Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 67

Daniel Schorr, great American newsman | Michael Tomasky

Daniel Schorr was from a time when putting news on television was considered a matter of civic trust and responsibility

One can't say it's a shock when a 93-year-old-man dies, but the death of veteran American newsman Daniel Schorr this morning at that rich age is a real loss for American journalism.

Schorr comes from a time and culture, CBS News in the 1950s, when putting news on television was considered such a civic trust and responsibility that the news division didn't even have to make a p...

Michael Tomasky: Daniel Schorr

One can't say it's a shock when a 93-year-old-man dies, but the death of veteran American newsman Daniel Schorr this morning at that rich age is a real loss for American journalism.

Schorr comes from a time and culture, CBS News in the 1950s, when putting news on television was considered such a civic trust and responsibility that the news division didn't even have to make a profit. He worked for Edward R. Murrow, and he reopened CBS' Moscow bureau after it had been shuttered by Stalin in...

Off-topic post on Angelina Jolie | Michael Tomasky

So I see that Salt gets a splat on Rotten Tomatoes' tomatometer, coming in at just 56%.

I remember seeing Girl, Interrupted. I thought it was a wrenching movie, and Angelina Jolie was just incredible. She won the Oscar of course, deservedly so, and between then (1999) and now she could have played a series of great dramatic roles and been this generation's Meryl Streep.

Instead she keeps making these vehicles for adenoidal fantasy about whatever latex-bestrewn Amazon-woman role she happens to ...

Stopping the rage machine | Michael Tomasky

Harris and VandeHei have another big zeitgeisty Politco piece up today, called the Age of Rage:

Here's the optimistic case: The embarrassment of the Shirley Sherrod story — with its toxic convergence of partisan combat and media recklessness — will be a tipping point. It will remind journalists and politicians alike that personal reputations and professional credibility are at stake, and a bit more restraint and responsibility are in order.

Here's the realistic case: Get ready for more of the...

Friday quiz: the eminent historians | Michael Tomasky

As a young man, I briefly toyed with the notion that I might get myself a nice Ph.D. in history. I was a fairly unaggressive student as an undergraduate, but the one category of classes I really did enjoy, in which I actually even tended to do the reading, was history. My first class on the French Revolution opened my eyes and set my mind ablaze, and I will always remember fondly my professor, Dennis O'Brien. An extremely witty man, gay though not exactly open about it (though also not...

Obama is really an 80-something-year-old Republican | Michael Tomasky

Jacob Heilbrunn has an interesting essay up at Foreign Policy that's about how nutty and extreme the GOP has become on foreign policy, which we all knew, but he adds a lot of historical texture and makes this interesting observation:

Perhaps [Mitt:] Romney truly thinks that the new START is a sellout to Moscow, but he appears to be less an avatar of the right than its most prominent hostage. He might even be suffering from a kind of Stockholm syndrome. The treaty, after all, has won the...

Obama is really an 80-something-year-old Republican|Michael Tomasky

Jacob Heilbrunn has an interesting essay up at Foreign Policy that's about how nutty and extreme the GOP has become on foreign policy, which we all knew, but he adds a lot of historical texture and makes this interesting observation:

Perhaps [Mitt:] Romney truly thinks that the new START is a sellout to Moscow, but he appears to be less an avatar of the right than its most prominent hostage. He might even be suffering from a kind of Stockholm syndrome. The treaty, after all, has won the...

While the world burns | Michael Tomasky

Via Yglesias I see that David Leonhardt of the NYT has a great column today on our wonderful Senate and climate change:

[Washington:] just endured its hottest June since records began in 1872, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. So did Miami. Atlanta suffered its second-hottest June, and Dallas had its third hottest...

...Yet when United States senators and their aides file into work on Wednesday, on yet another 90-degree day, they may be on the verge of deciding...

While the world burns|Michael Tomasky

Via Yglesias I see that David Leonhardt of the NYT has a great column today on our wonderful Senate and climate change:

[Washington:] just endured its hottest June since records began in 1872, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. So did Miami. Atlanta suffered its second-hottest June, and Dallas had its third hottest...

...Yet when United States senators and their aides file into work on Wednesday, on yet another 90-degree day, they may be on the verge of deciding...

Gingrich says US should be more like Saudi Arabia | Michael Tomasky

The other day when we were discussing the lower Manhattan mosque proposal, a couple of commenters said something like no mosque near ground zero until we can build a church in Saudi Arabia. I found this line of argument pretty hard to take seriously, as did a few other commenters, who noted, uh, well, that America has a history of religious tolerance that Saudi Arabia does not, so they're pretty different places, and holding up Saudi Arabia as a standard to which the US should hew maybe...