THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Citizen Journalists Vs. MSM Hacks: Former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, whose “reporting” consisted of making stuff up and plagiarizing others’ work, was the keynote speaker at Washington and Lee university’s semi-annual Journalism Ethics Institute last week, reports NPR:
"Getting Jayson Blair obviously was a departure," says Edward Wasserman, the Knight professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee.
Indeed. The keynote address is typically reserved for people like Lowell Bergman or Toni Locy, journalists who withstood pressure from zealous prosecutors or corporate heavies.
This time, Wasserman says he found inspiration in a newspaper account of Blair's new career as a life coach for people who, like Blair, suffer from mental illness and substance abuse.
Blair hasn't talked much in public about his own wrongdoing - not since he did a media tour in early 2004 for his memoir, Burning Down My Masters' House. The book started with an admission of deceit but spent much energy pointing fingers at his colleagues for their own behavior.
† (Islamo)Fascist Fashionistas (fourth item): During the summer, Paris couturiers (that's French for "hacks") debuted burka-inspired garments on the catwalk “inspired” by articles about President Nicolas Sarkozy calling the shroud that covers Muslim women from head-to-toe a symbol of subservience that is not welcome in France, explains fashion blog Luxist.
In what was meant to be a thumb in the eye of Islamofascist forces, Pakistan went the other way in the country’s first-ever fashion show last week, reports The Associated Press:
Some women strode the catwalk in vicious spiked bracelets and body armor. Others had their heads covered, burqa-style, but with shoulders - and tattoos - exposed. Male models wore long, Islamic robes as well as shorts and sequined T-shirts. …
Many of the models, designers and well-heeled fashionistas packing out each night said the gathering was a symbolic blow to the Taliban and their vision of society, where women are largely confined to the house and must wear a sack-like covering known as a burqa.
"This is our gesture of defiance to the Taliban," said Ayesha Tammy Haq, the CEO of Fashion Pakistan Week. "There is a terrible problem of militancy and political upheaval ... but that doesn't mean that the country shuts down. That doesn't mean that business comes to a halt." …
While the shows in Karachi resembled fashion weeks in other parts of the world, there were no foreign designers or buyers. The organizers decided not to invite them given the precarious security situation.
The fashion show resembled its Western counterparts in one other way: Designer Ayesha Tahir Masood tells AP that "[o]nly 0.001 percent of Pakistani women would wear these clothes, and then only in a controlled environment when drunk out of their minds."
Editorial Note: If Luxist is correct that designers take their inspiration from the zeitgeist created by mass media coverage, then what are we to make of fall fashions featuring garments, shoes, handbags and accessories in zebra, tiger, leopard and giraffe patterns now that America has elected its first biracial president? It’s a jungle in most department stores nowadays. Coincidence, or latent racism? Discuss.
† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Why We Need Gitmo): The Telegraph (London) reports that some Gitmo detainees would rather stay at the military prison than be transferred to federal the federal "supermax" prison at Florence, CO. And who can blame them:
Peter King, a Republican congressman who visited earlier this year and wants the prison kept open, said that "if there's any scandal at Guantánamo, it is that the detainees are treated too well".
The 221 remaining inmates receive between four and 20 hours outdoor recreation in the Caribbean sun and anything from weekly to almost unlimited access to DVDs and receive three newspapers (USA Today, plus one Egyptian and one Saudi Arabian title) twice a week. Every bed has an arrow pointing towards Mecca and every cell a prayer rug. …
The detainees' diet is exclusively Middle Eastern and halal, in observance of regional and religious sensitivities. … They drink the same bottled water as the prison's staff.
Here’s what life would be like at the Florence facility:
Prisoners would spend 22½ hours a day in a 9ft by 9ft cell with the only natural light coming from a skylight outside.
Exercise would be limited to an hour and a half indoors five days a week and they would have minimal contact with others, including the 33 other international terrorists held there.
According to an Arab American cultural adviser who works at Gitmo, the detainees enjoy the fresh ocean breeze.
While it’s tempting to want the hardened terrorists at Gitmo – in particular, KSM – to suffer as much as possible, there are good reasons not to move them to a mainland prison, argues former U.S. attorney general Michael Mukasey in this Washington Post op-ed:
The very transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo to this country has consequences. The question of what constitutional rights may apply to aliens in government custody is unsettled, but it is clear from existing jurisprudence that physical presence in the United States would be a significant, if not a decisive, factor. That presence would generate serious security concerns for any person or place associated with their prosecution or confinement, would facilitate the torrent of lawsuits that several lawyers have promised to bring on detainees' behalf once they come within the jurisdiction of any federal court, and would present those in custody and those yet at large with a cornucopia of valuable information disclosed as part of discovery in criminal cases and during the trial - all of this notwithstanding the availability of a congressionally created forum in a location that is remote, secure and (agitprop to the contrary notwithstanding) humane.
So keeping Gitmo open is win-win for terrorists and American citizens alike. They get to live in a gilded cage, we get to keep them there far longer than would be possible once they became residents of U.S. prisons and subject to all the protections of the U.S. Constitution – just like illegal aliens, as the dust-up over how the U.S. census should be conducted (sixth item) has illustrated.
† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times): Crocs swung to a 3Q profit of $22.1 million - a year earlier the company had posted a loss of $148 million - but CEO John Duerden doesn't expect the good times to persist into 4Q, as their business is seasonal (who would want to walk on slushy sidewalks with shoes that are polka-dotted with holes?). Shares dropped 18 percent on the cautionary projection.
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