Why? Because the magazine’s December issue violated a code banning “warfare or weaponry.” Not because it can be used to create an especially ineffective shiv, mind you, but, rather, due to the imagery on its cover. Yup, the issue featured a member of the Taliban holding a rifle, and so the inmate in question — a woman currently serving 20-years-to-life for 2nd-degree murder — won’t be allowed to read it. (Unless, of course, the magazine decides to appeal the decision.) Someone get that woman her monthly dose of Marc Ambinder!

RELATED: Amid News Of 14-Year Prison Sentence, Rod Blagojevich Introduces The Media To New Dog

Here’s the prison’s letter, courtesy of The Atlantic:

h/t The Atlantic

Someone found the Libyan leader’s diplomatic passport, and in it we find that his preferred spelling is an uncommon one: Gathafi.

Gaddafi has long refused to speak anything but Arabic, leaving it up to individual publications to chose their own translation; Qaddafi, Gaddafi, Kadafi, and Khadafy all becoming commonly accepted renderings. Gathafi hardly registers on a google trends graph of the last year. The Atlantic‘s Max Fisher points us to an old ABCNews.com story that found 112 different ways to translate the name from Arabic to English, and according to that list, Gathafi is the least common. This is, perhaps, no surprise given the man’s tendency towards the individual.

Copy editors world-wide will spend the rest of the morning scratching their heads, unsure of how to accommodate this new news into their style guides. Old habits die hard in the copy room, and it seems likely that just as Fisher suggests they have done at The Atlantic, most will stick to their old spelling in favor of consistency.

At its core, it’s the right question to ask. In 2009, the private sector employed 83.2% of the workforce, accounting for 87.5% of the economy – and that was before thousands more government employees were fired. The private sector drives the economy. Or, as the case may be, doesn’t.

Do businesses have an ethical obligation to get people to work? The Pope gave it a shot earlier this week, suggesting that the “common good” should be considered alongside the maximization of profit. (Safe to say he wouldn’t win the Republican Presidential nomination.) But people see business decision and ethical decisions through separate lenses. From a piece at Freakonomics:

We found that when individuals saw a decision through an ethical frame, more than 94% behaved ethically; when individuals saw the same decision through a business frame, only about 44% did so.

Not only are business decisions immune to ethical considerations, they may actually be antagonistic to them. It’s clear that ethics, the greater good, won’t be a winning argument by itself.

Then is there a role for the government to play in compelling business to increase hiring? That’s a key point in Nocera’s essay: examples from Europe in which hiring was increased by, among other things, capping the number of hours people can work.

Well, it’s been tried.

In June of 1933, President Roosevelt and Congress established the NRA – the National Recovery Administration. The NRA pushed for broad, industry-wide standards that would increase hiring and job quality: maximum hours per week, a minimum wage and, in some cases, price controls. The idea, as Jimmy Durante advocates in the video above, was that by reducing the competitive disadvantages of any one business implementing these measures by itself, more people could be put to work.

The NRA was wildly popular with the public – and with big businesses. The former, obviously, saw increased employment opportunities and often higher wages. The latter saw an opportunity to set standards that diminished smaller competition. The initiative worked: industrial production and hiring increased dramatically.

The public popularity meant that there was a great deal of pressure for businesses to comply. Businesses working under NRA standards used the blue eagle pictured at right as a sort of emblem of patriotism. Those that didn’t comply and didn’t show the eagle were often boycotted.

Unsurprisingly, two things happened. First, a black market arose, in which goods were priced below the NRA standard. Second, the Supreme Court declared the bill that spawned the NRA unconstitutional, for regulating non-interstate commerce. The NRA was dismantled in 1935 – though some of the its initiatives were included in the Wagner Act of the same year. America’s most direct experiment with a controlled economy was short-lived.

What does this mean for America, circa 2011? Simply this: that only two things can compel businesses to start hiring.

First, market forces: a demonstration that hiring will be good for business over the long- (and short-) term.

Or, second: public image and public support. Remember after September 11th when companies made a direct appeal to patriotism as a marketing technique? What if companies used a different patriotic tack – putting people to work – as a marketing hook? What if, in other words, some major employer that could weather a short-term hit to its bottom-line publicly and audaciously took on more workers? It seems likely that the public response would be overwhelmingly positive – and could perhaps open the floodgates.

No matter what they sell, businesses have one business: making money, no matter what the Pope says, no matter what the government tries to do.

But there’s a market in doing right by people. One that remains basically untapped.

In a story that’s already generating attention–and debate–The Atlantic‘s Garance Franke-Ruta reports that an “evangelical organizer” who works for the presidential campaign of Rep. Michele Bachmann was “charged with terrorism in Uganda after being arrested for possession of assault rifles and ammunition in February 2006, just days before Uganda’s first multi-party elections in 20 years.” Franke-Ruta reports Peter Waldron spent 37 days in a prison ouside Kampala, with the charges later dropped. A movie about his ordeal is said to be in the works. On Saturday, Waldron helped get-out-the-vote efforts in Ames, Iowa for Bachmann, reportedly declining “repeatedly” to give his name to a reporter.

The Atlantic‘s story says Waldron’s website explains the 2006 incident, saying that he was “falsely accused of being a spy.” According to Franke-Ruta:

At the time of his arrest, Waldron was hailed on one right-wing blog as being “an arms dealer of the Lord” and “the latest victim of Christian persecution in Africa.” But his allies seeking to free him said he was being persecuted for his reports in the “Africa Dispatch” newsletter about Ugandan opposition activities, and that he denied that he owned or was storing weapons.

Questions about the story, specifically the charge of terrorism, led reporters to an original report on the arrest by a newspaper in Kampala that descibes a police chase, rifles and 184 rounds of ammunition:

Asked what charges Waldron is likely to face, Mugenyi said, “Definitely even before we investigate, there is the (offence) of illegal possession of firearms. I do not know what the Director of Public Prosecutions might advise.”"If he says it is terrorism, I do not know but right now, the offence of illegal possession of firearms is very clear.”

Betsy explained that her normally anonymous “Anonymous Rant” was going to be decidedly nymous today, at Elk’s request. Here’s a little taste:

Saw on your site those fucking toolbags at the Atlantic are holding a “New Work Era Summit” at Neuseum. Funny thing is they didn’t invite a single union leader or, you know, like a regular worker. Instead, they invited plenty of people who are union busters like Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, and that fucking asshole from ManpowerGroup. Temps aren’t anything but scabs.

He’s referring to Jeff Joerres, President and CEO of Manpower Group. Apparently, they’re not an agency for male strippers.

Elk goes on to deride the inclusion of ThinkProgress’ Matt Yglesias as the “voice of the people.”

Michelle Rhee became something of a media darling as Washington, DC schools chancellor, but her support for vouchers and opposition to tenure earned her the enmity of labor supporters. Duncan similarly espouses things, like vouchers and merit pay, that rankle teachers and their supporters, but sound good when you don’t think about them too much.

Tenure, for example, does protect some “bad teachers,” but it’s also the only bulwark against cost-cutting municipalities simply axing the most expensive teachers, creating a profession of low-pay, low-skill educators (ditto “merit pay,” which can be gamed to exactly the same effect).

Vouchers are great for parents whose kids are already in private schools, or who can almost afford them, but not so much for the kids who can’t (usually the most at-risk kids), and who are left behind in an already-struggling public school that now has even fewer resources. Proponents call it “school choice.”

Elk’s frustration, in a larger sense, is rooted in the Democratic Party’s decades-long effort to be seen as more “business friendly,” and its willingness to alienate portions of its base in order to try and broaden its appeal. Labor is just one of many Democratic constituencies who get buttered-up around election time, but are left sitting by the phone the rest of the time.

Update: A spokesperson for The Atlantic tells Mediaite, “Consistent with The Atlantic’s practice of convening conversations where a wide range of views are represented, the AFL-CIO’s Thea Lee took part in a round table discussion this morning on jobs and the economy that preceded the broader New Work Era Summit. A range of voices from government, business, and academia also participated in today’s events.”

Michelle Rhee and Matt Yglesias contributed to a special report on TheAtlantic.com , but were not in attendance at the New Work Era Summit.

Update II: The Wrath Of Elk: Mike Elk saw The Atlantic‘s response, and sent the following statement to Mediaite:

What load of shit from embarrassed Atlantic flacks. So let me get this right AFL CIO Chief of Staff Thea Lee spoke at the event before registration for the event or introduction remarks happened… Bullshit, Sounds to me like one of the Atlantic’s corporate underwriters of the summit, the notorious union busting association “National Association of Manufacturers”, didn’t want labor prominently featured anywhere among the dozen or so speakers at the event. The Atlantic taking money from NAM to host a labor event is extraordinarily unethical, someone needs to resign over this.

Following publication of my column denouncing the segment, Bolling and I had an intense, yet civil, debate on Twitter Sunday night, and tonight, he issued a brief apology for the remarks.

“One editorial note. On Friday, we did a story about the President meeting with the President of Gabon. We got a little bit fast and loose with the language, and we know it’s been interpreted as being disrespectful, and for that, I’m sorry. We did go a bit too far.”

Bolling’s apology was brief, but while some may feel the urge to extract a pound of flesh, I think the chat that Bolling and I had on Twitter last night indicates that he got the message, and that he’s at least earned the right to go and sin no more. If you find this apology unsatisfactory, compare it with Bolling’s reaction to his “chugging forties” remark, and you’ll see he has made honest progress in considering the feelings of others.

Furthermore, as Bolling took exception to my headline, I am prepared to allow that I played fast and loose with the word “tool,” it was interpreted as disrespectful, and for that, I’m sorry:

ericbolling
Is ABC racist? Or USA Today? or just me because I work for Fox?…http://fb.me/H3J4Kn7D
12 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

tommyxtopher
@ericbolling Maybe this will clear it up for you http://bit.ly/l5FRqv I don’t think ABC or USA Today did the same, did they?
11 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

ericbolling
@tommyxtopher I expect that treatment from the liberal blogs.. not you guys. M has always been fair, objective. nasty name was cheap shot!
11 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

tommyxtopher
@ericbolling Well, I am the “Hizzouse” liberal, so don’t blame the whole site. Besides, that headline was funny, you gotta admit that.
11 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

ericbolling
@tommyxtopher just doing your job, I guess…
11 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

tommyxtopher
@ericbolling So, if “no intent,” what other Prizzezidentz have you employed hip-hop parlance on? I’m prepared to admit I’m wrong.
11 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

tommyxtopher
@ericbolling Wait, and how was I unfair?
11 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

ericbolling
@tommyxtopher I do opinion at 10! btw-I may be a “liberalist” but DEF not a racist. If you took the time to know me/the show, you’d get that
11 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

tommyxtopher
@ericbolling Never said you were a racist, but would appreciate an answer to two fair questions.
11 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

ericbolling
@tommyxtopher Stewart/Maher use these terms all the time, but because they’re libs , they’re funny… I use the same words and I’m a “tool”
11 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

tommyxtopher
@ericbolling So, are you saying you were referencing his race, but you think it’s okay because Stewart/Maher do, also?
11 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

ericbolling
@tommyxtopher nope
11 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

tommyxtopher
@ericbolling I would agree with you on Maher, almost included it in my piece. His “gangsta President” remark was offensive, but he thinks
11 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

tommyxtopher
@ericbolling he gets apass b/c he’s a comic, and he meant it “positively.” Stewart, tho, uses it to satirize stereotypes, not promote them
11 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

tommyxtopher
@ericbolling So, if not, when have you used hip-hop parlance on a white politician? Was Reagan hosting a “hood” in the “crib?”
11 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

ericbolling
@tommyxtopher TC you may not like my delivery/but theres NO hate. gotta go watch Piers stumble thru Amer Got Talent, proof America is great
11 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

tommyxtopher
@ericbolling Did you, or anyone else, ask whether voters in 2004 would rather have a “forty” with Bush or Kerry?
11 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

ericbolling
@tommyxtopher no but I might have…
11 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

tommyxtopher
@ericbolling Well, when you’re done, my questions stand.
11 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

tommyxtopher
@ericbolling I’m sure you’re a fine person. Maybe fine enough to consider that what you’re saying legitimately offends people.
11 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

ericbolling
@tommyxtopher good chatting with you… keep an open mind, man.
11 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

tommyxtopher
@ericbolling You too. And FTR, “tool” isn’t necessarily an insult. Tools are an essential part of human progress.
11 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete

ericbolling
@tommyxtopher now thats funny!
11 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

The segment in question refers to a meeting the President had with Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba in the Oval Office on Thursday. The substance of Bolling’s “criticism” is almost beside the point, as his own panelists pretty much demolish the notion that only saints should visit the White House: (from Fox Business Network)

Bolling’s defense of the 40 oz. remark involved the fact that white people (himself included) drink “forties,” and perhaps his defense, in this case, will also involve white co-opting of black culture. Surely Bolling is free to explore his love of hip-hop by using terms, like “hizzouse” and “crib,” that have been popularized by the form.

However, it is curious how the Holy Hip-Hop Ghost only seems to possess Bolling when he’s talking about our first blizzack Prizzezzident, Barizzle Obizzle, and how this obvious student of the sweet science of dropping science thinks that Common is a “hood.”

Either way, it’s a free country. Bolling can kick some slang out, and others can call him out for trying to marginalize the President as a ghetto stereotype. Bolling would have more of a leg to stand on if his charge had any merit. As The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg pointed out, the Gabonese President is also the current President of the UN Security Council, and according to The White House, there were no S’mores served at the meeting, but rather, a helping of acknowledgement that Gabon’s President is, indeed, not a saint: (via email from The White House)

President Obama and President Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon met today and discussed a wide range of multilateral and regional issues, including security, environmental protection and the economy. The Presidents discussed Gabon’s presidency of the United Nations Security Council, including its chairing of an important session on HIV/AIDS. President Obama recognized Gabon’s leadership on Libya, Sudan, Cote d’Ivoire and other issues. The leaders exchanged views on Libya, reaffirmed their support for U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, and their shared desire that a democratic transition in Libya should begin for the Libyan people. President Obama urged President Bongo Ondimba to take bold steps to root out corruption and to reform the judiciary and other key institutions to ensure the protection of human rights, and he welcomed the reforms that Gabon has taken under President Bongo Ondimba to bring more transparency and accountability to government. Both leaders agreed to continue to work together to promote peace and security, as well as advance good governance in Gabon.

There is legitimate criticism to be made here, such as the fact that the press were only permitted to take still photos, but it takes a special kind of contempt to characterize an Oval Office meeting with a UN official as “entertaining,” or to equate it with a poetry reading by a “very positive” rapper like Common.

Goldberg also points out that Ali Bongo’s predecessor and father, the late Omar Bongo, also visited The White House, and met with then-President Ronald Reagan in – GASP! – the Oval Office, and the two even had lunch together in the Residence! It’s unkown, though, whether S’mores and “forties” were served. Maybe Bolling can get on the case.

(h/t MMFA)

In an interview with Mediaite, Madrigal said the spontaneous display of patriotism that was so powerful to watch on television was, in person, “sad.” And as Madrigal explained, the presence of cameras gave the demonstration its only true focus (as he writes, there were no speakers, no stage, nothing to direct cheering and flag waving at, other than TV), and that drove some people into a sort of perform-for-the-cameras mode.

Watch our interview–and see photos Madrigal took at the White House Sunday night, right here:

According to The Atlantic, Gillis – along with GlobalPost.com contributor James Foley, Spanish photographer Manu Brabo, and South African photographer Anton Hammerl – has not been able to contact with anyone outside the Libyan government, which has still not acknowledged that it has detained these four journalists.

The four have been detained for a week now, and it isn’t clear how many are currently being held in Tripoli, specifically whether Hammerl is at the detention center along with the others.

h/t The Atlantic

The other journalists include GlobalPost.com contributor James Foley, Spanish photographer Manu Brabo, and South African photographer Anton Hammerl. The Atlantic was alerted to Gillis’ capture this morning, and sent the following in a press release:

In past cases, journalists captured in eastern Libya have been taken to Surte within 48 to 72 hours, at which point they are transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Turkish embassy in Tripoli then typically negotiates the journalists’ release with the Libyan government.

Editor James Bennet adds that Gillis “was reporting on the situation in Libya on behalf of The Atlantic and other American publications. We appeal to the Libyan authorities for her immediate and safe release, and for that of the three other journalists detained with her.”

In an entry announcing his departure, Sullivan says that, while he’ll look back fondly on the “special home” he’s enjoyed for the past four years, Brown’s new venture offers him the “chance to be part of a whole new experiment in online and print journalism.” Not only will Sullivan have the opportunity to continue his “Dish” blog, he’ll also contribute columns and essays in print within Newsweek.

Sullivan joins Howard Kurtz as a high-profile name to be lured by the Daily Beast / Newsweek team, despite ongoing concerns by some in the media over whether the merger will bring in views or truly be successful in breathing new life into the struggling Newsweek brand.

Amid concerns over a certain other newly-merged blog’s left-wing bias, Brown writes in a Daily Beast post that Sullivan “plays no favorites” and is “willing to admit mistakes and change positions.”

h/t New York Times / Media Decoder

Why is Bogart so special? “How did an actor who was limited to embodying the particular stresses of America in depression and war become inimitable—and immortal?” asks Alyssa Rosenberg at The Atlantic. Maybe “the kind of masculinity Bogart represents is simply unreproducible”? But why is that? Kanfer’s book doesn’t resolve this “enigma of moviegoing,” and leaves me still to wonder “why do we continue to need Humphrey Bogart?”

He gave all of himself: “Now we have fine leading men such as George Clooney and Brad Pitt but there’s something generic about them, no wounds, no despising death in the manner of Bogie in Casablanca,” says Henry Allen in The Wall Street Journal. We’ve seen stars rise up in the 50 years since, but “the post-Bogart guys have so little personal identity that stage impressionists can’t even imitate them.” Even if Bogart fell prey to some vices in his later years, “his best side still drives American psyches.”

He hit at the right time: “Bogart was the unlikeliest of movie stars,” says Saul Austerlitz in The Boston Globe. “As Kanfer notes, Bogart was the right star for the right moment” who “came to serve as the ideal hero for the era of noir: hard-bitten, wise to the world’s evils, but with a sneaky sense of justice and moral order.” Bogart set the tone for a type of character, and actor, we often see today. “He is every bit as diffident and as gruff as any 2010 antihero, and yet his prickly dignity marks him as a timeless American icon.”

As the Times story notes, “profitability is a new enough concept at The Atlantic that some there seem almost giddy about it.” That would include David Bradley, the man who purchased the magazine from Mort Zuckerman back in 1999.

Mr. Bradley asked his accounting department to find out which subscriber’s check officially put the company into the black. They pinpointed a woman from Livingston, Tenn., who sent in a $29.95 check for her renewal on Oct. 1. Mr. Bradley got her phone number off the check and called her to say thank you.

At first she mistook him for a telemarketer and almost hung up on him, but not before he promised to pay for her subscription for the next 10 years.

Bradley’s call was more than a quaint gesture; the man has reason to be genuinely excited. The article reminds readers that “The Atlantic lost $4.5 million in its first year under Mr. Bradley’s ownership,” a number that only ballooned over the years.

Of course, it took more than a bunch of $30 subscriptions to bring about the $1.8 million in profits his magazine’s slated to make this year. You can read more about the magazine’s turnaround here.

The article finds “The Great Talker” eager to keep the ball rolling. He took strides to combat the popular notion that the Obama administration has lost its luster. To make this point, he turns to high-school romance:

I really don’t think the hope is gone. I don’t think the majority of the American people think the hope is gone. What they’re looking for is reassurance. You know what it’s a little bit like? You ask the girl out in high school, and it didn’t work out, and you’re really excited about this next person, but you’re just not sure.… “I got turned down by Mary; do I want to ask Lisa? Tell me, is there a reason to be hopeful here?” So it’s not that they’ve given up. I think you’re seeing increasing confidence growing in people, saying, “We are moving in the right direction.” But the other thing I think is that people are pretty smart. They know this isn’t gonna happen quickly.

As such, he doesn’t see his team in danger of losing the White House in 2012:

I really don’t think there’s many people right now who think that Barack and I aren’t more likely to win reelection than not. Which is kind of a window. Nothing’s certain. I’m not saying we’re… But, if you notice, it’s all about this election now, which it should be, and it’s usually not extrapolated into, “Well, the Republicans are gonna win in 2012.” And part of that is because intuitively people know we started moving in the right direction. We got this thing rolling. It’s not there yet for a lot of people. It also is there for a lot of people.

As for what his role will be in 2012, Biden swatted away speculation as to whether he and Hillary Clinton would pull a switcheroo. “Noooo,” he apparently said, assuring DePaulo that he’s already discussed the matter with Obama himself.

In fact, he and Obama discuss all sorts of things—sometimes while on double-dates.

Well, actually, we double-date in a bizarre way. We double-date where it affects our kids and my grandkids. Let me give you an example. Every Saturday morning, in basketball season, my little number three granddaughter, Maisy, is on the same basketball team as Sasha. So what we’ll do is, we’ll call and say, “Are you going to the game?” and so we’ll end up, the four of us—Jill, me and Michelle and Barack—in a gymnasium…and there’ll be like 8,000 Secret Service agents and us sittin’ there, and everybody is like, Whoa.

Cute. Read the interview in its (disappointingly) gaffe-free entirety over at GQ.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, asked Castro if Cuba’s economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and Castro replied: “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” Goldberg wrote Wednesday in a post on his Atlantic blog.

First and foremost, for decades world leaders have attempted to convince Castro of the dangers and pitfalls of communistic rule to no avail. Finally—though too late to spare his people sociopolitical pains—the former leader has essentially declared ideological defeat. This, in itself, is a major step forward for the Cuban people.

Though Castro stepped down as president four years ago in the midst of a bout with a “serious illness,” he still remains the official head of the nation’s Communist Party. Castro’s comments are particularly intriguing because they are truly his first public reflections on domestic issues since leaving office. Furthermore, they call into question the very tenets he has touted for decades as the basis for his country’s economic and social structures. To some, his comments border on the unbelievable; as Jaime Suchlicki of the University of Miami’s Research Institute for Cuban Studies told the Miami Herald said,

“He is either crazy or senile. This certainly does not sound like something Castro would say. But if he was quoted accurately, then I guess he’s come to the realization, like everyone else, that Marxist-Leninist governments do not function. So the real question is, what is he going to do about it now?”

Suchlicki’s question is valid, but another question—“What will America do about it now?”—is equally importance. While many, including Castro himself, attribute Cuba’s problems to the nearly five-decade old U.S. trade embargo (which many conservatives would tout as a successful endeavor to stop communism in its tracks), Cuba’s problems go well beyond the embargo. One can easily see that the socio-communal elements that have governed Cuba for decades have been major detriments to the nation’s growth and sustainability; isn’t this essentially what Castro has admitted in his recent discussions about the Cuban model?. Plainly stated: The small Island nation’s economic problems have been greatly exacerbated by the idiotic and counterproductive actions of its leaders.

Just look at the facts. According to Fox News, the Cuban government runs more than 90 percent of the nation’s economy. Sadly, workers make about $20 per month. In addition to this miniscule wage, workers receive free health care, education and cheap transportation and housing; Cubans are sold ration books so that they can purchase food at discounted rates.

USA Today offers the following characterization of Castro’s new-found stance: “Now he’s quietly questioning the viability of the system he created, and taking time to smell the flowers.” What USA Today sees as “smell[ing] the flowers,” I see as “entering panic mode.” Following Fidel Castro’s startling words, his brother has announced massive job cuts (half a million people), openness to foreign investment and other changes that indicate an acceptance of Cuba’s dire economic circumstance. Cuba’s leaders are desperate and they’re looking for a path to survival.

Now the question is whether the U.S. should help Cuba by lifting the infamous embargo. Though it appears Castro is questioning his own misguided actions, one should not forget his heinous acts and the lack of personal freedoms citizens have suffered under for decades. It’s always easier to admit defeat when reality becomes undeniable. I’d advocate waiting it out to see what Cuba’s next move is.

What will the Castro family do? How will they handle their revelations? It’s up to Cuba’s leaders to ensure the nation is fully integrated into the global economy. In the meantime, America should sit back, relax, watch and prepare to change policy if and when doing so will serve as a mutually beneficial act.

Sullivan puts the dilemma thusly:

So once again, we will have the political prospect of the Obama administration simultaneously legally defending the Defense of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in court, while politically saying they oppose both.

It’s an odd situation, one Sullivan calls “constitutionally sound” yet also “increasingly perverse and bizarre” morally. After all, many more Americans support a repeal than oppose it, so the administration would be arguing not only against its own professed views, but those of a majority of the people they represent.

And according to Sullivan, there’s plenty of blame to go around as to why Obama hasn’t gotten Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repealed already. He mentioned the “radically Christianist GOP” (and of course included favorite target Sarah Palin in that category), while also giving credit to the Log Cabin Republicans for filing the suit in which Phillips delivered her ruling. He didn’t let Obama off the hook, either, saying the “extra-cautious, gays-are-radioactive mindset of the Obama administration” is part of the problem…and that for the LGBT population to think Obama’s as in their corner as he says he is, he needs to do, well, something:

[I]f Obama thinks gay voters and our families are going to be happy when he ends his first term with nothing accomplished except the lifting of the HIV ban (backed by Bush) and a hate crimes bill that has so far had zero prosecutions, he is mistaken.

This certainly isn’t the first time Obama’s been criticized for not doing enough to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and until it’s officially a thing of the past, he’ll only hear even more barbs like the ones here. After all, it’s like Sullivan says: if Obama isn’t acting now, on this issue, seemingly one of the least controversial gay rights issues he could take a stand on…”when will he?”

H/T Glenn Greenwald

Photo via

Green starts to answer, and Matthews asks, more insistently, “What do they do?”

Here’s the instantly classic clip:

Matthews isn’t actually that far off base. According to Wikipedia, Nazi apparel figures heavily in some fetish play, but historical accuracy is not a sticking point:

Nazi chic is a controversial topic in the fetish clothing subculture. The symbolism of fascist, communist, and other ideologies remains popular, and a common compromise is to adopt the main design features of Nazi-era clothing– such as peaked caps, jackboots and trenchcoats– but not to include any explicit Nazi symbols. Sometimes substitute symbols are used, with designs that clearly reference the design styles of Nazi symbols without directly copying them.

Whatever floats Das Boot, I guess. Iott’s activities, however, appear to be strictly platonic, if ill-advised.

You could argue that, politically speaking, Iott deserves whatever he gets. Despite what some apologists say, this is not simply about “military history.” If you’re going to have World War II reenactments (or movies), someone has to play the Nazis. His opponent, incumbent Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), points out the real problem (via a spokesman):

“Wiking members say they re-enact ‘to honor’ the Waffen SS soldiers. But honestly, who would honor such butchers? They fail to mention that the entire SS organization was declared a criminal organization by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal.

“Wiking members say they ‘salute their (Waffen SS) courage and loyalty to put their lives on the line in defense of their native soil…’ It’s time for a fact check: the Waffen SS fought mainly on foreign soil, not native soil, and they committed atrocities against civilians throughout Europe and against American soldiers in Belgium.

“To perpetuate such a twisted and dangerous view of history is outrageous and indefensible.”

Indeed, the Wiking reenactor’s website makes no mention of the specific war crimes committed by that division, an omission that they might think is covered by this disclaimer:

Disclaimer: This page or anyone involved in its creation, or members of reenactment groups listed here, are in no way affiliated with real, radical political organizations (i.e., KKK, Aryan Nation, American Nazi Party, etc.) and do not embrace the philosophies and actions of the original NSDAP (Nazi party), and wholeheartedly condemn the atrocities which made them infamous. May the victims of this unspeakable horror rest in peace. As we portray the German combat soldier, we are only interested in recreating his daily life, furthering our understanding of what it took to be a soldier, and at the same time having fun reliving history. We honor the men (and women) who really experienced the war, and we salute their courage and loyalty to put their lives on the line in defense of their native soil, no matter what nationality or government.

Whether you agree that this is possible or not, the intent appears to be to carve out soldiers who did not commit atrocities as the ones they portray. Viewed in that light, Iott’s explanation gains some credibility:

Never, in any of my re-enacting of military history, have I meant any disrespect to anyone who served in our military or anyone who has been affected by the tragedy of war, especially the Jewish Community.  I have immense respect for veterans who served our country valiantly, particularly those who fought to rid the world of tyranny and aggression by relegating Nazism to the trash heap of history. I also believe we need to ‘never forget’ what happened to Jews during that war.   In fact, my respect for the militaryand our veterans and my concern for the victims of war is one of the reasons I have actively studied military history throughout my life.

Iott also explains that he is a longtime military re-enactor, and provides photos of instances in which he played the good guys.

On the other hand, the Wiking website, and this recruiting video, clearly bespeak a misguided admiration for the 5th SS Panzer Division’s military prowess:

This admiration is echoed by Iott’s statements to The Atlantic:

I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that here was a relatively small country that from a strictly military point of view accomplished incredible things. I mean, they took over most of Europe and Russia, and it really took the combined effort of the free world to defeat them. From a purely historical military point of view, that’s incredible.

The central issue, then, is not whether it’s okay to “Play Nazi Dress-up,” but whether the “military history” of the 5th SS Panzer Division can be reduced to an abstraction. To any thinking human being, or Star Trek fan, the answer should be an easy “no.” If you’re going to play the Nazis, in a reenactment or a movie, you have to face the fact that you are the villains. Iott’s statement makes no recognition of this.

All of this makes Iott insensitive, wrongheaded, misguided, perhaps even stupid, but it doesn’t make him a Nazi, or a Nazi sympathizer. It’s an important distinction, because that’s the taint that’s being applied to Iott, and in this case, that punishment doesn’t fit his crime. Maybe he deserves to lose his race for Congress, but he doesn’t deserve to live the rest of his life as “that Nazi Republican guy.”

Maher found the clip through Atlantic Senior Editor Joshua Green, whose claims to fame include discovering Eric Massa and Bill Bennett. He discovered several damning images of Iott dressed as an SS officer, reenacting invasions with his pals. Calling Iott up to explain, the Republican congressional candidate explained that he got involved with the Nazi reenacting group the Wikings as a father-son activity with his teenager. While he claims to not be a Nazi or condone their beliefs, he told Green he has respect for the idealist young men who died in the war and enjoys studying their history. Oh yeah, also, Iott is running for Congress.

The full explanation from Real Time via HBO below:

In one of his posts yesterday, Sullivan took offense with a Talking Points Memo from O’Reilly’s Wednesday night broadcast. He claims that, unlike the “clown” Glenn Beck, O’Reilly is a “propagandist” who distorts the state of the American progressive movement:

Beck is in many ways a clown. But my own sense of him is that he is, at times, a genuine clown, not entirely fake. (I know many disagree, and I cannot judge the man’s soul from a distance, but that’s my hunch.) O’Reilly, meanwhile, is a propagandist – not as bad as Hannity – but dishonest and wrong. … Mr O’Reilly, I know Fox has long had a blanket ban on having me on as a guest, but here’s a challenge: allow me to debate this Talking Points Memo with you, and reveal what a completely half-baked piece of nonsense it was.

I’m not Dee Dee Myers. I am not a progressive. And I think your version of this president is a caricature so unfair it deserves a real thrashing out on air, in public.

If O’Reilly does indeed invite Sullivan onto his program, viewers should expect quite a show, as Sullivan seems eager to engage in a substantial debate with the news anchor whom Jon Stewart has characterized as Fox News’ least crazy. If this showdown happens, we can only hope to see more light and less heat.

Here’s the Talking Points Memo that so irked Sullivan:

The logo (which, it should be noted, The Atlantic has already called out for plagiarism from a Midwestern pizza place), is a small “D” in a blue circle. The hours spent thinking up this complex design must be incalculable. Maher presents it without comment, though his face says it all, and to add insult to injury, Jon Hamm of all people deadpans from off-camera, “Radiates power, doesn’t it?”

Maher himself goes a bit harder on the Democrats, at some point even lobbing the grave insult of comparing them to the Chicago Cubs. The list of slogans Maher has chosen for them are all hilarious in their own way, though the last one, perhaps, is the most apt for this November: “Don’t get up; we’ll let ourselves out.”

The clip from last night’s Real Time on HBO below:

Sometimes the truth is more Orwellian than fiction. Castro has now come out against the interview, but not too aggressively. Stating that Goldberg’s interpretation of his statement was “amusing,” he commented during an event for his new book, Strategic Victory:

Castro said he made the statement “without anger or worry. Now I’m amused to see how (the Atlantic reporter) interpreted it literally” in consultation with a CFR expert.

My answer, Castro said, “meant exactly the opposite” of what the reporter wrote, Castro said, speaking at an event presenting the second volume of his autobiography.

Castro said he was clear about Goldberg’s intention when he asked if the Cuban model was still worth exporting: “It’s obvious that implicit in the question was the theory that Cuba was exporting the revolution.”

Note: for the average Cuban, a statement like “the Cuban model doesn’t work for us anymore” is a crime against the state (“subversion” or, if the arresting soldier is in a crabby mood, “treason”) and can cost up to twenty years in prison and/or a meeting with your friendly neighborhood firing squad.

Anyway, there are many, many reasons why that interview was acutely painful for the Cuban exile community to read (and the sadistic dolphin park story is the least of them). Seems like it was almost as painful for Fidel, who decades ago ran literal circles around sympathetic American journalists like the New York Times’ Herbert Matthews, to get a dose of his own medicine. Goldberg has already fired back, stating that he copied the statement verbatim and did not remove any relevant context. Needless to say he’s probably not going to be invited back to Havana anytime soon.

[h/t Gawker, photo via Telegraph]

Although the story reads as if Ambinder had been cultivating Mehlman for years, it’s also evident that Mehlman timed his coming-out story to coincide with his sponsorship of a $5,000 a person fundraiser for American Foundation for Equal Rights, the folks behind the challenge to the anti-gay marriage law in California.

Mehlman, a master at controlling the story and staying on message, didn’t just blurt out his story to Ambinder in an un-planned fashion.  It now appears that a number of people knew about the story even before Mike Rogers went public with the rumor of the coming-out expose that Ambinder was planning. Like all “coming out” stories involving well-known people, it was well-orchestrated by people surrounding Mehlman although there is no evidence he was shopping the coming-out story around to anyone besides Ambinder.

Politico, The Advocate and Huffington Post soon had interviews with Mehlman and admit they knew about the story for at least a couple of days. Here’s what Advocate reporter Kerry Eleveld said in her piece, that went up on Advocate.com Thursday morning.

Mehlman had first discussed his coming out story with Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic, but he had reached out to The Advocate in advance of its publication and made a point of offering his second interview on the matter to an LGBT news outlet.

But if The Advocate got the second interview, they weren’t the first to go live with a follow-up story and interview.  Instead, HuffPost’s Amenda Terkel had an interview up a few hours after the Ambinder story went live based on an interview she did that evening.  Her story was followed quickly by a story by Mike Allen at Politico, who also talked to Mehlman after the Ambinder story went live.

Nico Pitney, national editor at HuffPost, told Mediaite that media outlets learned about the Mehlman announcement “a few days earlier” but that there was never a doubt that Ambinder would break the story.

Rogers, who has been working at outing Mehlman for years, is taking credit for pushing The Atlantic to go at least two days earlier than they wanted with the story. He suggests that Ambinder wanted to dump the story out on a Friday to make follow-up harder and, according to Rogers, so “apologists like Dustin Lance Black and Chad Griffin time to support Ken publicly.”

But Ambinder denies that he was waiting until Friday with the story.  Linda Douglass, The Atlantic’s head of public relations, told Mediaite that the story went live on Wednesday because that’s when the story was done. And in a chat today, Ambinder also dismissed Rogers’ version of the timing.

Very curious how quickly people become interested in the meta-representation of reality (the mechanics behind the story) than the story itself. The story was published when it was published. I talked to Ken late last week and early this week, and wrote the story, had it edited, and then pushed it out.

In 2006, Ambinder wrote about the challenges that Mark Foley scandal created for gay Republicans, including the lavender mafia that surrounded Foley and reached into the Republican establishment. A well-connected openly gay reporter, Ambinder would have the connections inside the web of gay Republicans to convince Mehlman to give him an exclusive.

Ambinder insists that he didn’t know that Mehlman was gay until he admitted it last week, although they had discussed gay-related political issues for many years. In his chat, he said “I haven’t found a single person who says that Ken outed himself to them earlier.” As to the worst keep secret in D.C., Ambinder said  “If I outed everyone I suspected was gay, I’d be a bad person, firstly, and very very busy, secondly.”

In an interview today with the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, Ambinder said if he’d known that Mehlman was gay he would have outed him.

“I would have reported it because he was in power at a time when the Republican Party was whipping up anti-gay sentiment to get votes,” Ambinder told Kurtz. “I’m very squeamish about outing anyone. That squeamishness certainly would have gone into the equation. But there would have been a clear and compelling reason. Even though outing would have encroached on his personal dignity, which would have made me uncomfortable, it would have been the right thing to do to hold someone in power accountable.”

In February, Lehmann secured a book deal based on the columns, which examine the institutions of modern capitalism and a provide “glimpse into how the top one percent maintains an iron grip on almost half of America’s financial wealth.” Last week, Rich People Things became available for preorder, with the release date for preorders slated for September 15. Fans of Lehmann’s column have already been clamoring to order the book — if Lehmann’s columns are any indication, the book promises to be full of his signature mix of biting satire and sharp prose.

This week, I spoke to Lehmann about the book, the column, and the events that led him to write about so-called “Rich People Things” — and Lehmann also provided an excerpt of a chapter for Mediaite readers.

First: tell us a little bit about your book — how would you describe it?

I’d say it’s like a long and sensual walk on the beach with an extremely attractive soulmate. Or else a jaundiced look at a corrupt and wheezing money culture, steeped in denial and free-market propaganda. Take your pick, really.

I tried to keep certain long-ago books on similar themes in mind as I wrote—like Edmund Wilson’s collection of Depression reporting The American Jitters, and Thurman Arnold’s The Folklore of Capitalism. Not that I’d put myself anywhere near such distinguished company, mind you—but both those books sharply expressed the mixture of raw disbelief and restless curiosity about how events conspired to create a catastrophe on the scale of the Great Depression. I’ve seen all too little of that sensibility in reports on our own economic plight, so I’ve tried to revive it a bit, both in the online column for the Awl and in the book.

A curious note about Thurman Arnold, who was a bitterly cynical former antitrust official in the Roosevelt years: There’s an office building named for him now in downtown DC. I can’t tell which is stranger: That there was once a federal appointee who could write a scabrous attack on free-market pieties called The Folklore of Capitalism, or that his most visible legacy is an office building full of bankers and lobbyists toiling unknowingly in his name.

In your first column for the Awl, you talked about your experience working at New York magazine and particularly your reaction to  their “Rage of the Rich” issue in spring 2009. Can you tell us a bit about that experience at New York?

Hoo boy. Well, suffice it to say, after a lot of loose talk about “giving the New Yorker a run for its money” and “reviving long-form literary journalism” and whatnot during my interviews there, I was instantly tasked upon my arrival with overseeing the redesign of “The Strategist” shopping section and its metastasis from 6 or so to 24 or so pages in the magazine. There was also the agonizing meeting to determine the Platonic form of the New York Magazine Cover Story, and the consensus choice was a profile of bag-making ingénue Kate Spade. I blurted out in reply that I would flee the building before I would read such a thing. From then on, let’s just say it became clear to all concerned parties that my hire was less than an ideal fit.

And, what gave you the idea to start writing the Rich People Things column?

The aforementioned New York mag issue. Alex Balk and Choire Sicha had asked me to write for the Awl prior to its launch, but I wasn’t really intending to. (Hello, they still don’t pay contributors!) But I saw that NY mag package, and could imagine all too vividly the process by which it was conceived and executed, and when I resolved I couldn’t remain silent, I also knew that the Awl would probably be the only place to run such a thing. I had no intention of writing a column; Choire had given it the Rich People Things slug, which I believe was coined originally during his tenure at either Gawker or the New York Observer, when he posted that first entry. Alex asked me if I objected afterward, but I couldn’t think of any grounds to complain, partly because I didn’t really understand what the phrase was supposed to mean.

But as it happened, this was the spring of 2009, and the economic indignities just kept on coming. Someone else the following week forwarded me a link to really myopic piece in the Washington Post on Obama’s tax policy, and from then on, I realized this was actually one of the easiest columnizing gigs on the planet—and a good thing, too, since as I mentioned before, it DOESN’T PAY A GODDAMN THING.

You’ve described the book in the past as a ”bestiary of the permanent institutions of American capitalism.” What institutions do you single out the most for analysis and why?

Well, I thought it would be good to use the column’s point of view to examine a lot of things that we take for granted as other-than-rich-people-things in our common life—like the Constitution, the Democratic party, the Supreme Court and whatnot. I also wanted to discuss a few things that were, in the stricter sense of the word, actual things—like the iPad, the art of Damien Hirst, and reality TV. The idea, I think, was to mix more somber historical and political features of economic life with the cultural forces that sustain our beliefs in meritocracy and the gospel of success. Also to keep the tone pretty arch and satirical, since our guiding economic dogmas are many things, but as the events of the past two-plus years or so have shown, they are really not all that rational.

In your columns you’ve referenced those who you call the “are nots.” How do you define this term, and who are you classifying as are-nots?

I think the phrase—which I cribbed from political scientist Marc Landy, if memory serves—invokes the idea that our incomes and wealth-holding don’t match up to our status anxieties. So, for instance, if a Tea Party protestor was absolutely convinced that the Obama stimulus plan was a tax increase—when it was in fact a tax CUT for anyone earning less than 250K a year, you sort of have to conclude that person is protesting something other than their slipping economic footing. What that is, I could only guess at—but it would seem to involve a sense of exclusion from the so-called elites who lay out the economic aims of the liberal state, the Red Army in the lamestream media, the coastal lords of the culture industries and what not. The complaint, near as I can suss out, is that there’s conspiracy afoot among these remote figures to deny, well, something to the overlooked people in the American mainstream. To the extent that something is their own status or sense of self-worth, I think it’s useful to characterize them as “are nots.”

Is any of the book from past Awl columns? How much is new material?

It’s mainly new material—85 percent or so, I’d guess–with some other published work I’ve done in non-Awl outlets also woven in. But since I’ve never really written a book before, I haven’t real mastered the art of repurposing old material in a new format.

Also just to confirm — the official release date is Oct 15, but it’s available for pre-order now, correct?

Yep, it can be pre-ordered now—and the release date for pre-orders, for both the e-book and print version appears to be Sept. 15. This all has something to do with the bold new DIY business model at OR books, but it’s so bold and new that I don’t really grasp it. My editor, the delightful Colin Robinson, constantly tells me, though, that the volume of pre-orders will determine the eventual print run in October, so tell your readers to take pity on an poor old unpaid Awl columnist and pre-order the thing in droves.

********

>>>NEXT: Exclusive excerpt from Rich People Things, featuring New York Times columnist David Brooks! Click if you want to find out if it’s flattering or not.

Though the Pentagon Papers were released almost 40 years ago, Fallows explains the structural similarities between the two leaks:

The interaction between “traditional” and “new” media is the most immediately arresting “process” aspect of this event. It’s structurally similar in one sense to the Pentagon Papers case nearly 40 years ago. Back  then, Daniel Ellsberg worked with the New York Times to publicize the documents. Otherwise, how could he have gotten them out? This time, Wikileaks worked with the Times — and the Guardian and Der Spiegel — to organize, make sense of, and presumably vet the data.

He further makes the point that there’s something to be said for disseminating through these “traditional” news outlets:

Wikileaks could have simply posted the raw info even without the news organizations’ help. At first glance this is a very sophisticated illustration of how newly evolving media continually change the way we get information, but don’t totally replace existing systems. The collaboration of three of the world’s leading “traditional” news brands makes a difference in the way this news is received.

Adam Kirsch makes a similar point in The New Republic. He makes the case for why WikiLeaks still needs the New York Times, because the Internet alone is not enough:

Wikileaks’s highest value is transparency, but the leak suggests that transparency is moot without authority. Perhaps this truth will start to dawn on Assange and the many other new media figures who, with their gleeful attacks on the mainstream media, are helping to undermine the authority of institutions like The New York Times in ways that the U.S. government never has or could. Where would a leaker find himself—in an old movie or in real life—if there were no one left to leak to?

[emphasis ours]

Transparency is moot without authority. This is an important point, and hopefully one that won’t soon be forgot. It also ties back with a fundamental difference between the Pentagon Papers and the AfPak leaks.  As The Nation‘s Robert Dreyfuss points out, the Pentagon Papers “involved a detailed analytical study of that misguided war, while the WikiLeaks papers are for the most part raw data and intelligence reports, not yet vetted.” And who else is vetting them, if not for the traditional media Fallows writes about.

In terms of historical perspective, ProPublica’s Richard Tofel argues there is a remarkable difference between the two leaks:

In terms of important disclosures, it’s not even close, with the historical importance of today’s documents likely to be relatively minor, and that of the Pentagon Papers enormous.

In 1971, in contrast, the Pentagon Papers revealed a host of important discrepancies between the public posture of the U.S. government with respect to Vietnam and the truth…

This leads to the question: does Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower himself, think the two leaks are comparable? In a DemocracyNow round-table discussion, Ellsberg said he was “very impressed” by the release, saying it was the first time since the Pentagon Papers that something of that scale has been released — adding that such a release is long overdue:

“How many times in those years should there have been the release of thousands of pages showing our being lied into war in Iraq, as in Vietnam, and the nature of the war in Afghanistan?”

He also said he thought highly of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the military specialist accused of leaking the information:

“I admire very much the spirit in which he did this. He said that he felt the public needed to know this and that he was prepared to go to prison, even for life—he said that—or even to be executed. That’s the first person I’ve heard in 40 years who is in the same state of mind that I was 40 years ago.”

Ellsberg will be further discussing the WikiLeaks story today at 4:30pmET on MSNBC.

Watch Ellsberg’s full remarks below:

Madrigal reminds us why editors — and their red pens — are necessary, but points out that they seem like a dying breed:

In other words, editors do the things for text that designers did for visual products. They standardize rules; they enforce consistency; they provide the key for the map; they make things right.

And yet, in recent years, they’ve seemed expendable, perhaps because they were still around. Now, though, they’re disappearing. Text goes online with less editing than it would have ever gone into magazines or newspaper. More and more of us writers are working without their services. More and more people are writing without ever having being edited. Maybe now people will realize what editors did: their presence will be felt in their absence.

Yes, maybe now people will realize what they’re missing. Maybe they’ll notice a difference. More eloquently put:

The Internet can feel like a jungle, and journalists are in the business of providing paths through the territory. Writers might blaze the trails, but editors maintain the roads. The vines are creeping and the potholes are growing. And maybe letting the road deteriorate is really the only way to make audiences and media companies realize the value of those whose names do not appear underneath the headline.

[emphasis ours]

We don’t realize what we’ve had until it’s gone. In this case, it’s edited and polished prose. Editing is necessary in the same way that fact-checking is — yet in the 24/7 news cycle, it’s often overlooked in order to save time. Perhaps it’s because publishing something online feels less concrete than ink on paper, but that’s hardly an excuse. Just as this post will be edited before it is published, it makes sense that others should be too — even if they’re only online.

My new job, basically, will be to take the lessons I’ve learned at Newsweek and bring them to other media outlets. The mission is to show how this platform can be key to connecting journalists and readers, making the process more engaging and conversational. The approach will be the same that I’ve taken in creating the Newsweek Tumblr: That the most important thing for any publisher is to first be a full, participating member of the community, and that the main focus should be on meeting the needs of that community, not self-promotion.

Despite the magazine’s recent financial turmoil, Newsweek was wildly popular among Tumblr users. When Newsweek went up for sale, Coatney took to Tumblr and defended the magazine from its  harshest critics. The commentary Coatney posted was honest, open, and always refreshingly devoid of PR-speak. It became a backchannel for readers to hear what someone at the magazine was really thinking, and Tumblr users loved it. And for many of us, myself included, the Newsweek Tumblr brought me to the Newsweek website more often than I might have otherwise visited, by posting links, photos, and articles of interest in a place where I was more likely to read them.

Newsweek was the first major media outlet to actively use Tumblr, but in recent months many others have jumped on the bandwagon as well: The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Atlantic, and Rolling Stone have all started Tumblr accounts in the last two months. Rolling Stone’s account is inactive, but the New York Times and The Atlantic’s both have a “Coming Soon” placeholder post.  And beyond them, countless other media outlets have been flocking to the platform (Mediaite has had its own Tumblr for the past year as well).

What distinguishes Tumblr from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter is its focus on content, not follower counts. On Tumblr accounts, you cannot see how many people are following that account, as opposed to Twitter where follower numbers are prominently displayed on every page. Instead, you only see the number of “likes” and reblogs garnered by each post. By doing so, Tumblr emphasizes that success on the platform is measured solely by how good your content is, which should make it an ideal platform for online publishers. And good content it has been: the Newsweek Tumblr was loved mostly for its witty, honest daily commentary and dialogue with readers, and many have already noted on Twitter and Tumblr how sorry they will be to see Coatney leave.

I spoke to Mark today over email to get his thoughts on Newsweek’s success with Tumblr, his new job, and what kind of value Tumblr can provide to traditional media outlets.

How many followers did the Newsweek Tumblr account accumulate?

We’ve got around 112,000 followers right now, adding about 5-700 a week. Which isn’t a lot compared to, say, Newsweek’s Twitter (1.3 million)–but I think that that it’s a significant number–Tumblr followers are typically far more engaged than Twitter users, for one thing–you see a much higher level of engagement from those people. And there’s a good network effect; Tumblr’s metrics show that every 240 ‘notes’ a post gets (that is, ‘likes’ or ‘reblogs’ of a post) translates into the post being seen by about 100,000 readers, which means on an average day, Newsweek was easily hitting around 100-200k readers/day on Tumblr; really good posts (our best one got, I think, more than 3,000 notes) were getting significantly more attention.

What value do you think Tumblr offers to media organizations? Personally I love the platform and the kind of engagement it provides, but a lot of media outlets focus on the bottom line of pageviews and fan counts – how do you sell Tumblr to them?

Part of my job will be to show that value, sure. The biggest thing I think Tumblr offers media orgs is the fact that Tumblr really is focused on good user experience–they’re responsive to their users, and the service is really frictionless and easy for people to get in and quickly start blogging and connecting with others. I’ve used a lot of blogging CMS’s (sorry, that’s an awkward construction) and Tumblr is the best I’ve seen in terms of ease of use and (crucially) connecting your postings to other users. So the value for other media platforms is that, yes, Tumblr is a way to tie into an audience that is super engaged, and has the tools to interact with your content in an easy, fun way.

Again, my longstanding criticism of most media websites is that they’re basically the same thing as print–there’s no real interaction with the readers. And I think that connection with readers will be crucial for publishers going forward. You need to cultivate your most ardent fans–and I think Tumblr helps you do that.

What do you think about how so many other publications have been jumping on the Tumblr bandwagon lately, such as NYT, New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Huff Post?

I think Tumblr’s starting to get some good momentum, for one thing–they’re growing at around 20% a month, adding 25k new users a day, and are close to hitting 1.5 billion pageviews/month, which would put Tumblr in the top 50 worldwide. That’s a pretty good network to tap into. And again, I think the importance of having a closer, better interaction with the audience is key, and one that publishers are increasingly recognizing.

And finally, what will happen next to the Newsweek Tumblr that we’ve all come to love?

I’m hoping it keeps going, and does better than I did with it. There are some really great writers here who have their own Tumblrs, and I hope to get them taking this over after I’m gone.

*************

And we hope so too! We’re also looking forward to seeing how other major media outlets start using Tumblr – and we’re sure Coatney will be playing a big role in making that happen.

Photo from MarkCoatney.com

You probably suspect where I’m going with this: Octavia Nasr. We’ll get there. First, though, let’s discuss Dave Weigel.

Weigel is the online columnist from the Washington Post who, until late last month, was charged with covering the conservative movement in the United States. Until, that is, someone leaked emails he’d sent to a not-small email group founded by Ezra Klein called Journolist. In the emails, he takes umbrage with Matt Drudge and Ron Paul supporters among others, suggesting the former die in a fire. Weigel gave his resignation shortly thereafter with a Palin-esque rationale – that the effort in rebutting the furor that ensued was not worth it for his employer.

Journalism professor and wonk Jay Rosen was among those who noted that the opinions on Weigel’s decision and he criticism he’d received broke down along what we could call generational lines. Those reporters who matured in the offline world were more likely to criticize Weigel’s emails than those forged in the world of the web. The latter were typically more forgiving than the former. Their argument was often along the following line: in the same way that Facebook and blogs are re-shaping what employers expect of applicants, the prevalence of social media tools and public opinion-sharing will reshape expectations around journalist neutrality.

Let’s jump to Octavia Nasr for a moment. As Mediaite revealed yesterday, Nasr, a twenty-year veteran of CNN, was fired after a tweet generally interpreted as sympathetic to a leader of Hezbollah. Nasr disputed that interpretation – but it didn’t matter. CNN, under pressure, pulled the trigger.

Consider the generational difference here. Nasr, an established reporter, didn’t misunderstand the rules of neutrality. Rather, she claims to have tripped over the technology, stating that the incident “provides a good lesson on why 140 characters should not be used to comment on controversial or sensitive issues.” Nasr’s protocol breach was less about the statement than her failure to appreciate the medium. (That it dealt with the particularly mine-laden realm of Middle East politics certainly didn’t help.)

Yet the cases are oddly analogous: reporters leaving their positions (willingly or not) after sharing their opinions in ways deemed by many to be indiscreet. Which brings us to where I was really headed from that opening paragraph.

Both the Nasr and Weigel incidents come in the midst of a very pertinent debate prompted by Rosen. In a column on his blog Pressthink, he detailed the false dichotomy that often exists within political (and other) reporting; i.e., the idea that one must hew to a middle, neutral ground on all issues and, more awkwardly, create one where none exists. In the essay, Rosen also clearly defines a number of the terms that his Twitter followers may be familiar with, like “the view from nowhere,” which he uses to describe the often-artificial neutral ground from which journalists think they view the world.

The piece is predicated on this question: what is the ideology of our (i.e., American) political press? Rosen presents two “camps” into which those answering the question will fit. The big camp says – easy question. The small camp – it’s complicated. In the big camp are three groups, according to Rosen: those who think the press is liberal, those who think it is conservative, those who think it is neither.

Rosen’s language here is tricky. He conflates an “it’s neither” response with the “easy question” group, but then presents the “it’s neither” viewpoint as follows:

Look, it’s very simple, our journalists say. The press isn’t on the side of the left or the right. Of course, journalists are human. They have passions, they have interests, they have opinions. But these are irrelevant to the way they define and do their job, which is to find out what’s happening and tell the world about it. Ideologues don’t make it very far in political journalism.

That “but” that starts the fifth sentence is a big one (just as that “very” in the first sentence is a bit patronizing). The “but” divides a statement from an opinion. I agree with the statement. I disagree with the opinion.

How about this? The press is a group of individuals who come to the work from different backgrounds and with different motivations, and who report for organizations that have different backgrounds and motivations. A reporter may have a libertarian motivation and work for an established organization that is motivated to appear neutral. Another may be moderate politically and work for a media company that is pushing a conservative agenda. These things happen; we are not all tenured professors. (My turn to be patronizing.) Those motivations and backgrounds are not irrelevant – nor are they always tacit. So where does this view fit?

Rosen notes that he’s generalizing, that there are differentiations within the groups. Sure, there’s not much breathing space for my worldview, presented above, but these categories, while polarizing, aren’t the point of the article. And, besides, I suspect Rosen largely agrees with my formulation.

I say that because the Atlantic‘s Marc Ambinder asked a series of clarifying questions, to which Rosen responded with a post that is probably more instructive for practicing journalists than the original. He sums up his recommendations for political journalists (though they apply more broadly than that), the first two of which are:

Transition from the institutional voice to the individual journalist with a voice. This is already happening. The “voice of god,” a disembodied language in which the news came to be presented, is slowly being phased out while the opportunities for journalists to speak with voice and interact as human beings are on the rise. The symbol of this shift is the reporter who also blogs, but an even better marker is the blogger who is hired to do a job that a “straight” reporter might have done before, as with Ezra Klein covering health care reform and other wonkish subjects for the Washington Post. During the dramatic battles of 2009-10, Klein had no trouble making his views known on health care reform and reporting with credibility on the issue, a combination once thought impossible.

Gradually replace the view from nowhere with “here’s where I’m coming from.” The weakening of the institutional voice is good news for those who would like to find a better solution to the (tricky) problem of ideology in political journalism. The discovery that users want to make a connection to the people who bring them the news is also useful. These developments prepare the ground for the bigger and harder shift that awaits political journalists, which is to abandon the View from Nowhere as a means for generating trust and replace it with “here’s where I’m coming from,” which is a different—and, increasingly, a more plausible—way of generating trust.

(It is very much worth your time to read them all.)

In other words, Rosen suggests journalists create an understanding with their audience of background and motivation – and report from that authentic space.

Last month, I wrote a piece that considered the philosophy of Michael Kinsley. Kinsley made a similar argument about the role of a journalist with a voice. In his words:

Much of today’s opinion journalism, especially on TV, is not a great advertisement for the notion that American journalism could be improved by more opinion and less effort at objectivity. But that’s because the conditions under which much opinion journalism is practiced today make honesty harder and doubt practically impossible…. TV pundits need to radiate certainty for the sake of their careers. As Lou Dobbs has demonstrated, this doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind, as long as you are as certain in your opinion today as you were of the opposite opinion a couple of days ago.

But if opinion journalism became the norm, rather than a somewhat discredited exception to the norm, it might not be so often reduced to a parody of itself.

Kinsley, in discussing Dobbs, raises an additional important point I touched on earlier. What about the media companies?

The Post decided to accept Weigel’s resignation. CNN fired Nasr. What if they hadn’t? How would making different decisions have reflected on their other reporters? How do the decisions they actually made impact how those other reporters are regarded? To what extent can a journalist present where he or she is coming from when that location may be outside the dominion of his or her employer?

Take this example: Fox News. There’s a general sentiment that Fox has a viewpoint that they put forward. Or, to put it in “view from somewhere” terms – Fox hews to a conservative political worldview. How does – and should – this color our understanding of a commentator or journalist who follow’s Rosen’s suggestions? Not to mention the copy editors, editorial staff and headline writers.

The democratizing effect of the Web has shaken up media companies in obvious financial ways. But what Weigel, Nasr, Rosen and Kinsley are experiencing and commenting on is the democratization of opinion. The stolid editorial boards of two decades ago are the disparate personalities of today – just as anonymous bylines have become journalist’s brands. As such, journalists need to be more comfortable being themselves – and their employers need to feel comfortable in allowing it. The next Dave Weigel’s resignation, one would hope, would be rejected. In the future, we can assume, the next Octavia Nasr will have more latitude to explain her position.

Incidentally, I’m rooting for the Netherlands in the World Cup final. I’m letting you know that upfront in case I decide to write about it.

Photo of Jay Rosen from JD Lasica’s Flickr page.

The discussion at hand considered the cessation of immigration in its entirety. (The consensus on illegal immigration was expressed by Koch: “I’m absolutely opposed to the illegal, as we all are, and I want to root them out, kindly, and ship them back.”) Firing Line creator and host William F. Buckley, Jr., provided the panel with gentle lashes in the spirit of a cattle driver – traveling with the group, but with a destination in mind.

Guidance in perhaps a different direction came from the episode’s moderator Michael Kinsley. A recap in The Times relates that Kinsley:

…departs from his assumed objectivity at the end to chide the anti-immigrationists for supporting their case with polls that show that most Americans want restrictions on immigration…. Mr. Kinsley points out that the premise of “Firing Line” is that even majorities may benefit from persuasive argument.

This from the man who, a few months later, would become the founding editor of Slate.

The past decade has seen the worlds of technology and media blend to a degree nearly unimaginable in 2000. You know this, of course: Apple is the world’s largest music retailer; blogs drive information sharing; the most popular way to watch videos is through Google-owned YouTube, etc. The world of traditional media has shifted – been upended – accordingly.

Few have ridden the crest of this wave more savvily than Kinsley. That spirit of challenging conventional wisdom has been demonstrated both in his articulated opinions and his willingness to embrace new systems for sharing those thoughts. As a pundit on CNN’s Crossfire, editing Slate, leading the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times, and now at The Atlantic, Kinsley’s philosophy has been an open desire to speak truth to power, and to bend the boundaries of where and how the media engages with its audience. It’s a philosophy that blends nicely with the Internet – and mirrors the core tenets of the American experiment. It’s an idea, if widely adopted, that could rebuild the public conversation.

From an Adolescent CNN to an Infant Internet

The predicates for Kinsley’s worldview are in the old-school world of journalism: as an editor of The New Republic, a brief stint at the New Yorker, and later, Harper’s. He was baptized into the world of television by joining Buckley on Firing Line, eventually transitioning to a still-youthful, pre-Gulf War CNN in 1989. As the sitting liberal gladiator on CNN’s Crossfire (replacing founding host Tom Braden) he battled a rotating cast of conservatives including Pat Buchanan (when he wasn’t running for President), Robert Novak and John Sununu. (This was the time period when he coined what became known as a Kinsley gaffe: that a true mistake on the part of a politician was when he told the truth.) Crossfire, particularly in its Kinsley iteration, was one of the progenitors of debate-entertainment – and is regularly mentioned as something that could be integral in saving CNN.

At the time of the 1995 immigration debate, Kinsley was a few months away from leaving the show. That August, he was invited to Microsoft’s offices in Washington to discuss the founding of an online news magazine – a conversation which resulted in Slate.

It’s easy now to forget the nature of the web during Slate’s early years. Content was structured for dial-up visitors; Kinsley’s original idea for the magazine was that readers would print out the articles and staple them into a magazine. As early as 1998, Slate experimented with a subscription fee – one of the earliest attempts by a content publication to do so. Kinsley’s rationale for doing so is elucidated with his typical humor:

For a publication, like an individual, financial independence brings intellectual independence. The technical term for this, I believe, is “fuckyouability” (FUA). If you’re self-supporting, you can say “fuck you” to anyone, which is one important function of a magazine on almost any subject and in any medium.

The challenge, as publications have learned, is when readers and viewers confronted with appeals for payment return the sentiment. In his tenure at Slate the magazine never reached the goal of self-sufficiency with regularity. Kinsley stepped down as editor in 2002, shortly after revealing that he had Parkinson’s disease; he left the publication for good in 2004 to become opinions editor for the Los Angeles Times. In an interview with MSNBC at the time of his departure, he indicates that Slate was breaking even; in a history of Slate‘s first ten years, he admits that such success was sporadic.

In 2006, he expounded on the difference between the web and traditional magazines in seeking advertiser dollars.

[S]ubscribers don’t really pay for print magazines: Even very successful glossy magazines often don’t get enough from subscribers to cover the cost of finding them (through junk mail) and signing them up. The reason they bother to extract money from people is to persuade advertisers that these people really want the magazine and therefore are likely to actually read it. On the Web, you don’t have to do that indirectly: You know exactly how many people have clicked their way onto a page. That makes the whole system of soliciting and charging subscribers unnecessary. There will probably be a small role for subscriber-paid journalism on the Web, but not a large one.

This statement reflects an optimism about advertising that hasn’t been borne out. We’re seeing signs though that what didn’t work for Slate in 1998 – subscribed content – may work in 2010. Rupert Murdoch, and others, are demonstrating that it can. In 2006, though, few were in a better position than Kinsley to understand this debate.

>>>NEXT: When ‘Wikitorials’ Sounded Like A Good Idea

The controversy centers around a “beach party” held at the Bidens’ home at the Naval Observatory where journalists were invited to spend the day with White House staff and the Bidens for a kid-friendly event.  It’s the kind of event that happens a few times a year in a company town like Washington, D.C., where the press and the administration hang out for a casual break from the grind.

For Glenn Greenwald, however, the events occur too often and show too cozy a relationship between the media and the administration.  Responding to a post  by Marc Ambinder, Salon’s Greenwald said the spectacle of journalists chatting with White House officials at a party “helpfully reveals what our nation’s leading “journalists” really are:  desperate worshipers of political power who are far more eager to be part of it and to serve it than to act as adversarial checks against it — and who, in fact, are Royal Court Spokespeople regardless of which monarch is ruling.”

Ouch.

While not directly mentioning Greenwald, The Atlantic’s Ambinder anticipated the criticism acknowledging “these aren’t ordinary afternoons, and the very idea that a journalist would accept a slice of watermelon from the Vice President strikes many a critical activist as criminally insane — an example of the cozy relationships that exist between journalists and their sources, an example of how the oppositional role of the press has been compromised by people in power.”

Ambinder defended his decision to go by saying “a bunch of really good, hardened, news-breaking, interest-accountable holding reporters are in fact able to share more comfortable moments with people they cover.”

Progressive commentators piled-on the beach party with Daily Kos‘s Susan Gardner complaining journalists were “a class totally unworthy of the First Amendment protections the Founders created for them. America deserves so much better.” Matthew Yglesias chimed in that reporters can get “captured by their sources” while officials become “unduly concerned about the press coverage they get.” Maybe Yglesias’ bosses at Obama’s favorite think tank and farm team for the administration–the Center for American Progress–can mention that next time they are invited to a State Dinner.

It is a perennial question that arises every year during press dinner season–capped by the White House Correspondents Dinner–where people wonder whether reporters should be yukking it up with the president and members of Congress in the evening after being adversaries during the day. The New York Times–whose staff was at the Biden beach party–does not participate in nerd prom.

(Full disclosure.  During the Bush administration, I attended four “nerd proms” and took mid-level members of the administration at least twice.  I met Justice Antonin Scalia once and learned that my guest had a weakness for the Food Network. Alas, I’ve never been to the White House or the Vice President’s House, except on a tour.)

So who wins between Ambinder and Greenwald?  Arguably, it’s a draw.

Greenwald is rightly concerned that these kinds of cozy events look bad for people who think journalists shouldn’t be so friendly with the people they cover.  It does give the appearance of bias and impropriety and appearances are as big a worry as actual bias and impropriety.  In addition, Greenwald is right to be concerned that journalists can become so enamored by the attention from D.C.’s ruling class that they may fail to ask the tough questions for fear of not getting an invite to the next hoedown.

On the other hand, the idea that Ambinder or any reporter is suddenly going to say nice things about Emanuel and Biden just because they noshed hot dogs together on a hot, June Saturday doesn’t really understand how journalism or Washington works. Just as attorneys can be civil with opposing counsel, journalists can be civil with the people they cover without it meaning they won’t ask hard questions the next day.

Of course, relationships can become too close and journalists can be too friendly with the people they cover.  But a single beach party with the kids or an evening in tuxedos and evening dresses with administration officials isn’t likely going to compromise the adversarial relationship between journalists and the people they cover.

Would journalists be better off if they never had friendly interactions with the people they cover? If Ambinder runs into Emanuel at Ben’s Chili Bowl, is he supposed to turn on his heels lest it be viewed as too friendly an interaction? Where exactly is the line?