Watching Fareed Zakaria’s new show on CNN. It’s called GPS– Global something or the other. He assembled a good panel to discuss global issues. I love shows like this because they follow an interview format with people who actually know what the hell they’re talking about; they’re actual scholars, not just political hacks.
The debut episode’s panelists include China scholar Minxin Pei, Christiane Amanpour, former Irish PM and European Commission President John Bruton, and the asshat (and Bushie) Doug Feith. I’m both enjoying and squirming at the muffled insults being tossed at Feith (and Bush, indirectly). Those of you who remember may know that that Feith was a DoD intelligence man, who cooked the Iraq intelligence and is so ridiculously neoconservative that it led Colin Powell’s chief of staff to claim “I’ve seldom in my life met a dumber man.”
Bruton, Amanpour and Pei are good. I find their perspectives refreshing, especially Pei. I don’t know much about China nor have I heard much from Chinese scholars so it’s interesting to hear a China scholar talk so bluntly about how the Chinese perceive Obama (not on their radar yet), how China is handling Tibet (stupidly) and press access in the recent Chinese earthquakes (unprecedented, but not as big a deal as people would like to believe).
Generally when people I abhor talk, I tend to tune out– especially in this case that wicked buffoon Feith. (Why is he teaching at Georgetown? Is he serving as a living example of what not to do?). But nowadays I am trying to listen to these whackjobs (or “differing voices” as some might like to say) because of an article written by Samantha Power, where she decries the way we read things online (the echo chamber of only the opinions/ stories that reinforce our perspectives rather than the wide array of differing opinions in a newspaper). So I did try to listen to Feith even though it did feel all nails-on-a-chalkboard, to me.
Anyway, back to Fareed. He’s a good questioner and clearly knows the issues, whether it’s China, India, the middle east or the US government’s policy toward various African nations. He’s also written a very good book recently about the growing marginalization of the US government in global treaties and deals.
Two things about Zakaria that I find interesting still:
One, that he has done no mea culpa ala Andrew Sullivan, for his flawed, arrogant support of the war. It’s one thing to have supported the Iraq war with a measure of humility, and on the basis that you were supporting it based on the facts you had. But to breezily and harshly dismiss critics as peacenik pansies and then to be critical of that same war a few years later without having the decency to apologize, is just ridiculous.
Second, and completely unrelated– he’s still an average host. His transitions and segues are weak, his intonation, elocution and pacing of words is choppy and uneven. I think a lot of Indians who’ve lived in both the US and India, sound like that. We lapse into our faux-English pronunciations one minute and a US pronunciation the next, and the overall sound is awful. He needs to practice with some news anchors and he can smooth that out.
That said, I have hope for this show. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to an intelligent discussion on foreign issues, on a US TV station. Which means it probably won’t do very well outside of the Charlie Rose set *cough* me *cough*.
I enjoy America’s Next Top Model greatly, and I like Tyra Banks’ drama mama attitude. It makes for good TV. But does she really deserve a 3,000 word+ piece in the NYT magazine? I saw the story on Friday and skimmed the multimedia section (including a graphic of Tyra’s six most common smiles), but I still don’t get it. The article has some interesting tidbits here and there, but it’s mostly paeans of praise from friends, family and colleagues.
(I should add that I’m glad she moved back to NY both with ANTM and her talk show; not that her shows have much credibility, but the NY location will definitely give ANTM some of its groove that it lost in LA).
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The best thing about the Sex and the City movie was the movie theater I watched it in. The Avalon is one of the oldest movie theaters in DC, and it’s absolutely beautiful. It was nearly torn down a few years ago, and the community resurrected it. It’s a beautiful, large, old-style theater with an intricate mural on its ceiling, a teeny-tiny ladies’ room done in Pepto-Bismol pink and it really is a community theater. Nearly everyone who came to the movie seemed to be from the community and it was lovely to see. It made up for the utter mediocrity of the movie, which had one of THE worst endings I’ve seen in a romantic comedy. I thought Made of Honor had a crappy ending, but SATC went one step worse.
People who know me, know I lurve Charlie Rose. Don’t get me wrong– I know he’s a flawed interviewer, what with his tendency to answer his own questions (e.g.– a question to a banker might be “So the markets are not great. They’re in trouble. Things aren’t working out. And in that situation, what do we do? Do we increase government spending? Do we cut interest rates? Or do we just say “hands off).
BUT he does have interesting and in-depth interviews with compelling people whom we don’t see enough of in the rest of US newsmedia, especially interviews with higher education officials, artists, writers and the like.
All of this is a lead up to say–this video is HILARIOUS. (Courtesy of Chris Hayes Editor of TheNation).
I love The New York Times in much the same way as some people love their children. When the Times does ridiculous things I inevitably excuse it. Jayson Blair? A bad deal, but they admitted it and moved forward. The Iraq travesty? They did a huge mea culpa piece– the self-flaggellation was enough.
I love the offbeat pieces, the educated opinion writing and even the old-fashioned use of honorifics.
But every now and then they do a piece so ridiculous that it’s indefensible. This piece on women going to New York for a Sex and the City lifestyle, is one such piece.
I get that the show is iconic, but must we really have an article about how women are struggling to afford Manhattan apartments and $500 shoes at the same time? Oh how shocking– their lives aren’t like the show. They can’t afford to eat at 4-star restaurants AND pay the rent.
What’s more tedious is that the article attempts to examine things that have happened, PC (Post-Carrie). One such “pithy” observation: Women today use cellphones and blogs, whereas in the show, Carrie merely has a column, and her cellphone is merely an accessory. In fact, men don’t want to date the heroines of the Times’ piece, because *gasp* these women blog about their love lives. Oh no–their lives are so different from Carrie’s! How sad.
Clearly someone thought that it would be timely to do this piece because the SATC movie comes out in a few weeks. Regardless, the article wastes our time with several pointless issues, such as the cost of shoes, the perils of big-city high-life dating, and the ignominy of living in Queens.
I’ve read for some time now about the changes coming to the New Republic. But I have to say that the impact of seeing the actual magazine far outweighs reading descriptions of it. I’m not a subscriber, but I have seen older issues, and this one is definitely an improvement. It’s amazing how something like better-quality paper and more illustrations can enliven a magazine. That’s certainly what’s happened here.
The problem with magazines, of course, is that in general, their markets and staffs are shrinking. Certainly this is the case in the United States. The reverse is true of India, my home country. Magazine publishing is booming there, as this Time magazine article attests. It’s ironic that I came here to study about journalism and publishing when the real boom is actually taking place in India.