BREAKING: Incomparable services restored!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2024

Provider rights the ship: People are suffering from the storm, but also around the world.

They're suffering; we were inconvenienced. We know there's a very large difference

With respect to the storm, it didn't seem that we actually had a storm around here. But our Internet and cable service disappeared (very) early on Sunday morning—and our (landline) phone went too!

Yes, it was an area outage, youthful agents of the (unnamed) Internet Service Provider assured us. But after visits to their facility Sunday at noon and Monday morning at 10, we were beginning to wonder if they were ever going to be able to right the ship.

At some time today, they did! We were elsewhere, helping medical practitioners advance the world's medical knowledge.

Before our services went away, we'd planned to spend the week examining some of the contents of a pair of silos. One is maintained by the Fox News Channel, one by the New York Times.

After recovering from our trauma, we'll start that work tomorrow. That said, the silence of the past several days led us to contemplate the future, in which we'll attempt to describe the state of play afflicting our nation in these latter days, deep inside the political era which started in 1960.

We don't know who the be president-elect will be by then. At present, we picture a new enterprise, at a different site, working under this title:

American Discourse, American Babel
Fox News Channel, New York Times

The Fox News Channel and the New York Times! They're a pair of very famous orgs, though they may not be well-known.

We're not saying that they're "the same;" we aren't saying they're "equivalent." We'd say they're each in control of a silo, and the wages of discourse by silo is the post-journalistic Babel which now belongs to us all.

Before the storm somehow washed us away, we'd reviewed some peculiar reporting at the New York Times. Tomorrow, we'll start this new block of work with a look at a Political Memo by Rebecca Davis O'Brien.

O'Brien's a good, decent person. On Saturday morning, her piece appeared on the front page of the New York Times' print editions.

We agree with many of her points—but on balance, the piece struck us as odd. Online, its dual headline says this:

POLITICAL MEMO
Harris Has a Lot of Strengths. Giving Interviews Isn’t One of Them.
Vice President Kamala Harris is a sharp debater and a tireless campaigner, but televised interviews are a weakness. Her professional experience may explain why.

We agree with some of O'Brien's basic points. On balance, though, her piece seemed puzzling, odd.

We'll start tomorrow with that Political Memo. We may cite the slightly peculiar remark Gail Collins recently made as she spoke with Bret Stephens:

Another Trump Acolyte Finds Himself in Big Trouble

[...]

Bret: I’m still where I was last week: waiting for Harris to persuade me to vote for her. What’s wrong with asking her to sit down for a one-on-one interview with a serious journalist who will ask some tough but reasonable questions about urgent public policy matters? The same, of course, should be done with Trump.

Gail: You know I’m not gonna tell you that Harris is doing enough serious interviews with national reporters. She’s not. Neither, obviously, is Trump, but we have a right to hold her to a higher standard.

Bret: I just want reassurance that she is up for the job.

Given the fuller way he's explained it, we aren't offended by Stephens' stance with respect to Harris. Quite a few people are. 

That said, did Collins mean what she seemed to say? Did she really mean that it's OK for a major newspaper to hold one presidential candidate "to a higher standard?"

Did she mean that the way its sounds? Probably not, but then again, there was that Political Memo just a few days later!

The so-called "democratization of media" has created a nation of silos. Do the mandated contents of one silo sometimes find their way into another?

We wondered when we read that Political Memo! Right there on the Times front page, very few nits were left unpicked, sometimes in ways which didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. 

We were left with a curious question. Has the other candidate ever been nit-picked, on the front page of the New York Times, in a way which could be compared to that? Has the Times ever beat the bushes, in a comparable way, about his "interview style?"

Full disclosure! We're sick of what we've been trying to do at this incomparable site. It's time to start with our flailing nation's recent history, but for now, we'll still go with this.

We'll start with O'Brien's Political Memo. Or the debate may wash things away! How's a Babel dweller to know?