Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 964

Quinn Isn't Ready to Forgive de Blasio's Wife Over Her 'Children' Remarks

In what's becoming a tradition of the 2013 mayor's race in New York, frontrunner Bll de Blasio was the primary target of all the other candidates at Wednesday's debate. So it was inevitable that someone was going to ask de Blasio about his wife Chirlane McCray's comments to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Those comments, about the openly gay candidate's stances on child care, and paid sick days, seemed to question Quinn's accessibility as a woman. 

As you may have heard, Dowd had to correct her column today after the de Blasio campaign demonstrated that the journalist misquoted McCray's remarks about Quinn. So here they are in full, from the current version of the piece:

Well, I am a woman, and she is not speaking to the issues I care about and I think a lot of women feel the same way. I don’t see her speaking to the concerns of women who have to take care of children at a young age or send them to school and after school, paid sick days, workplace, she is not speaking to any of those issues. What can I say?

And she is not accessible, she is not the kind of person who you can talk to and go up to and have a conversation with about those things, and I suspect that other women feel the same thing I’m feeling.

At the Wednesday mayoral debate, de Blasio was asked about those remarks. The candidate focused on Dowd's correction, noted that the remarks in question were a "misquote," adding, "my wife meant no offense." Earlier Wednesday, Quinn's campaign had responded with outrage to what it read as an insinuation that Quinn's lack of children (and, the fact that she is in a same-sex marriage) somehow rendered her unable to relate to families. 

But Quinn doesn't think that either version of McCray's remarks, original or corrected, are inoffensive. "I gotta say, I found very hurtful and upsetting," Quinn said, launching into a response that indicates the candidate was ready for an opportunity to address McCray's statements. The full quote, she said, still "raise[s] the question" about whether the fact that she doesn't have children affects how hard she fights for families. "There are many reasons why some families have children and some don't... my wife and I both lost our mothers when we were young girls," she added, noting that the decision to have children is "deeply personal" both of them.  Her comments at the debate echoed her response to Dowd's column in a Wednesday statement: 

There are women all across the city who don’t have children for any number of reasons, whether they simply can’t, choose not to or circumstances don’t afford them the possibility ... to criticize me as not understanding what young families go through because I might not have children is over the line and I take great personal offense to the comment, as does my wife. 

       

This Homeland Security Employee Is Preparing for a Coming Race War

[image error]A Department of Homeland Security employee who works on, among other things, the procurement of guns and ammunition for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, spends his nights and weekends preparing for a coming race war and advocating for anti-gay causes, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Meet Ayo Kimathi, a.k.a. “the Irritated Genie," who told his bosses at the DHS that his anti-white, anti-gay site, "War is on the Horizon," was just an entertainment site that sells concert and lecture videos. 

You see, DHS employees, even those with office jobs like Kimathi's, have to get outside activities approved by their supervisors, according to the SPLC. Kimathi's former supervisor told the watchdog group, which tracks hate speech and groups in the U.S., that despite her former employee's banal description of his extracurricular activities, the actual content of the site left her "stunned." She continued: “To see the hate, to know that he is a federal employee, it bothered me." She added that had Kimathi's site been accurately described to the agency, there's no way the DHS would have signed off on it. Possibly to keep his bosses from looking up his work, Kimathi used only the site's acronym, WOH, in his permission request. In addition to his involvement in the purchase of ICE supplies, Kimathi also had a public profile for the agency, speaking at vendor events. As "Irritated Genie," Kimathi also has a public profile as a black supremacist advocate. 

The content of Kimathi's advocacy demands some clarification. In some (white, conservative) circles, the term "black supremacist"  is applied with a very wide brush. Black supremacy was the implication of Maine Governor Paul LePage's reported comments that President Obama "hates white people," for instance. Kimathi's site is not in this vein of this imagined threat — on the contrary, War on the Horizon calls Obama a "a treasonous mulatto scum dweller," and lists him among the movement's enemies (also on the list? Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, and Condoleezza Rice, among others) Instead, the DHS employee advocates for:

The mass murder of white people. His site says, "warfare is eminent, and in order for Black people to survive the 21st century, we are going to have to kill a lot of whites – more than our christian hearts can possibly count." A conspiracy theory arguing that white people are trying to "homosexualize" black men in order to make them more effeminate and therefore weaker. As part of this, Kimathi, praises a series of laws in some African countries that criminalize LGBT behavior and people. Kimathi also advocates for the supremacy of black men above black women — he offers tips on his site, for instance, "to help every Black woman in the world understand what she needs to do to keep a strong Black man happy." 

Conservatives don't tend to be fans of the Southern Poverty Law Center: this is the same group that labeled The American Family Association and pretty much the entire anti-Islam movement as hate groups. But their report seems primed to stoke the fires of a set of American conservatives who already believe the DHS is hoarding ammunition (contrary to the evidence), either to build a secret army, or to prevent gun owners from accessing it.  

Update: ICE's Deputy Press Secretary Gillian Christensen responded in a statement to this story: 

ICE does not condone any type of hateful rhetoric or advocacy of violence of any kind against anyone.  Every ICE employee is held to the highest standard of professional and ethical conduct. Accusations of misconduct are investigated thoroughly and if substantiated, appropriate action is taken.

Christensen declined to comment, as a matter of ICE policy, on whether the agency was currently investigating Kimathi or not. 

       

Some Newly Uncovered Nixon Comments on the Subjects of Jews and Black People

[image error]Richard Nixon was like many a Millennial (or middle-aged politician) who's gotten busted for sending racy emails or sexts — even though he knew everything he was saying would be archived forever, he still said really inappropriate things. The Nixon Presidential Library released the last set of Nixon White House tapes on Wednesday, and like many of his tapes released over the last few decades, this set confirms that Nixon was not very enlightened when it came to racial and ethnic minorities. Take a phone call with Henry Kissinger on April 19, 1973 about an upcoming U.S.-Soviet summit. Nixon was concerned someone would cause problems, and if they did, they would pay for it, he said: "Let me say, Henry, it's gonna be the worst thing that happened to Jews in American history."

Nixon continued, "If they torpedo this summit — and it might go down for other reasons — I'm gonna put the blame on them, and I'm going to do it publicly at 9 o'clock at night before 80 million people." ("I agree completely," Kissinger, who is Jewish, said. "They brought it on themselves.") Then Nixon really got going about the Jews. "I won't mind one goddamn but to have a little anti-Semitism if it's on that issue," the president says. "They put the Jewish interest above America's interest and it's about goddamn time that the Jew in America realizes he's an American first and a Jew second."

[image error]The Nixon library is somewhat helpful in hunting for scandalous things Nixon said. There are separate MP3s for each conversation, and PDFs for sections of phone calls or Oval Office conversations that list who's in a conversation, who's participating, and the general issues it covers. The library's descriptions can be a little quaint. In reference to a May 1, 1973 phone call between Nixon and press secretary Ronald Ziegler got into a statement issued by Nixon aide and lawyer Leonard Garment (pictured at right), the PDF notes they cover "Garment’s Jewish background." On the tape, Nixon said he wants to fire Garment for what he felt was an undermining comment, yelling, "Goddamn his Jewish soul!"

The tapes cover from April 9 to July 12, 1973 — a stressful time for Nixon. On April 30, 1973, he announced the resignations of two of his closest aides, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, who were tied up in the Watergate scandal. There are 340 hours of tape, which is a lot to sort through, and not all of the audio is clear. But The Atlantic Wire has picked out a few interesting conversations that give more insight into Nixon's paranoid, bigoted mind. (For people who are obsessed with Watergate, there's interesting stuff if you want to get in the weeds. A series of calls — with Watergate stars like Chuck Colson, Alexander Haig, Haldeman, plus Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — after he announced the resignations is fascinating for Nixon obsessives, showing his insecurity and loathing of the press.)

In a June 14, 1973 Oval Office meeting with Anne Armstrong, counselor to the president, Nixon said black people couldn't run Jamaica. "Blacks can’t run it. Nowhere, and they won’t be able to for a hundred years, and maybe not for a thousand.  … Do you know, maybe one black country that’s well run?" He gave some guidance on what appointees should be like: "No Jews. We are adamant when I say no Jews. … But I mean don’t say anything don’t let anybody know we didn’t [audio unclear] Jewish. But Mexicans are important. Italians, Eastern Europeans. That sort of thing."

[image error]In a June 13, 1973 conversation with secretary Rose Mary Woods, Nixon discussed the entertainment at an upcoming event. Johnny Mann and Debbie Reynolds are in. What about Danny Kaye, Nixon asks, "and not because of his ideology." Kaye, a singer and comedian, was born David Kaminsky to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants in 1913 (pictured at right via Wikimedia Commons). Woods started to say, "Well they were going to try to get him but…" And Nixon cuts in: "He's Jewish?" Woods ignored him, continuing, "I don't know what happened whether—" Nixon interjected again: "He's Jewish." Woods explained, "They had to check him out with the Russians."

In an April 18, 1973 phone call with Spiro Agnew, Nixon said Jews were holding American foreign policy "hostage to Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union." He added, "Some of the Jews picket can raise hell, but the American people are not going to let them destroy our foreign policy — never!" This was a subject to which Nixon repeatedly returned.

[image error]The bigoted mixes with the banal. In an April 14, 1973 phone call, the president tells his wife he'll be working late on a speech, so he'll miss dinner. He asks about a garden tour she did with children. "You know it's funny, the little black kids are so uncommunicative, aren't they? Good golly," Nixon said. Pat Nixon (pictured at left, via Associated Press) replies, "Yeah but these were better than most, did you know that? They're all dressed up and everything." Nixon was surprised. He had a tougher time with black kids: "They didn't react, though." The first lady explains, "Well, with you they were a little different." At her event, "They were better, you know"

Additional reporting by Eric Levenson.

Top image: Nixon bows in response to remarks of Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel, as the chief executive welcomed his guest on the south lawn of the White House in Washington on Sept. 25, 1969. (AP Photo)

       

Woody Allen's Biggest Movie Yet

Today in show business news: Blue Jasmine is Woody Allen's most far-reaching movie, Clint Eastwood might take over the Chris Kyle story, and True Blood makes some improvements.

Woody Allen is 962 77 years old, and yet he's still growing. Or, well, his body is very much shrinking, but his movies are growing. His latest film, the drama Blue Jasmine, which features a (hack alert) tour de force performance from Cate Blanchett, will be expanding to 1,200 theaters this weekend, from a mere 229. That's the most theaters a Woody Allen movie has ever been in. Ever! More than Midnight in Paris, even. I mean, when Annie Hall came out there weren't even that many theaters in the country. (I don't know if that's true, but it feels like it could be true, right?) The movie has been doing very well in its "platform release," so Sony Pictures Classics feels it's time to take the thing really national. That's good news for Allen and it's probably good news for Blanchett's Oscar chances. The bigger the film is, the less likely it is to be forgotten come voting time in five months. Sorry, Julia and Judi and Nicole and all the rest of you with your eyes on the prize. Jasmine isn't going anywhere. [Deadline]

Speaking of old men who are still wildly successful, Clint Eastwood is in talks to replace Steven Spielberg as the director of American Sniper, the biopic about SEAL sniper Chris Kyle that Bradley Cooper is attached to star in. So... that could change the movie's politics a bit, couldn't it? Will Chris Kyle talk to a stool? He might be talking to a stool. Hilary Swank could play the stool. None of this is set yet, though, and Eastwood still has to film the musical Jersey Boys, so anything could happen. If Eastwood can't do it, maybe they could try Francis Ford Coppola next. He's old too! [The Hollywood Reporter]

Oh thank god. Or thank Warlow or Lilith or whoever the hell we're supposed to be thanking on this godforsaken show. In an interview with Vulture, the showrunner for True Blood says the following: "I feel like we can learn more about these people in this town and do much more interesting character-driven stories if we reduced the number of separate story lines that we were telling. So if you're seeing a correction, it's essentially that. It means — and this won't come as a surprise to Joe Manganiello — closing off werewolf pack stories." So! Not only will next season (I'm watching next season, I'm just admitting it to myself and moving on) have fewer storylines, but there won't be any ding-dang werewolves. Or, there will be werewolves, but we won't have to deal with tiresome subplots about dynastic power struggles between a bunch of trash buckets who live in the woods. Honestly who ever cared about the werewolves? "I am the leader of this pack of werewolves. I decide what grubby patch of woods we have sex and yell in." "No I am the leader, and I say we growl at each other in this junkyard." Dumb. It was always dumb. And now it's done. Joey Magnets will still be on the show, but that's it. I'll miss Dale Dickey, because I always miss Dale Dickey, but other than that I say good riddance werewolves. Who, from what I could tell, were just shifters who could only turn into wolves and liked to punch each other outside of shacks. Not terribly awe-inspiring. [Vulture]

This could be exciting. The CW is putting together a series similar to Fame, to be produced, in part, by Debbie Allen. Ok... This could be good... Let's see what else it says here... It's set in Los Angeles and-- Wait. Ick. That's not. It sort of takes the dance and musical theater thing out of the equation, doesn't it? Because those things don't really exist in LA? So it's all going to be music video wannabes and whatnot? Sigh. But, fine, I suppose beggars can't be choosers. Please make this thing happen. We need it. Don't we? [The Hollywood Reporter]

Here's the trailer for The Book Thief, an adaptation of the inspirational book about an adopted girl whose German parents take in a young Jewish boxer during World War II. It's also about books and reading and stuff, so, there you have it. One of the lines in the trailer is "from the studio that brought you Life of Pi," so you know where they're going with this thing. All the way to feelings town. Which, hey, fine. Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson are great, the guy who plays the boxer is cute, what more do you need? Carry on, The Book Thief.

       

The Reviews Are in on Al Jazeera America: Fair, Balanced and a Little Boring

Al Jazeera America, which had its highly anticipated if limited debut yesterday afternoon, has an uphill battle to establish itself amongst America's cable news juggernauts. But its biggest hurdle isn't necessarily how American it is (or isn't), or that more than half of US homes don't have access to it. The biggest problem, in fact, may be that that critics are deeming it boring.

Though critics seem to be impressed by the cabler's mission, they say there's something sort of lacking in its delivery. Laura Bennett at The New Republic says the network "mostly delivered" on its promise to provide fair and balanced reporting, but its dedication to lingering on the issues led to a few overly long segments. As Bennett puts it:

On all shows the hosts are committed to letting people talk instead of interrupting them, which sometimes has the unintended effect of being boring. One scientist rambled for so long about Fukushima and radioactive isotopes and bluefin tuna that the anchor had to cut him off with “I think your answer is that it’s complicated."

Variety's Brian Lowry compares the network to the Public Broadcasting System, saying that AJA's approach "was about as close to PBS tonally as you’re apt to find in the commercial space, with nary a wacky human-interest or feel-good story to be found in either of [its two] central shows." The Washington Post's Paul Farhi notes "there was little flash" on Al Jazeera America, and that it needs something if it is going to compete successfully in the crowded cable news landscape. He writes: 

“Inside Story,” a panel-discussion program that followed the inaugural one-hour newscast, featured three academic experts on climate change. They essentially agreed that ocean levels are rising and that major American cities are threatened — thereby producing none of the sparks that usually fly when such topics are discussed on cable TV. 

[...]

Al Jazeera America’s slogan promises, “There’s more to it.” If it hopes to stand out in a crowded field, it knows it has to make good on that.

Mary McNamara at The Los Angeles Times is harsher:

[I]t's tough to make a half-hour of truly informed conversation about climate change interesting; it's almost impossible if you're going to rely on three talking heads and some fairly banal graphics, as former C-SPAN host Libby Casey did on her first issue of "Inside Story."

Indeed, the opening hours of Al Jazeera America had, for all its high ambitions and expensive expansion, a muted color scheme, unexciting camera work and sophomoric graphics. 

Of course, this is what Al Jazeera promised. (“There will be less opinion, less yelling and fewer celebrity sightings," Ehab Al Shihabi, the channel’s acting chief executive, told The New York Times' Brian Stelter.) And, theoretically, this is the sort of news Americans want. (Or, at the very least, as Ana Marie Cox at The Guardian put it, "the news channel Americans deserve.") A March Pew poll found that MSNBC was the most opinionated news channel, while a February poll found that Fox news is the most or least trusted channel depending on which political party is asked. And CNN has suffered one embarrassment after another. But what people say they need and what they actually want, are, of course, often at odds. As Lowry puts it, "...if you want cute panda videos — or even just Anderson Cooper raising an eyebrow — look elsewhere [...] Whether there’s enough demand, alas, might be a different matter entirely." 

       

A 'Low Profile' Twitter IPO In 2014 Is Very Unlikely

In an effort to avoid the same sort of out-of-control hype that led to Facebook's disastrous IPO, Twitter has decided it wants a "low-profile" affair, one source tells the New York Post. The company is already failing in that effort. The Post reports that unconfirmed yet highly anticipated Twitter IPO — which has been rumored and anticipated by media outlets for years — has banks are fighting for the chance to get in on the action. Unnamed sources claim that the initial public offering will take place in "early 2014."

Investors put Twitter's worth at around $10 billion, a substantial price tag for a company that brought in just $350 million in revenue in 2012. Although that's nowhere near the outlandish $100 billion IPO valuation Facebook reportedly sought, it's high, and banks are rushing to partner with Twitter on its impending IPO, as the Post explains, because they think it can make them money. But that's exactly what Twitter's trying to avoid with a "low-profile" IPO, per the Post's mysterious source. Getting investors too excited before the IPO date, you see, can further inflate the price. That's what happened with Facebook: Investors were disappointed with a rumored stock price that fell lower than expectations, which only pushed the actual IPO price up further. Twitter doesn't want that kind of inflation, because then, like Facebook, it might debut with a dud. 

One way to avoid this sort of investor hype would be to, as DealBook's Jeffrey Goldfarb argued last week, go the way of Google with a modified Dutch auction IPO. "The process used by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin successfully mitigated some of the hype that Facebook couldn’t." he wrote. In such a set-up, investors bid each other down, until a price is agreed upon. Goldfarb explains that such a method is especially prudent in the case of a stock like Twitter, where its "main attraction will be that many others want to buy it."

But that method can backfire, as was seen in the case of the online magazine Salon, which used the Dutch auction method back in 1999. Salon's investors bid the price down to $10.50, which turned out to be too accurate and prevented a "pop" on the first day — the desired effect for new stocks that gives a company momentum and early investors a returns. Twitter, of course, doesn't want that either.  "IPO investors should not go into a deal and buy a stock and the very first day show a loss. The market is not used to that sort of thing and has no tolerance for it," said one investor of the Salon botch. 

Twitter claims it is willing to leave money on the table, claims the Post's source. But, recall: Facebook used to make claims like that before it had investors to answer to. Now, it's trying to monetize every part of its business, even going so far as to try get Internet service to 4 billion potential new customers. The fact is that an IPO is about making money — and Twitter doesn't really have the option for a "low-profile" launch. 

       

Wonder Woman Can't Have it All

Wonder Woman needs another chance. 

Following any Wonder Woman project isn't unlike reading some gossip rag about producers and directors dealing with a talented, but demanding actress. "Challenging" is the reason filmmakers give when Wonder Woman projects fail. "We are still trying right now, but she's tricky," is a DC Comics executive Diane Nelson's explanation of why the company hasn't moved forward with a film. In a self-perpetuating cycle, studios constantly wonder if enough people will buy tickets to a Wonder Woman movie, or if she has enough star power to anchor a film on her own. Inevitably, the first question journalists usually ask hopeful producers is why they'd ever take on such a "hefty" project.

"She's always on trial. It's like, why isn't she good enough, why doesn't [the comic] sell enough, why isn't she representative of this or this or this?" Grant Morrison, comic legend and the author of an upcoming Wonder Woman graphic novel, told The Guardian. And that's why he's centering his 120-page graphic novel on that idea—a clever, meta-take on our preoccupation with why Wonder Woman can seemingly never catch a break. "And so I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great to just base the story on an actual trial—have the Amazons put her on trial, and tell the origins story via that," Morrison said. 

Morrison's graphic novel seems more promising than most recent Wonder Woman projects — for example, the panned 2011 television pilot by David E. Kelley or the 2007 feature film by Avengers director Joss Whedon. It just might be the break Wonder Woman needs. (It is not clear yet when the graphic novel will be released.)

The real question is why this is happening to Wonder Woman. Part of the reason may be that comic books remain a sexist industry dominated by older white men. As DC's most iconic feminist, Wonder Woman is an outlier, and not always a beloved one. 

"She [Wonder Woman] stands as an unapologetically feminist super heroine in an industry that often relegates women to sidekicks, damsels, and girlfriends," Shoshana Kessock writes for Tor.com.

Wonder Woman did not need a man to succeed. She isn't like Hawkgirl, Batgirl, or Zatanna—she wasn't brought in as a daughter or sidekick to a main character. "And while many things about the character have changed since her reinvention in 1987...her foundation as a powerful female character with staunchly feminist views has not changed," Kessock adds.

And therein lies the difficulty for writers. 

Because Wonder Woman is an indelible icon of feminism, writers are more reluctant to experiment with her. It's easier to write a more ambivalent, ambiguous character like Batman, whose only real imperative is to fight crime in Gotham. Wonder Woman, on the other hand, stands for so much—feminism, strength, hope, humanity, etc.— and there's a pressure for her to live up to these expectations at every turn. "Why isn't she representative of this or this or this?" Morrison complained, mimicking potential critics. And Kessock points out, "Nobody wants to be the one to do the film incorrectly—whatever that means—and present the studio with a flop starring one of its major characters."

Morrison — the man who reignited the fiercely catty, feminist, twisty character of Emma Frost  — is taking a refreshing approach to Wonder Woman by surrounding her with other female characters.

I wanted to get in as many relationships between women as possible – there's Wonder Woman and her teacher, Wonder Woman and her mother, Wonder Woman and the girl she kind of fancies at school. I wanted lots of different female relationships to show that there's not just one type of woman and she's not representative of all women.

That's promising. But the other big concern with Wonder Woman is explaining her wacky creation myth. Some people don't even know what her origins may be. As Nelson told The Hollywood Reporter, "She doesn't have the single, clear, compelling story that everyone knows and recognizes." 

"And the bondage/feminism problem is only the beginning of the character’s idiosyncrasies," wrote Wired's Noah Berlatsky. "Wonder Woman is explicitly supposed to be bringing peace — but she comes from an Amazon warrior culture and spends most of her time fighting," 

I don't really buy these arguments. Superman is just as idiosyncratic (underwear on the outside) and inconsistent (for someone who is genuinely good, he gets into a lot of fights, too) as Wonder Woman. And as for being afraid of screwing up a comic book legend? There was no such concern with that horrific run of Batman movies that included Alicia Silverstone and bat nipples. Well, but what about people buying tickets? Recall that Wonder Woman is continually voted as one of the most iconic characters of all time. Buy tickets they will.

But I do believe this: a big reason we aren't getting the Wonder Woman film we deserve is because powerful studio execs, producers, and writers are scared. 

We shouldn't forget that part of Wonder Woman's appeal is her uncanniness. "I’m glad the character is tricky enough that studio execs can’t quite figure out how to ruin her for a mass audience. May she foil all such attempts to bind and/or unbind her," Berlatsky wrote. In order to show that quality, writers, directors and producers just have to be brave—as brave as Wonder Woman herself. 

       

NBC Wants Everyone To Forget About Controversial Hillary Clinton Miniseries

Kim Masters of The Hollywood Reporter reports today that NBC is looking to jettison a controversial miniseries on Hillary Clinton once the hubbub surrounding it dies down a bit. Thing is, although killing the project may be relatively easy, overcoming the bad press will be difficult. 

Masters reports that NBC Universal sources are predicting that NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt "will let the furor die down and the project will simply disappear without a big announcement." That backs up a (definitely more random) report from Florida-based blogger Scott Jones at his gossip site FTVLive. In a report Monday, Jones wrote: "Word is that NBC is going to let it quietly go away without saying a word."

If so, it would be an unceremonious end to a project that often felt like it might be more trouble than it was worth. Although NBC made a big show of announcing the miniseries at the Television Critics Association press tour late last month, a controversy erupted when Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus threatened both NBC and CNN, which is producing a documentary on the former Secretary of State, with a boycott. (NBC News' Chuck Todd called the miniseries project a "nightmare," and Fox Television Studios—which was in early talks to co-produce the project—decided it wouldn't get on board.) Then, last week, the Republican National Committee voted in favor of the boycott, which would ban primary debates from airing on the two networks. 

Masters explains that Fox TV's decision not to co-produce was "ostensibly for financial and not political reasons," but with other studios passing as well, lack of funding may be a way out for NBC. "If the Clinton plan fades because NBCU pursues an unmakeable deal, some might still believe the real issue was politics," she writes. "But the company could argue that this hardly was the first project to succumb to the difficult economics of the business." 

At this point, killing the project —set to be written and directed by Frozen River's Courtney Hunt—would be fairly simple. (On Friday Greenblatt released a statement insisting that the miniseries was only in "development.") The repair of NBC's reputation, however, might not be as easy. In her story, Masters portrays Greenblatt as careless with the project from the beginning, reporting that he "did not seek [NBC Universal CEO Steve] Burke's blessing or flag the deal in a meaningful way." (For what it's worth, Masters says that the politically conservative Burke isn't insisting the project be abandoned.) Now NBC has to make a decision: Stand up to the ire of Republicans or look like cowards. Neither is where the network wants to be. 

       

An 'Overwhelmed' NSA Still Doesn't Know What Snowden Took

Despite the NSA's statements to the contrary, it looks like the intelligence agency doesn't know everything that whistleblower Edward Snowden took from them after all. Intelligence officials told NBC News that the NSA was still “overwhelmed” with the work of finding out what else Snowden has. The news comes just two days after British authorities detained journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda for nearly 9 hours.

Here's why the agency hasn't yet caught up to Snowden's leaks, according to NBC:

The NSA had poor data compartmentalization, said the sources, allowing Snowden, who was a system administrator, to roam freely across wide areas. By using a “thin client” computer he remotely accessed the NSA data from his base in Hawaii. One U.S. intelligence official said government officials “are overwhelmed" trying to account for what Snowden took. Another said that the NSA has a poor audit capability, which is frustrating efforts to complete a damage assessment.

NBC's report fits right into a PR war over what the government knows about Snowden's secret stash. Here's the recap: in early June, investigators figured out that Snowden probably took information from the NSA's servers using a thumb drive, leading one official to say that they "know how many documents he downloaded and what server he took them from," implying that the government was well on its way to getting a handle on the damage. But later that month, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes told reporters that the White House still didn't know what Snowden took. Then, an anonymously-sourced story at CNN confidently claimed that Snowden didn't have the "instruction manual" to the NSA's surveillance programs, in response to a comment from Greenwald indicating that Snowden had something like a "blueprint" to the agency in his hands. But the most overtly omniscient statement on the NSA's capacity to figure out what Snowden has comes from the agency's director Keith Alexander: 

We have tremendous oversight over these programs. We can audit the actions of our people 100 percent, and we do that.

The Atlantic previously raised some doubts over that claim. For one thing, Alexander said in June that the agency was "now putting in place actions that would give us the ability to track our system administrators." Alexander has since said that he was going to just replace almost all of the system administrators working for the NSA with machines.

NSA followers won't be terribly surprised at the discrepancy between public and private statements from the agency. Just last week, an internal audit obtained by Snowden and leaked to the Washington Post revealed that the agency has very little oversight from the secret court designed to keep it legal. That report was, if not the last, one of the final nails in the coffin for the agency's "oversight" rebuttal to criticism of their secret data collection programs.

The detention of Greenwald's partner Miranda, and the ensuing reports of apparent intimidation from British officials towards the Guardian over their reporting on Snowden's leaks, indicates that some authorities might be taking harder tactic towards the whole damage control problem. According to the Guardian's editor, British intelligence officials even forced the paper to destroy hard drives containing encrypted versions of the leaks. British intelligence officials could be worried about potential reports in the future on some of the information authorities are pretty sure Snowden took: details of the data collection programs in the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, who work closely with the NSA. But don't worry: the White House is ready to assure Americans that such tactics wouldn't happen in the U.S. of A.: Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters today in a press briefing that it was "very difficult to imagine a scenario in which" destroying the hard drive of a journalist "would be appropriate."

       

'Progressive' Groups Were Targeted by the IRS, Too

The document drip in the IRS probe continued on Tuesday, with top congressional Democrats releasing new information that they said definitively shows the tax agency applied heightened scrutiny to both progressive and conservative groups.

[image error]
MORE FROM NATIONAL JOURNAL Why MLK's 'Dream' Is So Hard to Find Online Extreme Weather Hurts Low-Income People Most The Strangest Impact of the Sequester

Democrats and Republicans have engaged in a series of strategic leaks since the probe of the Internal Revenue Service began months ago.

On Tuesday, newly released internal minutes from 2010 show that "progressive" was listed alongside "tea parties" as criteria that "should be flagged for review."

In a letter to congressional Democrats, the IRS said that other, previously undisclosed, search terms used included "ACORN successors" and "Emerge" (there is a national progressive group, Emerge America). The auditor who set off the scandal has said that tax authorities had singled out tea-party groups for extra scrutiny.

"This new information should put a nail in the coffin of the Republican claims that the IRS's actions were politically motivated or were targeted at only one side of the political spectrum," said Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The chairman of the panel, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, is unlikely to be deterred in his probe, however. Earlier this month, Issa said he was expanding his inquiry to look into possible improper coordinate between the tax agency and the Federal Election Commission.

"How many times have Congressional Democrats now tried to declare the IRS targeting investigation over? " said Issa spokesman Frederick Hill. He said there was "no comparison" between the agency's treatment of Emerge and tea party groups. "The fact that Emerge was initially approved for tax exempt status, but had it revoked after its improper behavior came to light, underscores how much more stringent the IRS was with Tea Party applicants."