lot of time if you’re going to be thorough and fair. That’s what I respect most about Horwitz’s work on the book: he takes the time to make an honest attempt at trying to understanding that which, I suspect, can never fully be understood.

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Paul Isom is looking for a new job today. He was the student media director at East Carolina University. Why was he canned?

On Nov. 8, the [student] newspaper published a full-frontal photo of a streaker who ran onto the field during that weekend’s home football game. The decision prompted outcry from some readers and from university administrators who said it was “in very poor taste.”

If this photo was so controversial and in “very poor taste,” why did the university require two months to decide to give Isom four hours to clean out his office and get outta Dodge?

No doubt lawyers were consulted. After the photo was published, the university’s vice chancellor for student affairs, Virginia Hardy, presaged what would come to pass:

We will be having conversations with those who were involved in this decision in an effort to make it a learning experience. The goal will be to further the students’ understanding that with the freedom of the press comes a certain level of responsibility about what is appropriate and effective in order to get their message across.

Learning experience my ass. The goal of the lesson being taught here is to warn student journalists and their advisers to not cross the university when it comes to maligning its image.
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by Robert S. Becker

Stay ‘til the end – and a rich payoff of Carl Sagan’s gemlike insights. A little clean-up work first, to clear the palate.

I don’t regularly read Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer (CK, as in crank), often regret when I do, ending with gnashing teeth. From time to time, perplexity or hilarity moves me to the dark side, hunting out the loopy logic behind the latest fringe skullduggery. I used to read that wily conservative wordsmith, Peggy Noonan – a far better stylist – until I gagged at her unctuous Vatican sycophancy.

So, I brightened suspiciously at Krauthammer’s seemingly apolitical title, “Are we alone in the universe?” Full story »

#1: The Devil’s Teeth by Susan Casey

When The Devil’s Teeth was published in 2005, I thought Susan Casey had stolen the ideal writing project from some hidden corner of my brain and had then proceeded to live it out: she attached herself to a group of biologists studying great white sharks off California’s coast. She got to live among them as they worked up-close with one of the planet’s most magnificent creatures, and then she got to come home and write a book about it.

I want that life!

The Devil’s Teeth stands as a great example of a writer willing to plunge headlong into a story, literally heart and soul, living it in order to really tell it.

But it’s a cautionary tale, too. How far is too far? What are the repercussions of being so involved in the story? Full story »

If you’re a working journalist, congratulations. You have survived a horrendous year of newsroom job cuts. The Newsosaur, Alan Mutter, compiles the sad, frustrating, dismaying news:

The number of jobs eliminated in the newspaper industry rose by nearly 30% in 2011 from the prior year, according to the blog that has been tracking the human toll on the industry for the last five years.

Mutter, working with data from Erica Smith, author of the Paper Cuts blog, notes layoffs have been horrific over the past four years.

Since Smith began her running count of publishing layoffs in the middle of 2007, 39,806+ newspaper jobs have been eliminated. This represents 11% of the all the jobs in an industry that, according to the Census Bureau, employed 360,633 individuals in 2007.

Worse, Mutter points out, the number of journalists in America’s print newsroom is at an all-time low. The layoffs, over time, have taken a staggering toll on newsrooms.
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It’s a funny thing that happens when someone buys a car, especially when they think they’re buying a none-too-common sort. I buy a Mitsuyota RoadWidget, in part because it is distinctive, and next thing I know, they’re everywhere! A similar thing happens when one starts blogging in earnest apparently. Substantive issues that may have long been around may have flown under the personal radar since they weren’t perceived as personally relevant. Write an article or three and next thing ya know, there’s significant current debate surrounding related issues all over the place.

Cases in point. As I’m scanning the headlines today looking for fodder, I find what appear to be three relevant articles. Full story »

I ordinarily like Chris Cillizza’s writing well enough, but “What Herman Cain Meant” missed the mark early on. The rest of his article may have its merits, but I take exception to the following rather striking logical fallacy.

“That Cain collapsed in a heap of allegations of sexual impropriety and titanic levels of muddled messaging — all of which culminated in his decision to suspend his campaign Saturday — is proof that an unconventional approach to politics can only get you so far.”

So, flipped over, the proof that an unconventional approach to politics can only get you so far is that Cain collapsed in a heap of allegations and poor messaging. It’s only because he was unconventional, you see, that his real or alleged past caught up with him. It was his lack of conventionality that led him to spout one inane, idiotic thing after another. Forget mixed messaging, even if he’d had “fixed” messaging, he’d have just sounded like a consistent moron. Full story »

Tom Wicker, an exceptional journalist, writer, and thinker, is dead. I doubt my students have heard of him. That’s my fault; I should tell them more about the journalists past as well as present. His obituary in The New York Times recalls his brilliant career.

Wicker wrote good stories and abhorred the practices that produced bad stories. From The Times‘ obit:

Mr. Wicker’s “On Press” (1978) enlarged on complaints he had made for years: the myth of objectivity, reliance on official and anonymous sources. Far from being robust and uninhibited, he wrote, the press was often a toady to government and business.

In his honor, please permit me to revisit a post I wrote about Wicker some months ago. What makes a good news story? Or a bad one?

Nearly a decade ago, my university’s journalism school gave an award to Wicker, whose “In The Nation” column ran in The Times from 1966 through 1992. His columns were sufficiently critical of Richard Nixon to earn Wicker a place on Nixon’s enemies list.

In accepting our modest award, Wicker said, “Find out what you can and tell the people what you know.”
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