PHOTODUDE.COM

Don't Get Du-Cocky

Though I have to admit my current thoughts lean in the same direction, this edges into a dangerous zone:

Never will a campaign predict a landslide, but if only, say, half of the assumptions that guide Obama’s general election strategy are true, his campaign is, in essence, preparing for a landslide in the popular vote.

Marc Ambinder – What The Obama Campaign Is Really Saying

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s one:

I seem to recall in 1988, when I took this photo of a cocky crew at the Democratic National Convention, they led by almost 20 points in the “current” polling (August, 1988). One might have thought back then that Americans were ready for change after two terms of Republicans. But by November, the story had changed radically, and the land slid the opposite direction.

This time around, we have current president with an “approval” rating of 23 percent. In other words, when it comes to public opinion about his actions, he has absolutely nothing to lose, and he has the capability to shift the playing field considerably between now and November.

This is no time for anyone to get cocky.

Say Goodnight to the Hippy Dippy Weatherman

In 1972, I turned 14, and for Christmas I got [a] one of those fold-up “record players” and [b] three albums of my choosing. The first two I picked were “Paranoid” by Black Sabbath and The Fifth Dimension “Live.”

Yes, I was eclectic as a child, too.

But perhaps the most formative choice in many ways was the third, Class Clown by George Carlin. It contained the infamous “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” which spawned a lawsuit that ended up before the Supreme Court. I would also note that the word “never” turned out to be a bit strong, as many of those words can now be heard on “regular” cable TV, never mind HBO/Showtime, etc.

But it wasn’t those specific seven words that titillated my 14 year old brain, it was the way he played with words of all kinds, and the way he took simple observations and made them … profound. Or profoundly funny. His mind worked a bit like mine: oddly. The best example may be his bit about blue food:

I often wonder why there’s no blue food. Every other color is well represented in the food kingdom. And don’t bother me with blueberries; they’re purple. The same is true with blue corn and blue potatoes. They’re purple. Blue cheese? Nice try. It’s actually white cheese with blue mold. Occasionally, you might run across some blue Jell-o in a cafeteria. Don’t eat it. It wasn’t supposed to be blue. Something went wrong.

Carlin was a comedian I enjoyed for many years. Though recently some have thought he’d just become a cantankerous old man, well, let’s just say I could relate. Thus, my great sadness to find out that he passed away tonight of apparent heart failure.

Both his earlier lifestyle and heart troubles were well known. In 1983, he joked about it:

An update on the comedian health sweepstakes. I currently lead Richard Pryor in heart attacks 2 to 1. But Richard still leads me 1 to nothing in burning yourself up. See, it happened like this. First Richard had a heart attack. Then I had a heart attack. Then Richard burned himself up. And I said, ‘Fuck that. I’m having another heart attack!’

Well, I guess it’s time for a final update in the comedian health sweepstakes. George and Richard are likely now sitting around laughing at new jokes you and I can’t even understand, no longer worried about heart attacks or the lack of blue food. Or George is asking God, “So, I’ve been asking since I was a kid …. can you create a rock so big even you can’t lift it?”

Rest in peace, George, and thanks for all the laughs.

[Note: the article title is a reference to a Carlin character, Al Sleet]

The Alternate Reality Known As The Associated Press

The astounding arrogance of the Associated Press has managed to wake me from my blogslumber. They are suggesting that bloggers must pay for any quote of their work more than four words long. In other words, you could quote them saying “We’re clueless idiots” for free, but quoting them saying “We are idiots without a clue” would cost you $12.50.

The pricing scale for excerpting AP content begins at $12.50 for 5-25 words and goes as high as $100 for 251 words and up. Nonprofit organizations and educational institutions enjoy a discounted rate.

AP sets up a toll booth for bloggers citing its stories

So, when cancer is cured, and the American Cancer Society wants to quote the glorious news (or rather, more than four words of it), they will get a discounted rate from AP. How nice.

They recently went after Rogers Cadenhead at the Drudge Retort, issuing a cease and desist order over some very small quotes from their stories. Mr. Cadenhead, as bloggers are wont to do, spread the word, “hey, can you believe what these guys are trying to do to me?” (given the issue, that’s a paraphrase, not a direct quote, though I’m sure Rogers would not charge me $12.50 for one).

No, sir, we can’t believe it at all.

Oh, and it gets better. The AP claims that it can revoke the license at any time if it feels you’re saying something negative about the Associated Press: “Publisher reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if Publisher or its agents finds Your use of the licensed Content to be offensive and/or damaging to Publisher’s reputation.”

Now, these are the terms that the AP has had on its site for some time — but they explain why the AP went after the Drudge Retort for quoting less than 100 words. To the AP, that was a violation requiring a $25 license. So, while some believe that those criticizing the AP are overreacting, I’d argue that’s not the case at all. This is not, as suggested, a one-time thing. This is an ongoing pattern of misuse of copyright law by the AP.

Associated Press: Fair Use Limits You To Four Words; Five Words Costs $12.50

So, if you quote a portion their work in order to critique it, one of the legal definitions of “fair use” (see “book review”), they will terminate the “license” that wasn’t legally required to quote it in the first place. Nice racket.

The laws of fair usage of copyrighted material unfortunately do not cover the exact increment of a work that can legally be quoted (and it varies by content-type … how do you “quote” a portion of a photograph for the purposes of education or commentary?), but it seems clear AP is attempting to render and/or negotiate their own unique interpretation of the law.

To quote more than four words from the Beatles, “Because I told you before, oh, you can’t do that.” Some people who have weekly ad revenues in a number that ends with four zeros are willing to challenge you: “Hey AP — that’s 120 words. Have your lawyers call my lawyers.”

As for me, my weekly ad revenue might buy me a beer. So how’s this for “negotiation”? You guys at the Associated Press can continue “publishing” your content on your own web site, praying that people might find it there, and I will, from now on, pretend that you never existed as a news entity worthy of quoting. I, and many many other bloggers, will now never link or quote your content again, one word or one hundred.

Now, let’s check back in five years, and we’ll determine who “won” these negotiations. Because AP is already teetering on the financial brink. But I guarantee that in five years I will still be here, with plenty of other sources to link and quote.

Sequential Time Check

It is now 04:05 on 06/07/08.

That is all. Go back to bed.

Notes During A Busy Week

I realize I have recently moved beyond the point where people can expect even one post a week from me here. There’s currently a confluence of reasons.

First of all, while my children run around barefoot, my clients have closets filed with the finest shoes money can buy. My shoe output over the past couple of months has been fairly phenomenal, you just haven’t seen the first sole or shoestring here.

I’ve also been very distracted trying to keep track of the day-by-day vacillations: “Is Clinton getting out, or staying in?” Today alone, it’s been a bit like the “Occupied/Unoccupied” sign on a airliner bathroom. “The plane is about to land, ma’am, you’ve got to come out of there!”

But mostly, it’s one Über Deadline: this Sunday, my stepson is getting married, and let’s just say there’s a whole lot of input and output going on in these final days before the event. So, the next major “content dump” won’t be at this site, it will be at this one, with a ton of photos and video coming late Sunday or Monday.

As for this site, the best I can do for you right now is point you to web sites where there is new content. Maybe this will become one of them in a couple more weeks.

Held Hostage by Hillary

I’ve stayed away from this topic as long as I can bear. Sort of like when some drunken fan runs onto the football field hoping to get on TV, the best thing you can do is put the cameras on the announcer’s booth and ignore the attempt to steal the spotlight.

But, I, and many others, see a political party being taken hostage. It bubbled up as a result of comments earlier this week:

Desperate to get attention for her cause to seat Florida and Michigan delegates, Hillary Clinton compared the plight of Zimbabweans in their recent fraudulent election to the uncounted votes of Michigan and Florida voters saying it is wrong when “people go through the motions of an election only to have them discarded and disregarded.”

“We’re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe,” Clinton explained. “Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people,” Clinton told the crowd of senior citizens at a retirement community in south Florida.

In just one day, Clinton has used a variety of arguments to convince her party to seat Florida and Michigan delegates, going as far as comparing the struggles of the voters in Florida and Michigan to those of abolitionists, suffragists, to the plight of Zimbabweans. Clinton even warned that if a resolution is not reached, Democrats in these two states would feel abandoned and likely jump ship to Republican John McCain.

“I think people across Florida and Michigan are thinking to themselves, ‘Well if the Democrats don’t want my vote, maybe John McCain and the Republicans do?’ We can’t let that happen,” she told the small crowd.

Clinton Desperate to Count Votes, Compares Fla. Primary to Zimbabwe – From The Road

Un-freakin-believable. The DNC-forged plan for punishing Florida and Michigan that Hillary willingly signed onto last fall (see “Clinton, Obama and Edwards Join Pledge to Avoid Defiant States“) is now described as a disenfranchisement on a par with denying women, blacks, and Zimbabweans their right to vote? And then to suggest that Floridians might just as well vote Republican in the fall?

One hardly knows how to respond to such a mountain of manure.

Josh Marshall describes it as “Toxic,” Jonathan Chait says it’s “Shocking,” and Jonathan Alter calls it “Popular Vote Poison (“The shorthand many Clinton supporters are already taking into the summer is that she won the popular vote but had the nomination ‘taken away’ (as Joy Behar said on The View) by a man”).

It’s gotten to the point where the headlines scream, “What Does Hillary Want?”

The current scuttlebutt seems to be that she is leveraging her position to get an offer to be VP. Depending on who you want to believe, this is [1] being pushed mainly by Bill, [2] would be routinely turned down so that one of her allies could take the spot instead, but she feels like she is owed the public offer just the same, [3] would be publicly offered on the assumption and assurance she’d turned it down … and then she’d double-cross the Obama team and accept it, [4] the Clinton camp has already been told in no uncertain terms such an offer will not be forthcoming, and/or [5] Obama’s refusal “could mean open civil war within the party…”

It’s like trying to guess the inner workings of a hostage negotiation from several miles away. No one wants to talk about what’s really happening for fear of tipping the balance, but, essentially, it sounds like someone refuses to relinquish control of something that isn’t rightfully theirs, and they won’t come out until their demands are met. They say they may take everyone out with them, if it comes to that.

All that’s missing is the SWAT team and police tape line.

As for Hillary’s argument that she’s fighting to see that the delegations from Florida and Michigan are seated, the quickest way she can insure that will happen is to publicly drop out of the race. At that point, nearly instantly, the DNC will make arrangements to seat at least a portion of the delegations, as their votes will no longer be relevant to the outcome. As if they ever were.

I do indeed feel sorry for the citizens of Florida and Michigan, as they didn’t do anything to deserve this. Their state party leaders did. In poker terms, they were dealt an off-suit 9 and 6, and went all in. It was a stupid bluff that cost them their seat at the table. There simply has to be some accountability for that.

If I were Howard Dean, once the Hillary Hostage Crisis is over, I’d seat both delegations in full, split 50-50 between the candidates. And I’d tell the super delegates from both states I hoped they had a nice big screen TV to watch the convention. Because the super delegates largely are the Big Wig party leaders in each state who either participated in this madness or sat back and did nothing to stop it. They are the ones who should pay. The people of each state get some form of full representation, and the state party leaders get to go pound sand.

As for this seeming hostage crisis … I say you don’t negotiate with those who are working to overturn the process. If the situation were reversed, the Clintons would insist that the important choice of running mate could not be strong-armed. Hell, they’d be screaming every day, “Why Is He Still In The Race?”

It’s time to suspend this delusion. It’s time to state it plainly. Hillary has lost. Irrefutably, by the rules, fair and square. Hillary is being a Bad Loser, unlike the many candidates who dropped out prior to now on both sides.

Hillary is finishing showing us exactly why she is the wrong choice for this job.

And if it comes to threats of an intra-party civil war, Hillary will wage it as effectively as she waged the campaign to wrap up the nomination by Feb. 5.

She, too, should be told to go pound sand, and instead of Ted Kennedy in 1980 being the prime historic example, Hillary will be remembered as a the Ultimate Sore Loser. That will become the well-earned Clinton legacy.

Noxious Norman and Curious George

No matter how far we may have come as a society, there’s always a local yokel to remind people, “we’ve still got a ways to go”:

Marietta tavern owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he’s peddling, featuring cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with “Obama in ’08” scrolled underneath, are “cute.” But to a coalition of critics, the shirts are an insulting exploitation of racial stereotypes from generations past.

“It’s time to put an end to this,” said Rich Pellegrino, a Mableton resident and director of the Cobb-Cherokee Immigrant Alliance. It was among the organizations planning to gather outside Mulligan’s Bar and Grill Tuesday afternoon to protest the “racist and highly offensive” shirts.

AJC: Cobb bar protested as racist for Obama T-shirts

While I might applaud Mr. Pellegrino’s initiative, I would also suggest this can be resolved with one simple phone call or email. From the bottom PBS’s Curious George page:

Curious George and related characters, created by Margret and H.A. Rey, are copyrighted and trademarked by Houghton Mifflin Company and used under license. Licensed by Universal Studios Licensing LLLP.

© 2008 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Despite the fact “Norman said proceeds raised from sales of the T-shirts will be donated to the Muscular Dystrophy Association,” I’m betting once Universal’s barrel o’ lawyers catch a whiff of this, they will shower Mr. Norman in a hail of “cease and desist.”

He may deserve more, but it’s not like he’s someone who has a mind that is open to change.