64 responses to
“Ten cents a dance.”

1. Jeff Borden said on November 18th, 2008 at 10:17 am

   The free­lance mar­ket is awful right now. I just fin­ished a 1,500 word piece for a uni­ver­sity alumni mag­a­zine and a 500 word side­bar for $1,000. At least it was a pretty easy assign­ment — a pro­file of an admired alum. Right now, I’m in trade pub­li­ca­tion hell, sweat­ing out inter­views that never come or are yanked at the last minute, for what the edi­tor hopes will be a 2,500 word pro­file of a major agribusi­ness com­pany. The fee is $1,200 but does not include the free ulcers and anx­i­ety attacks as the dead­line looms and your hero has almost noth­ing in his notes.

   My part-time gig teach­ing broad­cast news to col­lege stu­dents offers its own kind of pain. These are some very bright, very moti­vated, very nice stu­dents. I really like them as peo­ple. But the seniors are ter­ri­fied of the world they are enter­ing. And with good rea­son. They are weigh­ing grad­u­ate school, which will add another $100,000 to their debt load, or unpaid intern­ships, if they are lucky enough to find them. It’s no small trick to try to keep their spir­its up and encour­age their dreams –who knows who among them may become a great jour­nal­ist– while also try­ing to man­age their expec­ta­tions and pre­pare them for the pro­fes­sional indif­fer­ence they will encounter from Day One.

2. alex said on November 18th, 2008 at 10:41 am

   I’d been a suc­cess­ful free-lancer for many years, although I was suc­cess­ful because I didn’t turn my nose up at writ­ing cat­a­log copy, which paid $40-$50 an hour back in the 1990s. It helped sup­port my jour­nal­ism habit. I won­der if it’s even pos­si­ble to find a cat­a­log copy­writ­ing job these days.

   Every­thing went kablooie after 9/11. I finally threw in the towel in 2004, moved to Indi­ana where it’s cheaper to live and got an office job. I never would have fore­seen this. I used to say I was glad I didn’t waste my money on a master’s at Medill, and that’s when I was writ­ing cat­a­log copy. I’m really glad about it now.

3. LA Mary said on November 18th, 2008 at 11:26 am

   I’ve been at this job nearly three years now. Before this I was pretty much a free lance recruiter for health care posi­tions, and in some years I made con­sid­er­ably more than I’m mak­ing now, but then I started get­ting burned on com­mis­sions. Smaller com­pa­nies would not pay me, then go chap­ter 11. Have that hap­pen a few times in one year and things go south real fast. I’m in an office now, so lots less free­dom, but the pay­checks are steady and the ben­nies are very wel­come. The com­pany I work for used to use free lancers like I used to be, but we’ve stopped and it looks like this is the trend. No more 20k fees to fill jobs. The free lancers in recruit­ing are hurting.

4. brian stouder said on November 18th, 2008 at 11:39 am

   You were a head­hunter! I used to have a col­league that knew every­one worth know­ing in our cor­ner of the uni­verse. Watch­ing him work a room (at a trade show, for exam­ple) was a beau­ti­ful thing — he had names/faces/stories for every prac­ti­cally every per­son he saw, whether the last time he met them was yes­ter­day or 15 years ago. (I’ve read that suc­cess­ful politi­cians have this same talent)

   I can see how a hefty com­mis­sion would make sense, when the recruiter knows the ground.

   Any­way — amidst the gath­er­ing delam­i­nat­ing gloom, Nance’s Bossy link was pretty funny!

5. Rana said on November 18th, 2008 at 11:41 am

   I’ve never been able to make any money with my writ­ing, for all that peo­ple claim to enjoy it, and find­ing writ­ing work that isn’t tech­ni­cal writ­ing has proved chal­leng­ing. As for blog­ging as a way of mak­ing a liv­ing… if my blog is mak­ing me any money right now, it’s not from the writ­ing, but from the traf­fic I direct to my online pho­tog­ra­phy stores.

   It did take me a while to even believe that my writ­ing was, in fact, some­thing that peo­ple might pay for, because acad­e­mia func­tions largely because schol­ars are will­ing to donate their words and exper­tise for free. Oh, yes, sup­pos­edly those arti­cles and book reviews are the foun­da­tion stones on which career advance­ment is built, but that system’s been bro­ken for a while now. I’ll still write an occa­sional review to keep the skills sharp, but the renu­mer­a­tion con­sists of the book itself and what­ever good­will is gen­er­ated with the jour­nal edi­tor and per­haps the author.

   Blog­ging full time can entail a sur­pris­ing amount of work (see this, for exam­ple — but be warned that an enor­mous, slow-loading com­ments thread is attached; you might need to go do some­thing else while it loads, and tell it to stop load­ing an unre­spon­sive script to boot), and, unfor­tu­nately, blog­ging for pay can look an awful lot like blog­ging for free, because there are so many tal­ented writ­ers doing it for fun and per­sonal grat­i­fi­ca­tion rather than to make a liv­ing at it. (This is not unlike what hap­pens at sites like Etsy, where the pres­ence of so many hob­by­ists has the unfor­tu­nate effect of keep­ing the price norms lower than they should be.)

   I seem to have a knack for being good at things that no one wants to pay for! *laughs* and am learn­ing what I prob­a­bly should have known long ago, that it’s more about the mar­ket­ing, than it is about the product.

6. Jeff Borden said on November 18th, 2008 at 11:53 am

   Okay, now I really am sick.

   There are pub­lished reports that Sarah Palin will be paid $7 mil­lion to write a book, which would have a release date in time for Christ­mas 2009.

   No word on the pub­lisher, but I’d bet it will be Reg­n­ery or some other rightwing house. This kind of pay­day assures our favorite moose-killing hockey mom has the finan­cial where­withal to remain rel­e­vant in the GOP, which is prob­a­bly a great thing if you’re a Demo­c­rat. Ms. Palin fires up the base, but dri­ves away every­one else. Go for it, Repub­li­cans, go for it.

7. nancy said on November 18th, 2008 at 11:57 am

   Take heart, Jeff! Maybe she needs a ghost!

8. Catherine said on November 18th, 2008 at 12:05 pm

   Now THAT’S a book it wouldn’t kill me to see banned.

9. Catherine said on November 18th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

   Enjoyed the Bossy link as always, but here’s why Nancy’s in my favorites and she’s not: I don’t enjoy the com­ments or the com­menters there, and I do here.

10. paddyo' said on November 18th, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    Book title con­test, any­one, for the name of Cari­bou Barbie’s forth­com­ing tome? (Or will it be a graphic novel, aka comic book?)

    I’ll go with

    “Acces­sories Sold Sep­a­rately: Cari­bou Barbie’s Most Excel­lent Shop­ping Adventure!!!”

11. Catherine said on November 18th, 2008 at 12:22 pm

    “Math is Hard; and So Was Bill Kristol”

12. Jeff Borden said on November 18th, 2008 at 12:31 pm

    “Sim­ple Sarah: Why Amer­ica Needs Another Incu­ri­ous Igno­ra­mus With a Manichean World View”

    “You Betcha: Sarah Palin’s Incred­i­ble Odyssey From Small-Town Mayor to National Polit­i­cal Embarrassment”

13. Gasman said on November 18th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    I think that Sarah Palin needs to take it a lit­tle more slowly. Maybe she should actu­ally READ a book before she tries her hand at writ­ing one. Nobody said that she lacked ambition.

14. brian stouder said on November 18th, 2008 at 12:53 pm

    I think Cather­ine has the book title con­test won!

    Pam (read­ing over my shoul­der) sug­gested “Let Me Check on That” with a subtitle

    “and I’ll Get Back to Ya”

15. coozledad said on November 18th, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    Why am I think­ing it’s going to be a pic­ture book with lam­i­nated pages?

16. LA Mary said on November 18th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    I’m doing Beta test­ing on new appli­cant track­ing soft­ware and I have to cre­ate fake appli­cants. Sarah Palin is one. I have her down as hav­ing heard about the job she’s apply­ing for from a news­pa­per and when the soft­ware asked for the name of the paper, I put in, “all of them.” Under spe­cial skills I entered “field dress­ing caribou.”

17. Peter said on November 18th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    $2 for 400 words? If you type 60 words a minute, that works out to about $18.00 per hour. Just to type the damn thing, never mind com­pos­ing it.

    WTF?! They don’t even do it that cheap in India!

18. brian stouder said on November 18th, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    A book ques­tion for the women: Have y’all been as taken and beguiled with the lat­est, hot vam­pire books (Twi­light, etc) as all the women I know are?

    The movie is com­ing this week­end, and woe unto me (or any­one else) if I get between them and their movie plans!

19. LA Mary said on November 18th, 2008 at 1:57 pm

    Brian, unless Philip Roth is a vam­pire, no. I’m on a reread­ing Philip Roth binge, inspired by the Nobel com­mit­tee dump­ing on Amer­i­can writ­ers a few weeks ago. They were so wrong.

20. Julie Robinson said on November 18th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    Eh – last time I was inter­ested in vam­pires was “Dark Shad­ows”, and I was about 10.

21. LA Mary said on November 18th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    I had a moment to look at Mitch Albom. More than ever I am out­raged that he gets paid for that crap.

22. Danny said on November 18th, 2008 at 2:20 pm

    Noth­ing to do with today’s dis­cus­sion, but I watched an old Sher­lock Holmes movie last night and after the sec­ond utter­ance of “it’s ele­men­tary my dear Wat­son,” I was won­der­ing if there is a later install­ment of the series where Sher­lock is not around to solve the crime because Wat­son kills him by shov­ing his pipe stem all the way up his nose.

23. nancy said on November 18th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    The Miami book fair video is even worse, Mary. There is some­thing so pathetic in that level of smug self-satisfaction.

24. LA Mary said on November 18th, 2008 at 2:28 pm

    Danny, there should be. On the other hand, the rela­tion­ship between those two always struck me as a lit­tle off, so maybe they like keep­ing a cer­tain level of ten­sion going. I know cou­ples like that.

25. brian stouder said on November 18th, 2008 at 2:29 pm

    mary — OK -

    you made me look!

    I was think­ing you were being dramatic.

    But no;

    your reac­tion was polite!

    And restrained (if anything)

    (as always)

26. LA Mary said on November 18th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

    I’m pro­tected from most video here at work by the happy elves in the IT depart­ment. I man­aged to watch the corny video and vote for it, though, and I passed it along to every­one in my office so they could vote. Three of us have kids about that age, so we know what a schol­ar­ship means.
    Good luck Derek.

27. Rana said on November 18th, 2008 at 3:01 pm

    Brian, no. Too many vam­pire books fall into the cat­e­gory of soft­core rape porn, and these ones cer­tainly do. I like some vam­pire books, yes, but not this kind.

28. Julie Robinson said on November 18th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

    Appar­ently the same girls that go ga-ga over Grey’s Anatomy are primed to make Twi­light as big a hit as Harry Pot­ter. Or so I am informed by our col­lege son. He fig­ures he will be dragged to it at some point, so I’ll report back.

29. brian stouder said on November 18th, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    I dunno; it escapes me. (For me, movies have to have volup­tuous brunettes, fast cars, and/or space ships; and books have to have 19th cen­tury Amer­i­can pres­i­dents and assorted politicos)

    But Twi­light will make lots o’ money while the sun shines, if the women I know are any indication…

30. Danny said on November 18th, 2008 at 3:29 pm

    Hmmm, reminds me of one critic’s blurb on A Knight’s Tale: If you’re dumb and a teenaged girl, you’ll love it.

31. Gasman said on November 18th, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    For the con­ser­v­a­tives who’ve been pre­dict­ing lib­eral gloom and doom, the Ds voted to let turn­coat Joe Lieber­man keep his com­mit­tee chair. Both Obama and the Sen­ate Ds were far more mag­nan­i­mous than I thought they should be. They need Lieber­man like they need a boil on their col­lec­tive ass; he’s a pain and his use­ful­ness is truly doubt­ful. They may yet have to smack him down. Why reward his back­stab­bing and lying? I am of the opin­ion that what we say mat­ters and we should be held account­able. We already have enough offi­cious lying pricks on the other side of the aisle, we don’t need to go out of our way to keep a token ass­hole (osten­si­bly ) on the left.

32. coozledad said on November 18th, 2008 at 4:05 pm

    I used to won­der if there would ever be pornog­ra­phy that might be regarded as fine art. When the cretin at the video store reg­is­ter started smirk­ing at you, you could just shake your head and mut­ter ‘philis­tine!’ sotto voce.
    But the only thing I’ve seen rec­og­nized film artists make that bor­dered on porn required way too damned much con­cen­tra­tion, or had that bas­tard Ger­ard Depar­dieu in it.

33. brian stouder said on November 18th, 2008 at 4:12 pm

    Or Mickey Rourke. What woman sees any­thing in Mickey Rourke?

    PS — I LOVE all movies by David Lynch — he almost always comes through with hot women who become nekkid in the course of his art­ful movies (I say almost, because the lawm­n­mower guy movie has no naked women that I can recall, but it is mar­velous nonetheless)

34. alex said on November 18th, 2008 at 4:28 pm

    Gas­man, I wasn’t all that keen on the idea of pun­ish­ing Lieber­man. It’s his right to endorse whomever he pleases, after all. Doesn’t it bother you when the Repub­li­cans cru­cify dis­senters in their own ranks?

    That said, Lieber­man was an ass­hole for some of the things he said about Obama.

35. brian stouder said on November 18th, 2008 at 4:33 pm

    Lieber­man is an exam­ple of President-elect No Drama Obama select­ing his fights care­fully. No sense wast­ing polit­i­cal cap­i­tal — before his pres­i­dency even begins! — on a sym­bolic (and self-indulgent) purge.…especially con­sid­er­ing that President-elect Obama has another marker he can call in

36. coozledad said on November 18th, 2008 at 4:33 pm

    I keep hop­ing that Lieber­man is some­how twist­ing in the wind, but it would give me even more sat­is­fac­tion if Harry Reid was dumped as Major­ity Leader. He’s another Quis­ling.
    Maybe in 2012.

37. Julie Robinson said on November 18th, 2008 at 4:51 pm

    Brian, as a life­long brunette (okay, so now it’s from Loreal), may I say how much I appre­ci­ate your appre­ci­a­tion of brunettes!

38. LA Mary said on November 18th, 2008 at 5:37 pm

    I don’t think they want to lose Lieber­man as a Demo­c­rat before the newly elected sen­a­tors are sworn in. Lose Lieber­man and lose the Dem major­ity for now.

39. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 18th, 2008 at 5:44 pm

    I’ve got three recur­ring annual free­lance writ­ing con­tracts, none of which has paid a dime more each of the last four years; one asked if “for the bud­get” i could take a “small” cut and i was for­tu­nately in a posi­tion to say “if you need to go with some­one else cheaper, i cer­tainly under­stand” which meant it didn’t come up again.

    But alum mags are tight­en­ing wickedly, with usual edi­tors telling me “i’m being told by admin they’d rather we run a less well-written piece by a stu­dent intern than pay an out­side con­trac­tor.” My news­pa­per col­umn pays zilch, as of last June, with a “we’ll under­stand if you don’t wish to pro­vide this col­umn if there’s no com­pen­sa­tion,” and i thought about it and decided the expo­sure paid me enough in other gigs to make it worth con­tin­u­ing, and i have — if i’d dropped, they would have filled the Sat­ur­day faith page with more AP national copy.

    But i haven’t writ­ten for pulp for pay in almost a year; glossy and on-line and grants are where the money is that i can find (he said, turn­ing over rot­ting logs).

40. moe99 said on November 18th, 2008 at 7:43 pm

    With all these Clin­ton retreads being men­tioned for high office, it’s just like Hillary won.

41. Jolene said on November 18th, 2008 at 8:58 pm

    It’s not quite like that, moe. The “retreads” did, after all, choose sides in the pri­maries. Greg Craig, who is to be WH Coun­sel, has known the Clin­tons since they were in law school, yet he signed on w/ Obama very early in his cam­paign. That seems to me to be a fairly strong state­ment of loy­alty to Obama.

42. Dexter said on November 18th, 2008 at 9:11 pm

    A cou­ple months ago I defended Mitch by say­ing I was a fan for years, and while I was dis­ap­pointed when Mike Downey left and Mitch came aboard at The Freep, I had got­ten used to him.
    He really has writ­ten some remark­able sto­ries about sports stars, my favorite was his inter­view and story with Chris Web­ber of Michi­gan infamy and NBA star­dom.
    But this latest…he’s just rub­bing shit in his read­ers’ faces. As another sports guy , Warner Wolf would say…“C’mon , Mitch! That’s crap!”

43. Dexter said on November 18th, 2008 at 9:12 pm

    The Ike Corn video was so corny I laughed out loud…give a lit­tle look-see and vote for Derek…he’s stuck in third place.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Maybe some of you don’t know much about Albom. Here’s a seven year old Colum­bia J. Review of his life.…
    http://​find​ar​ti​cles​.com/​p​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​m​i​_​q​a​3​6​1​3​/​i​s​_​2​0​0​1​0​9​/​a​i​_​n​8​990341

44. brian stouder said on November 18th, 2008 at 9:26 pm

    That video was a lit­tle corn-flakey — but GRRRREAT nonetheless!

    PS — Dex­ter — thanks for the Mitch review; it was interesting

45. Linda said on November 18th, 2008 at 9:27 pm

    Also, Moe, while there are lots of Clin­ton “retreads,” they actu­ally know their way around Wash­ing­ton from pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence, which is not all bad. Clin­ton him­self, and Jimmy Carter, came to Wash­ing­ton with peo­ple who were total out­siders, and the learn­ing curve was steep. I think Obama doesn’t want to waste a minute, both for the economy’s sake, and so that Repub­li­cans don’t get a chance to get trac­tion. That’s my guess, anyway.

46. beb said on November 18th, 2008 at 9:56 pm

    Even in the depth of the Depres­sion most pulp mags tried to hang on to a penny a word for aver­age sto­ries. Peo­ple like Max Brand actu­ally got 6 – 8 cents a word. And that was when a penny could actu­ally buy you penny candy. That some­one today is offer­ing 1/2 cent a word for free­lance writ­ing is appalling.

    The thing about Leiber­man is that where the Repub­li­cans will crush any­one who devi­ates even a lit­tle from party line, Democ­racts can’t find it within them­selves to pun­ish a man who has been mak­ing cause with the enemy for the last — how long has the Iraq war been going on?

    I’m also dis­ap­pointed by Obama hints that he won’t pros­e­cute crim­i­nal actions by the CIA on tor­ture. The only way to pre­vent tor­ture again becom­ing some­thing that Amer­i­cans (but not the rest of the world) do — is to try all the peo­ple who tor­tured. The truth is I wanted a fire-breathing left­ist as pres­i­dent. Not some middle-of-the road good-ol’-boy.

47. Gasman said on November 19th, 2008 at 12:02 am

    alex & brian,
    I thought that Obama’s benev­o­lent pro­nounce­ment toward Lieber­man was mas­ter­ful, but that didn’t mean that he would have shed many tears if the Sen­ate Ds had kicked his sorry ass out of the cau­cus. Even if it means they don’t get to 60 seats, they don’t need him and they cer­tainly can’t count on him. There are sev­eral R Sen­a­tors that are wor­ried that their states are turn­ing blue. They won’t have trou­ble get­ting to 2 or 3 Rs on most issues to break fil­i­busters. I’m not sure how eager the Rs will be to trot out that strat­egy for awhile any­way. They don’t need to look even more petty and nasty than they already do.

    Lieber­man wasn’t just spout­ing BS about Obama, he was actively cam­paign­ing against those who were osten­si­bly his cau­cus bud­dies. If I’d been one of those Sen­a­tors, I’d have wanted Joe the Turn­coat castrated.

    Lieber­man is a loath­some prick and deserves to be tossed out on his ass. With all of New Eng­land trend­ing very blue, his chances of being re-elected as a Repub­li­can are not good. He was not going to bolt the party. They could have stripped him of his chair and left him in the cau­cus, but damn it, he should have suf­fered some con­se­quences for his actions.

    I hope that Obama is not above remind­ing him that he is now Obama’s bitch for some time to come. Maybe that was Obama’s strat­egy all along.

48. basset said on November 19th, 2008 at 12:39 am

    now for some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent… was in the Fort this week­end for the first time in about thirty years, just pass­ing through as we were going back and forth to visit my wife’s fam­ily in Michigan.

    walked out of the La Quinta motel in Auburn this morn­ing and saw a Journal-Gazette rack adver­tis­ing that the paper would announce its pres­i­den­tial endorse­ment on Monday.

    maybe they’re wait­ing for the pro­vi­sional ballots.

49. mark said on November 19th, 2008 at 7:13 am

    beb–

    no, the democ­rats never eat their own, even when a mem­ber sides with the oppo­si­tion on an issue. I mean, it’s not like the entire demo­c­ra­tic lead­er­ship aban­doned lieber­man two years ago, back­ing, with endorse­ments and party fund­ing, his pri­mary oppo­nent instead, because lieber­man dared to dis­agree about the Iraq war. Oh, actu­ally it was exactly like that.

    And Amer­i­cans just love tor­ture unlike, as you point out, the rest of the world. The crew on that hijacked Saudi tanker are prob­a­bly prais­ing God that they are being held by civ­i­lized Soma­lian pirates, and not in the cus­tody of the degen­er­ate US Navy. Who hasn’t heard the hor­ror sto­ries about the US Navy and the blaz­ing ring of tires trick?

    If only we were as good as the rest of the world…

50. Jolene said on November 19th, 2008 at 9:05 am

    mark: Lieber­man lost in a party-sanctioned pri­mary, despite sup­port from many main­stream Democ­rats includ­ing Barack Obama. That’s the way the can­di­date selec­tion process is sup­posed to work.

    Sup­port­ing the win­ner of a legit­i­mate elec­toral process is quite dif­fer­ent from sup­port­ing the can­di­date of the oppo­si­tion party.

    Lieber­man ignored the out­come of that elec­tion, just as he ignored the usual con­straints of being a lead­ing mem­ber of a polit­i­cal party — that is, don’t cam­paign for the other guy.

    The idea that Lieber­man is still taken in by the Demo­c­ra­tic party after ignor­ing the results of the 2004 Con­necti­cut pri­mary and cam­paign­ing for McCain is, well, either a tes­ta­ment to Obama’s gen­eros­ity or a sign of spine­less­ness among Sen­ate Democrats.

51. John said on November 19th, 2008 at 9:40 am

    Not to defend Smokin’ Joe, but he is my sen­a­tor. Joe got the Sen­a­to­r­ial Nom­i­na­tion from the state Demo­c­ra­tic Con­ven­tion in 2006. Ned Lam­ont then forced the pri­mary which he won. So Joe went third party beat­ing Ned and Repub­li­can Alan Schlesinger. Unaf­fil­i­ated vot­ers out­num­ber the Ds and the Rs here in Con­necti­cut (44% U, 34% D, 22% R) but they can’t vote in the primaries.

    If Ned had been more of a cen­trist or had any elected expe­ri­ence, he would have won.

    What Joe did in the last 3 months is unbe­liev­able. Endors­ing the oppos­ing party’s can­di­date is one thing, but he went far beyond that. Had the Repub­li­cans not balked at a pro-choice VP can­di­date, we would have be spared the Cari­bou Bar­bie rise to fame as Joe would have been McCain’s choice.

    I believe Joe will not be re-elected in 2012 as his act has worn thin here. I’m hav­ing doubt about Dodd also, since he was tagged with an insider friendly loan from Coun­try­wide Financial.

52. brian stouder said on November 19th, 2008 at 9:52 am

    A gen­uinely pleas­ing inter­view, con­ducted by Nate Sil­ver, fea­tur­ing John Ziegler, the guy who is hawk­ing an inex­haustible sup­ply of tripe at howoba​m​agot​elected​.com.

    http://​www​.fivethir​tyeight​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​1​1​/​i​n​t​e​r​v​i​e​w​-​w​i​t​h​-​j​o​h​n​-​z​i​e​g​l​e​r​-​o​n​-​z​o​g​b​y.html

    The thing is unin­ten­tion­ally funny, since (thanks to Rachel Maddow’s show) I can just hear Silver’s even-toned matter-of-fact wonk­ish voice, while the other guy resorts to gut­ter lan­guage, and sev­eral taunts (or hopes?) that Sil­ver will “never” pub­lish the transcript.

53. Jolene said on November 19th, 2008 at 9:56 am

    Brian, have you noticed how many TV shows Nate has been on lately. I’ve seen him on all the MSNBC evening shows (Matthews, Gre­gory, Olber­mann, Mad­dow), and last night I saw him on The New­shour on PBS. It’s pretty cool that a guy who just had an idea and did the work is get­ting all this play.

54. brian stouder said on November 19th, 2008 at 10:08 am

    Jolene — yes indeed! And the thing is — the cachet I infer (when I see him) is “the guy who was almost EXACTLY RIGHT” in his inter­pre­ta­tion of the bliz­zard of polls we wade through, nowadays.

    All through the elec­tion cycle, he would say “dis­count this one” and “believe that one” and “here’s some­thing to con­sider” and put all that into his sta­tis­ti­cal blender (set on “puree”) and run 10,000 tests.…and pro­duce a result that was almost PRECISELY CORRECT!!

    I think he is a cross between Edward R Mur­row and Harry Potter

55. moe99 said on November 19th, 2008 at 10:26 am

    Oh, and mark, you’re an attor­ney. Want to explain to the rest of us how tor­ture trumps the rule of law in the US? I await your response with bated breath.

56. del said on November 19th, 2008 at 10:41 am

    As for tor­ture, mark, the over­ar­ch­ing point is that it should be unlaw­ful. And for those who do it their lib­erty should be in jeop­ardy. The Bush admin­stra­tion retreated from mod­ern civ­i­lized norms by insti­tu­tion­ally sanc­tion­ing tor­ture. Even teens under­stand such mod­ern civ­i­lized norms and that’s why they men­ace and threaten with the warn­ing, “I’m gonna go medieval on yo’ ass.“
    Bush and Cheney think that they’re strik­ing fear into the hearts of would be ene­mies of the U.S. with such tac­tics, but I think it only encour­ages them.

57. del said on November 19th, 2008 at 10:59 am

    moe99, the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for tor­ture, and canard, that is often given, and that mark may invoke is the fol­low­ing dooms­day hypo­thet­i­cal: A man knows that a weapon of mass destruc­tion has been deployed that will soon cause a gazil­lion peo­ple to per­ish — may he be tor­tured if he refuses to dis­close a means to pre­vent the mass destruc­tion?
    This only hap­pens in James Bond movies (along with comely espi­onage agents with names like, well, you know). To all those peo­ple I would say that it is imper­a­tive that cer­tain things should be pre­sump­tively unlaw­ful in our soci­ety. “Legal excuse” must be for the accused to assert.

58. Gena said on November 19th, 2008 at 11:56 am

    Another free­lance stone to turn -
    Many adver­tis­ing agen­cies (in par­tic­u­lar, smaller ones) like to have out­side writ­ers in their back pocket for things like newslet­ters, annual reports, adver­to­ri­als and press releases. Stuff copy­writ­ers basi­cally hate to do.

59. Gasman said on November 19th, 2008 at 12:03 pm

    When we began tor­tur­ing pris­on­ers, we became what we said we abhorred. Like­wise when we openly invaded a sov­er­eign state with­out justification.

    “I would rather be exposed to the incon­ve­niences attend­ing too much lib­erty than to those attend­ing too small a degree of it.” –Thomas Jefferson

    Iron­i­cally, the very tor­ture com­mit­ted by Bush, Cheney, et al., might be the ticket to free­dom for some truly dan­ger­ous ter­ror­ists. We are a nation of laws. All, includ­ing the pres­i­dent and vice pres­i­dent, are bound by the con­sti­tu­tion. If we have an exec­u­tive that can bypass con­sti­tu­tional stric­tures and require­ments, then our entire struc­ture of gov­ern­ment is at risk.

    If tor­ture was such a damn good idea, why have Bush, Cheney, Rums­feld, Gon­za­les, et al. gone to such great lengths to cloak their involvement?

60. del said on November 19th, 2008 at 12:44 pm

    Agreed gas­man. There was a time dur­ing the Bush years when our nation of laws had mor­phed into some­thing very sin­is­ter, with appar­ent pub­lic approval. I’m haunted by a sta­tis­tic that 74% of Amer­i­cans approved of tor­ture to pre­vent ter­ror­ism after 9/11. Despaired so much I bor­dered on nihilism — or some­thing like it. Didn’t think Obama would win early on. But, wait now, YES WE DID.

61. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 19th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    (whim­per, low) no, not annual reports … has it come to this?

    Really — i hate annual reports, except when they pay up front. Enough do to keep me writ­ing some. But some peo­ple feel that way about grant boil­er­plate, which i can hap­pily peck out all after­noon with­out seri­ous indigestion.

62. mark said on November 19th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

    moe–

    I don’t claim that “tor­ture trumps the rule of law in the US.” Actu­ally, I’m not even sure what you mean by the asser­tion. (“No offi­cer, your traf­fic laws don’t apply to me. I’m a tor­turer.)? I ques­tioned the absurd notion that the “rest of the world” rejects torture.

    And gas­man is wrong when he says the Con­sti­tu­tion applies to “all.” It doesn’t. It always applies to US cit­i­zens in US juris­dic­tions. It some­times applies to non-US cit­i­zens who are in US juris­dic­tions. It some­times applies to US Cit­i­zens who are in non-US jurisdictions.

    The Con­sti­tu­tion didn’t do shit for me when I was detained for sev­eral hours try­ing to leave Siem Reap. Hav­ing a friend at the State Depart­ment did. If you choose to marry a Saudi and move to his coun­try, your Con­sti­tu­tion is mean­ing­less if you try to drive a car or travel with­out your husband’s permission.

    Cops in the US are con­strained by stan­dards that are ulti­mately Con­sti­tu­tional ones. Among other things they pro­hibit exces­sive force and unrea­son­able search and seizure. Those restric­tions have absolutely no appli­ca­tion to a Seal team oper­at­ing in the moun­tains along the Pak­istani bor­der. Those guys are lim­ited by laws Con­gress might see fit to pass, treaties to which we are a party and mil­i­tary law. Spy­ing and espi­onage by a US cit­i­zen against the US gov­ern­ment is a cap­i­tal offense. Directed against a for­eign enemy it may get you a medal

    Will one of you Con­sti­tu­tional heavy­weights please ref­er­ence the por­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion that pro­hibits any­thing in terms of the treat­ment of a non-US cit­i­zen cap­tured and held out­side the US? The “no water­board­ing of ter­ror­ists cap­tured while try­ing to kill US troops” sec­tion may be down by the “bombs away with atomic weapons on heav­ily pop­u­lated cities” provisions.

    I’m pretty sure that Obama knows that his options for deal­ing with a bel­liger­ent Iran are far greater than they are for han­dling crit­i­cism from the edi­to­r­ial pages of the Chicago Tri­bune or a riot in St. Louis.

    Try read­ing “Sole Sur­vivor”. On the way to their tar­get, that Seal team was stum­bled upon by a man and a boy, osten­si­bly a farmer and his son. The Seals took a vote on whether to kill them or let them move on. They let them go. A few hours later the Seals were ambushed by 200 Taliban.

    Nasty busi­ness requir­ing nasty deci­sions. Com­pared with “the rest of the world” we have a pretty admirable record of bal­anc­ing moral­ity and the neces­si­ties of war. Those who cur­rently claim higher moral ground are also those who depend upon us to defend them.

63. Gasman said on November 19th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    mark,
    I find it rather aston­ish­ing that you would claim that it is entirely respect­ful to the con­sti­tu­tion to inflict upon non-citizens what is decid­edly ille­gal for cit­i­zens. If the con­sti­tu­tion has any mean­ing, then its pre­cepts should be equally valid for all, whether or not they are U.S. cit­i­zens. True, the con­sti­tu­tion is only legally bind­ing for U.S. cit­i­zens, but does it seem just to then claim we can do what­ever the hell we want to non-citizens?

    The Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence states that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are cre­ated equal, that they are endowed by their Cre­ator with cer­tain unalien­able Rights, that among these are Life, Lib­erty and the pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness.” Note that the oper­a­tive phrase is “ALL men are cre­ated equal,” not just some. Acci­dents of geo­graph­i­cal birth or nat­u­ral­iza­tion do not pre­clude unalien­able rights.

    Pars­ing what is “legal” does not ren­der jus­tice. I would have expected some­what bet­ter from a lawyer.

64. moe99 said on November 19th, 2008 at 10:23 pm

    Mark, the rule of law in the US, which I invoked and not the Con­sti­tu­tion, includes the Con­gres­sional rat­i­fi­ca­tion of treaties, such as the much neglected Geneva Treaty gov­ern­ing the treat­ment of POWs, regard­less of where they are cap­tured or detained . We have abro­gated and tram­pled on the rights we agreed to pro­vide such per­sons and we are shame­ful in the world’s eyes, for not just doing so, but for trum­pet­ing our “clean­ness” in this regard for so many years. Lo, how the mighty are fallen.

    And you can pull a John Woo all you like, but all the legalisms and dis­tinc­tions you will try to draw are noth­ing more than turds in dixie cups.

    Here are the applic­a­ble pro­vi­sions, mark.

    GENERAL PROTECTION OF PRISONERS OF WAR

    Arti­cle 12

    Pris­on­ers of war are in the hands of the enemy Power, but not of the indi­vid­u­als or mil­i­tary units who have cap­tured them. Irre­spec­tive of the indi­vid­ual respon­si­bil­i­ties that may exist, the Detain­ing Power is respon­si­ble for the treat­ment given them.

    Pris­on­ers of war may only be trans­ferred by the Detain­ing Power to a Power which is a party to the Con­ven­tion and after the Detain­ing Power has sat­is­fied itself of the will­ing­ness and abil­ity of such trans­feree Power to apply the Con­ven­tion. When pris­on­ers of war are trans­ferred under such cir­cum­stances, respon­si­bil­ity for the appli­ca­tion of the Con­ven­tion rests on the Power accept­ing them while they are in its custody.

    Nev­er­the­less if that Power fails to carry out the pro­vi­sions of the Con­ven­tion in any impor­tant respect, the Power by whom the pris­on­ers of war were trans­ferred shall, upon being noti­fied by the Pro­tect­ing Power, take effec­tive mea­sures to cor­rect the sit­u­a­tion or shall request the return of the pris­on­ers of war. Such requests must be com­plied with.

    Arti­cle 13

    Pris­on­ers of war must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlaw­ful act or omis­sion by the Detain­ing Power caus­ing death or seri­ously endan­ger­ing the health of a pris­oner of war in its cus­tody is pro­hib­ited, and will be regarded as a seri­ous breach of the present Con­ven­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, no pris­oner of war may be sub­jected to phys­i­cal muti­la­tion or to med­ical or sci­en­tific exper­i­ments of any kind which are not jus­ti­fied by the med­ical, den­tal or hos­pi­tal treat­ment of the pris­oner con­cerned and car­ried out in his interest.

    Like­wise, pris­on­ers of war must at all times be pro­tected, par­tic­u­larly against acts of vio­lence or intim­i­da­tion and against insults and pub­lic curiosity.

    Mea­sures of reprisal against pris­on­ers of war are prohibited.

    Arti­cle 14

    Pris­on­ers of war are enti­tled in all cir­cum­stances to respect for their per­sons and their hon­our. Women shall be treated with all the regard due to their sex and shall in all cases ben­e­fit by treat­ment as favourable as that granted to men. Pris­on­ers of war shall retain the full civil capac­ity which they enjoyed at the time of their cap­ture. The Detain­ing Power may not restrict the exer­cise, either within or with­out its own ter­ri­tory, of the rights such capac­ity con­fers except in so far as the cap­tiv­ity requires.

    Arti­cle 15

    The Power detain­ing pris­on­ers of war shall be bound to pro­vide free of charge for their main­te­nance and for the med­ical atten­tion required by their state of health.