The Week That Was

Napolitano, Janet
Disturbing ability to predict future events results in her being barred from several Las Vegas casinos.

Letterman, David
"Joke" by achieves the impossible: unites NOW, the Palins, textee and rose83 in agreement, and actually causes the latter to feel bad for A-Rod.

Capitalism, Free Market
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Merging with Movement, Evangelical to produce new religion in United States. Characterized by situational ethics and a lack of adherence to any definable concrete principles beyond Taxes, Lower and Wars, Many, and Bailouts, Selective, Bank-related.
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See Hypocrisy, Evidence of.

Limbaugh, Rush
See von Brunn, James W.

Palin, Governor Sarah
Former republican VP candidate who accepted decision not to let her speak at republican fundraiser but couldn't resist the opportunity for more fancy pageant walking on a stage. See media ho'.

KT- why are you throwing anything away? are things really so bad that Time can't afford a scanner?
(says the packrat)

sacred is that what Roland twitted, tweeted, whatevered about?
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@Roland_Hedley: Letterman: Palin updates "slutty" stewardess look @
Bloomie's. Irate Palin: Never went to Bloomie's. Needs outrage advisor.

Obama, President Barack
Writes fourth grader an excuse for missing last day of class providing her with a memento she'll treasure for the rest of her life. Young girl placed on terrorist watch list by outraged house republicans.

That Onion J.D. Salinger article was hilarious, thanks for that.

Klein, Joe
So intent on proving that real reporters are better than bloggers inadvertantly makes all other reporters look lame in comparison as well....

Pnnto: I've never read a twitter. Sarah does have the slutty stewardess look downpat though. If she ever decides to stop making laps on the speaker circuit, she could still make a fortune on the lapdance circuit. The fine line between poll dancing and pole dancing can be easily mistaken. When she was doing her winking thing during the VP debates, I wasn't sure if she wanted me to make a campaign donation or just lay the money on her nightstand.

ha scared someone sent that to me this week and I've been waiting to shoehorn it in.
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Giving you something to riff on was just a bonus.

Pnnto: I appreciate the opportunity to go off on Sarah. Feel free to set me up whenever you like. I can't resist.

KT: No "1000 Words" for us to play with over the weekend? Moving day is just sooooo disruptive for us swampcritters. Since Amy isn't there...what are you folks going to do with her porn collection? Are you just going to leave all those file cabinets where they are? Inquiring minds want to know.

One other thing. Any quotes or articles you might be thinking of keeping from Rosen...burn them. They're not worth saving.

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Outraged Andy Breitbart is Outraged
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James von Brunn is exactly like a lesbian studies major.
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Note: voicemail is NSFW. Repeat, NSFW. Unless your work is selling lots at Glengarry Highlands and Glen Ross Farms, of course.
~

Sullivan, Amy
"Handkerchief" of, accidentally pulled out by Sacredh. Steamy affair exposed.

You, Things that Time Magazine Won't (note: I'd insert the full list but they haven't installed my direct link to the internet backbone yet.)

Describe, Groups that Time Magazine Won't Ever Accurately

Breitbart, Andrew
See Limbaugh, Rush

Saw it and responded, using Jeff Rosen's latest sins against truth and justice as an example.

OT (sorry, all)
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Rose:
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That essay by Wacquant is a fantastic reiteration of what I've been trying to get at in these discussions, albeit in the form of a critique of Ann Laura Stoler (I wish I'd read that essay first) and Michel Foucault (lecherous, nonsensical freak possessed of some epiphanies).
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In particular, the section "The Logic of the Trial" is extraordinarily adept in its arguments against our current, bloated, inebriated-with-righteousness, non-analytic, dysfunctional discourse on race --especially in this country.
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Wacqlan writes:

All these reasons make it urgent to reassert that to conduct sociological analysis is not to conduct a trial. The purpose of sociohistorical investigation is not to establish guilt and to affix blame for unpalatable social facts but to break those down into their constituent components so as to uncover the social and symbolic mechanisms that produce, reproduce or transform them over time and across space. Its end-purpose is to explain and understand, not to excoriate or exculpate, denigrate or celebrate.

, and this is undoubtedly true.
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I have been for the most part treating this forum as a means for us (professional journalists, amateur journalists, advocates and engaged news consumers) to explain and understand events and situations, and to perform analysis according to rules whose purpose is to create the greater likelihood of public exposure to that which is true. I have been using the premise that arguments --even arguments involving rhetoric as the primary vehicle for ideas, as opposed to more empirical or rational bases-- here are for Socratic purposes, not political goals, and certainly not personal vendettas or grievances. This is not to say that I do not have political goals, or am performing acts of sociology, or that I always prevent myself from responding emotionally (obviously not the case), but the primary purpose of my involvement is to revive Enlightenment-era Coffeehouse discourse, and to decrease the opacity or obscurity of the journalism, propositions and discussion presented:

The cafés earned their place in the public sphere due to the conversation that took place within them. Robert Darnton in particular has studied Parisian café conversation in great detail. He describes how the cafés were one of the various “nerve centers” for bruits publics, public noise or rumour. These bruits were allegedly a much better source of information than were the actual newspapers available at the time.[63]

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At every opportunity, and especially during our predictable, unproductive spats during events that touch on the politics of race "it is particularly important to reaffirm the analytical imperative", as Wacquant so usefully and eloquently reminds us.
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I could go on and on about the incredibly helpful reminders given the reader regarding "the existence of long-standing racial traditions in non-WEstern societies" or "The first groups to be 'racialized' by Europe were not colonized populations but the 'Others from the Interior': Jews, peasants, workers, rival and recalcitrant nationalities within nascent states...", or "The idea that 'race' is a matter of 'physiology alone' bespeaks the hegemony of U.S. folk notions premised on an obsessive concern with descent and blood admixture...", or any number of concepts given by Wacquant that aid in widening our discourse on this subject beyond its current (political) absurdity.
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But rather than doing that, I would love to know, Rose, to what you could possibly object in this piece? What of significance has Wacquant gotten wrong, or omitted from this analysis, in your opinion?
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I really can't thank you enough for posting a link to this excellent piece for me, Rose. I'm extremely grateful.

Murphy, Mike
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(See also Idiot, Complete)

Save the Packwood stuff KT. It's an interesting chapter in D.C. history. Have a techno nerd scan it for ya.