The Smithian

February 20th, 2013

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Either John Boehner actually believes the transparent nonsense he wrote for the Wall Street Journal, which would mean the Speaker is alarmingly ignorant about the basics of current events, he’s deliberately trying to deceive the public, counting on Americans to be foolish enough to buy demonstrable falsehoods.

more, plus link to Boehner’s op-ed, here.
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art: by Chris Piascik

Either John Boehner actually believes the transparent nonsense he wrote for the Wall Street Journal, which would mean the Speaker is alarmingly ignorant about the basics of current events, he’s deliberately trying to deceive the public, counting on Americans to be foolish enough to buy demonstrable falsehoods.

more, plus link to Boehner’s op-ed, here.

+++++

art: by Chris Piascik

August 26th, 2012

thesmithian

'Romney told The Wall Street Journal that he won’t indulge those who want him to “lie down and let it all out”; he won’t be personalized “like I’m a piece of meat”; he won’t do a version of “This Is Your Life”; and he won’t “take everybody to my childhood home and say, ‘Here’s where I rode my bicycle.’” Even if he wanted to, Mitt couldn’t reveal himself. He has recast his positions so many times, he doesn’t seem to know who he is. He presents himself as a uniter who disdains negative campaigning, and then in the next breath, in his home state of Michigan...he makes a...birther crack about the president—a bat’s squeak calling to the basest emotions—especially bizarre given that his own father was born out of the country, in Mexico, with a questionable right to run for president.'

May 30th, 2012

thesmithian

'...Women wrote 20 percent of op-eds in the nation’s leading newspapers—The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal—between September 15 and December 7, 2011, according to a byline survey conducted by Taryn Yaeger of The OpEd Project, an organization that aims to diversify public debate...And women were practically absent in the debate of many hard news subjects, with their opinions accounting for 11 percent of commentaries on the economy, 13 percent on international politics, 14 percent on social action and 16 percent on security. Perhaps just as striking, women produced just over half—53 percent—of commentaries on “women’s issues.”'

April 24th, 2012

thesmithian

'If you want to appreciate what Barack Obama is up against in 2012, forget about the front man who is his nominal opponent and look instead at the Republican billionaires buying the ammunition for the battles ahead. A representative example is Harold Simmons, an 80-year-old Texan who dumped some $15 million into the campaign before primary season had ended. Reminiscing about 2008, when he bankrolled an ad blitz to tar the Democrats with the former radical Bill Ayers, Simmons told The Wall Street Journal, “If we had run more ads, we could have killed Obama.” It is not a mistake he intends to make a second time.'

January 29th, 2012

thesmithian

This Wall Street Journal segment discusses the results of a study that investigated how media depictions of college quarterbacks’ performances. A recent study published in the Academic of Management Journal found that media coverage rarely gave African American quarterbacks credit for leadership. When their teams do well, it is because of their natural athletic talent; when they do poorly, it is lack of leadership—blame not equally placed on White quarterbacks when their teams do poorly. So Blacks are blamed more for losses but get less credit for successes—an outcome of stereotyping that has disturbing implications for hiring and promotion in the workplace…

more.

January 14th, 2012

thesmithian

While The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and the New York Daily News have close to male-female parity…Time magazine has nine men and only one woman, Newsweek/The Daily Beast has six men and three women, The Atlantic has seven men and two women, New York magazine has six men and one woman, and The Economist went for broke, with an all-male team of five. At The Boston Globe (seven men, three women) and Reuters (eight men, three women), the ratio is more than two to one.

on the web, things look similar:

The Huffington Post has eleven men and only two women; Politico has twelve male reporters and six women on the campaign trail, Talking Points Memo has five men and one woman, and Slate and The Daily both have all-male teams.

more, plus a list of 2012 campaign reporters, here.

While The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, and the New York Daily News have close to male-female parity…Time magazine has nine men and only one woman, Newsweek/The Daily Beast has six men and three women, The Atlantic has seven men and two women, New York magazine has six men and one woman, and The Economist went for broke, with an all-male team of five. At The Boston Globe (seven men, three women) and Reuters (eight men, three women), the ratio is more than two to one.

on the web, things look similar:

The Huffington Post has eleven men and only two women; Politico has twelve male reporters and six women on the campaign trail, Talking Points Memo has five men and one woman, and Slate and The Daily both have all-male teams.

more, plus a list of 2012 campaign reporters, here.