Glenn Greenwald calls out well-intentioned progressives’ disgust re: “Is Kagan Gay?”

Is this just another example of a blog post that “could only be written by a straight person“?

I suspect Salon’s Glenn Greenwald would say yes:

Indeed, the very notion that it is “outrageous” or “despicable” to inquire into a public figure’s sexual orientation — adjectives I heard repeatedly applied to those raising questions about Kagan — is completely inconsistent with the belief that sexual orientation is value-neutral.   If being straight and gay are precise moral equivalents, then what possible harm can come from asking someone, especially one who seeks high political office:  ”are you gay?”

What possible harm? Er, being gay can still make you the target of a hate crime and get you kicked out of the military, for example — right? If the question is so innocuous, why do others in high political office — see Senator Lindsey Graham, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I might add — evade the question? Am I alone in seeing the hypocrisy of demanding an answer from Kagan but not from the Senators in charge of questioning and confirming her?

For the record, I believe sexual orientation should be a value-neutral attribute. I understand the Harvey Milk position: coming out to friends, neighbors, colleagues can be the most powerful antidote to homophobia. But what about all the others who don’t share my views? Am I wrong to worry? Is it wrong to be irked when The Gay Question hijacks the Kagan debate and diverts attention from the far more pressing question: Does Kagan have principles, and what the hell does she stand for, anyway? Am I guilty of condescension if I want to “protect” others from being forced to divulge sensitive personal information that can be used against them?

When an openly gay intellectual like Greenwald questions my position, I pay attention, and sincerely rethink my views — as a straight person, perhaps I’m missing something? Who is right?

Answer: I think both Greenwald and I may be guilty of a bit of projection, of turning these questions about Kagan into questions about ourselves, as Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick argues:

So, “Is Kagan an Ivy League elitist” may actually mean “Am I an Ivy League elitist?” “Is Kagan a soulless careerist?” may be read as “Am I a soulless careerist?” and “Hey! Why isn’t Kagan married?” starts to sound an awful lot like “Hey! Why am I not married?”….

If we’re going to talk about Kagan, let’s stick to her record, her writings, and her speeches. And if you want to talk about your love life, looks, academic anxieties, ambition, dreams of marriage, or dating history, I’m also all ears. But maybe let’s just leave her out of it?

Have to say, I get Lithwick’s point. But I still totally respect and admire you, Glenn (you don’t remember me from NYU Law, do you?).

[Equating sexual orientation with "sex life" - Elena Kagan, Supreme Court Nominee - Salon.com]

[Can we please stop talking about Supreme Court nominees like they are real people? - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine]

Tags: law, politics, SCOTUS

Twitter is the reason I am blogging less

Well, that and looming story deadlines — which usually max out my daily quota of words and capacity for thought. But like the best of desserts, there’s always room in my news-and-information diet for Twitter.

My conversion from Twitter Skeptic to Twitter True Believer is a recent development — to be frank, I used to look upon Twitter as somewhat of a cultural joke. But thanks to Sree Sreenivasan, professor of journalism at Columbia University, I am starting to learn how to tap into the power of Twitter.

Here are my Top Three Reasons for using Twitter:

1. “Facebook is for people you used to know, and Twitter is for people you want to know.” — Thomas Crampton. Most of the people I follow on Twitter would never “friend” me on Facebook. But on Twitter, there’s no barrier preventing me from reading what they read, and sharing what they share — no permission required. There’s a lot to be learned (for me as a journalist, anyway) from following prominent doers and thinkers in the world of news and media.
2. Twitter is like a virtual water cooler where you can share interesting links with interesting people. In real life, I keep mum about a lot of the things I’m interested in — too risky when you don’t know a person’s sensibility, interests and world-view. But on Twitter, I can congregate around others who are both compatible and also different enough from me to keep things interesting. Those people also serve as my trusted curators who help me sort through the massive amounts of information we’re all bombarded with daily.
3. Twitter beats RSS as an efficient alert system for stories I want to read. And it’s starting to divert some business from Google, too, as a tool for sifting through the Web. Much of the news/stories/blog-posts I read is now coming from Twitter.

For those wondering if Facebook is comparable to Twitter as a communications tool, here’s a helpful bit from TwitTip:

Let’s say you go to a wedding or other social gathering where lots of people know each other. The style and tone of communication there will be more like using Facebook; you chat with old friends and acquaintances, mixing and mingling in an intimate manner. In this setting, people tend to feel more relaxed and “in their element”. Conversations are familiar and center on shared experiences and connections.

Now, when you go to a large party or social event where you don’t know most of the people in attendance, you will use a very different style of communication, more like Twitter; you want to meet people and somehow make yourself known, stand out from the crowd, make an impression, self promote and make new connections. Twitter is like getting the podium and not everyone feels comfortable or knows how to stand comfortably in the spotlight.

In fact, almost all of us, when first approaching Twitter, tend to use it to post useless updates like “Going to lunch”, thinking of it as a another tool to communicate with friends, when in fact, it is more like stepping on to a stage, where you are communicating with an audience and quickly find that you need to find a voice and say something useful and interesting or quickly lose the attention of your audience. People refer to Twitter as a mini or micro blogging platform.

For a good list of links and resources relating to Twitter, check out: Sree Sreenivasan – @sreenet, TWITTER: Sree’s Twitter Guide for Newbies & Skeptics.

My Twitter handle: @shc347

Tags: Facebook, meta-journalism, social media, Twitter

“Rats Mob The Upper East Side” (Also the fashion catwalk)

The Wall Street Journal debuted its New York edition today, which featured on its front page the breaking story, “Rats Mob the Upper East Side.” The WSJ reports: “An army of rats is scurrying into apartments, stores and even car engines on a stretch of the Upper East Side.”

Meanwhile, over on Vanity Fair, they may have unwittingly proposed a solution:

From Billy Reid's Fall 2010 Collection (Yes, that's rat fur they're wearing)

Here are some choice quotes from the VF piece:

“I love the masculinity of it. It’s sort of the bad-ass fur,” [Designer Billy] Reid explains.

Locals have explored other uses for nutria [rat] pelts, including pillows and teddy bears.

“It makes a great blanket,” says Edmond Mouton, biologist and program manager at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. His department’s Web site includes a recipe for “stuffed nutria hindquarters” that serves 15.

I don’t know what PETA will have to say about this. But I can’t imagine the rich fashionistas of the Upper East Side caring. Because if there’s one organization that’s persona non grata on the Upper East Side — where there’s probably more fur per capita than anywhere else — it’s PETA.

Tags: newspapers, pop culture

A Tale of Two Headlines

Did the Huffington Post place these two stories side by side on purpose?

Is this another example of “Man’s inhumanity to man”?

Tags: meta-journalism

Words of Wisdom from Jonathan Slevin’s Farewell Letter

Jonathan Slevin is stepping down as Publisher and President of the Washington Times. In his farewell letter, he had this to say (and I think he’s spot on):

In parting, some brief advice: 1) Work collaboratively throughout the company; 2) Respond to the marketplace by putting digital first, radio second, and print products third, flowing onto newsprint as the outcome of first meeting the 24/7 customer digital demand; 3) Disperse authority in the newsroom throughout, structuring foremost to serve a digital audience. Recognize that the era of the newsroom as separate and supreme empire and editor as emperor is over. (emphasis mine)

[Slevin signs off, takes parting shots - On Media - POLITICO.com]

Tags: journalism, meta-journalism

Steven Hawking says: Avoid Aliens; They’ll want our resources

Hey Arizona, maybe you’re worried about the wrong aliens. Which is the greater threat: illegal aliens from Latin America or the aliens from Outer Space?

From The Slatest:

In a new documentary series for the Discovery Channel, Hawking explains that it seems highly unlikely that Earth is the only planet where life has evolved considering there are 100 billion galaxies in the universe. “To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.” Although extraterrestrial life is most likely to consist of microbes or simple animals, there could be a few forms of intelligent life. And, according to Hawking, contacting them could end up posing a threat to humanity because they would likely be interested in sucking up the planet’s resources. “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

If you were an alien, which of our resources would you suck up first?

Read the original story at The Times (of London) Online.

Tags: science

Does long-form journalism work online?

There’s an excellent example of long-form journalism in the Sunday Magazine of today’s NYT, which I blogged about last week here. Conventional wisdom says attention spans are dwindling and no one appreciates long-form journalism anymore — certainly not in the digital realm, where everything needs to be concise and of breakneck speed. That kind of thinking leads to posts like this from Jason Linkins of HuffPo’s Eat The Press: “Mike Allen Profile: We Read The NYT Magazine’s Politico Piece So You Don’t Have To.”

I have no problem with Linkins, but I found that post to be… obnoxious, and bad form, frankly. (Imagine releasing a CliffsNotes version of a book four days before the book itself is released, as Linkins did.) Linkins would probably fall into the camp of those who say long-form journalism doesn’t work online.

I disagree — but then, I read a lot of long-form journalism online. And like Max Linsky, one of the founders of Longform.org, well-told long-form stories were what made me want to become a journalist.

From Longform’s site:

We post articles, past and present, that we think are too long and too interesting to be read on a web browser.

We started this site to bring together our enthusiasm for both great longform reads and the excellent Instapaper reader.

Try it out — both Longform and Instapaper are free and favorites of mine.

And that NYT piece on Allen by Mark Leibovich? It was posted on Longform. Of course.

Tags: meta-journalism