Political Discourse 2020

Jack is Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO. He lists “a few reasons” for the decision following this initial post, which you can find by clicking here. The “discussion” degenerates from there (fair warning). 

“[T]he decision illustrates a sharp symbolic rift between Dorsey and one of his peers, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who on Wednesday stood by his company’s controversial policy that essentially allows politicians to lie in ads. . . . ‘In a democracy, I don’t think it’s right for private companies to censor politicians or the news,’ Zuckerberg said.”

See “Twitter to ban all political ads amid 2020 election uproar,” The Washington Post, Oct. 30, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: Wait. Politicians lie?

WORDmeister PS: Thank you, concerned WORDsters, for your queries about fire and powerlessness. Yes, PG&E has restored our electricity (for now). We were never in any jeopardy of fire here in Humboldt, but the wildfires continue to our south, where 1 million people are reported without electrical power. On Oct. 29, PBS’s Frontline aired Fire in Paradise, almost a year after a PG&E-sparked inferno wiped out the town of Paradise, CA, near Chico. Coming in the midst of PG&E’s recent attempts to “manage” fire danger by shutting down the grid, it’s timely. And chilling. Recommended.  

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Prayer

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Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Yesteryear

“They savor the thrill of the first hit of newsprint in the morning, with its slightly acrid odor and its ironclad association with the first cup of coffee. 

“They have mastered the origami skills required to read the paper on the subway. They appreciate the staggered hierarchy of the front page . . . . 

“And they can foretell how their copy will end up: folded to the crossword puzzle, decorated with various stains, missing a recipe or a travel tip, ready to return unto pulp.”

—Luc Sante, writer, “The Daily Miracle: Finding Magic Inside the Times’s Printing Plant,” The New York Times, March 26, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: Ah, that evocative first tweet of the day, and the shriek of coffee in the keyboard.

  

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Symmetry

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Journalism’s Collapse

Powerless in the Heart of Northern California Blackout Country: As horrific wildfires burn to our south, PG&E has turned the power on here long enough to grind coffee, warm up the house and send out tomorrow’s WORD before the blackout returns overnight through Wednesday. I think I’ll send you all the WORD now. Good night, and think enlightened thoughts. See what I did there?

“This is the first presidential election happening after the business model for journalism collapsed. Advertising revenue for print newspapers has fallen by two-thirds since 2006. From 2008 to 2018, the number of newspaper reporters dropped 47 percent.  Two-thirds of counties in America now have no daily newspaper, and 1,300 communities have lost all local coverage.” 

—Matt Stoller, fellow, Open Markets Institute, “Tech Companies Are Destroying Democracy and the Free Press,” New York Times, Oct. 17, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: Without newspapers, will we even notice Campaign 2020?

  

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November’s Senior News, on newsstands everywhere Tuesday
 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

What hubris?

“One of the things that I think we’re going to need to work on a lot going forward is, it’s just not clear to me that us sitting in an office here in California are best placed to always determine what the policy should be for people all around the world.” 

—Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook mogul, from his Stating The Obvious Collection. Interviewed by Ezra Klein, “Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s hardest year, and what comes next,” Vox, April 2, 2018. 

• Editorial Comment: Well, I’m reassured. Aren't you?

  

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Rockpile
 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Our Peril

“Look, we’re in an existential moment now. We are at peril and at risk if we don’t know the difference between truth and lies. Truth and lies are the only things that separate us from democracy and dictatorship. And we have to know. We have to know.”

—Christiane Amanpour, CNN chief international correspondent, South by Southwest interview, Record Decode, Vox.com, March 2018. (Thanks to alert WORDster Carol Wiebe)

• Editorial Comment: We know.

PeezPix

“You will find something more in woods than in books.” –Saint Bernard
 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Stop the Presses!

“The White House said Tuesday that it is canceling subscriptions to The New York Times and The Washington Post less than a day after President Trump suggested  terminating them.

“‘We have no plans to renew them,’ White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told The Hill on Tuesday.

“‘We don’t even want it [the Times] in the White House anymore,’ Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity during an interview that aired Monday night. ‘We’re going to probably terminate that and The Washington Post. They’re fake.’”

—Jessica Campisi, reporter, “White House to cancel subscriptions to New York Times, Washington Post after Trump remarks,” The Hill, Oct. 22, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: The newspaper business is doomed.

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“Come to the woods, for here is rest.” –John Muir

 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Pretty Damn Free

“If you never encounter anything that offends you, you are not living in a free society.”

—Avril Phaedra “Kim” Campbell, Canada’s only woman prime minister (June-Nov. 1993), 2004.

• Editorial Comment: Society is pretty damn free these days, Ms. Campbell.

Sometime later . . . “I have deleted my tweet about the hurricane & Mar-a-Lago and sincerely apologize to all it offended,” Campbell said in a tweet. “It was intended as sarcasm — not a serious wish of harm. Throwaway lines get a life of their own on Twitter. I sh[oul]d know better. Mea culpa.” —after “rooting” for Hurricane Dorian to hit the Trump resort, August 2019. Story.

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Plateface #9526

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Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Bad Writing

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. It cheapens and degrades the human experience, when it should inspire and elevate.”

—Tom Waits, singer-songwriter, “Strange Innocence,” Vanity Fair, July 2001.

• Editorial Comment: I’m *trying,* Tom!

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The Old Pier

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Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

The ‘Universal He’

“I am the generic he, as in, ‘If anybody needs an abortion he will have to go to another state,’ or ‘A writer knows which side his bread is buttered on.’ That’s me, the writer, him. I am a man. Not maybe a first-rate man. 

“I’m perfectly willing to admit that I may be in fact a kind of second-rate or imitation man, a Pretend-a-Him. As a him, I am to a genuine male him as a microwaved fish stick is to a whole grilled Chinook salmon.”

—Ursula K. Leguin (1929-2018), writer, “Ursula K. Leguin on Being a Man,” in Brainpickings, 2014. (Thanks to alert WORDster Mark Larson)

• Editorial Comment: Oh, fishsticks.

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Artichoke blooms

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Le mot juste*

“A new word leaped off the front page at me this week, ‘tranche,’ which I’d never seen before. This is exciting when you’re 77, like being approached by a platypus on the street wearing a sign, ‘Look before you leap.’ I’ve seen a platypus before but not a platitudinous one.

“‘Tranche’ means a portion of something, and it’s used in finance, so that’s why I don’t know it. The New York Times said Congress had subpoenaed Secretary Pompeo, ‘demanding that he promptly produce a tranche of documents.’ 

“I imagine the Times said ‘tranche’ rather than ‘portion’ because it sounds more important: ‘portion,’ to me, means two small potatoes, a cup of peas, and one slice of meatloaf.” 

—Garrison Keillor, writer and blogger, “Another fine week here in the republic,” Oct. 4, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: The newspaper of the common man. 

*Le mot juste: the appropriate word for the situation.

 

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Good night, boats

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 

 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard