See That My Access Is All & Political Grave Is Kept Clean

If you're a media-spheric news junkie I'm sure ya noticed the funky footnote that the Washington Post's famed writer Bob Woodward, now an Assistant Managing Editor himself has apologized to the other editors for failing to reveal he was another media insider in on the leaked identity of Valerie Plame. Woodward, says it was only to protect his sources, and seems guilty of the type of behaviors jailed former NY Times scribe Judith Miller was accused of. It could be argued that Woodward, in pursuit of "access" has perhaps cozied so tightly with administration officials to get scoops, that he has become the story. Incredulously, despite knowing he too could be subpoenaed, he has gone on t.v appearances to deride the Fitzgerald investigation, saying stuff like "the special prosecutor in that case, his behavior, in my view, has been disgraceful" and is a sort of a “junkyard dog”.

Media watchdogs are aghast, such as Rory O'Connor who calls it a grave error in judgement...

This much at least is clear: Woodward’s testimony changes key elements in the chronology Fitzgerald announced when indicting Libby; Woodward’s unnamed official is now revealed to be the first government employee to disclose Plame’s CIA employment to a reporter; and Woodward is that reporter…

Others note that Woodward's chronology hardly excuses Libby, nor negate's Fitzgerald's indictment, merely adds an interesting sidebar. AS Matthew Yglesia's notes at TPM CAFE:

One must be very careful in reading how Fitzgerald parsed his words about who may have been the first official to have told a reporter. Following is from the Fitzgerald press conference transcript:

Valerie Wilson's cover was blown in July 2003. The first sign of that cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14th, 2003.
But Mr. Novak was not the first reporter to be told that Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie, worked at the CIA. Several other reporters were told.

In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.

Note the word "known" highlighted in the third paragraph. Add to that the fact that Fitzgerald never said whether or not the investigation was completed.

Greg Anrig Jr notes in a conclusion for a post to TPM CAFE, he utilizes a prescient sample from a 1996 NY times article in which Joan Didion handily and thoroughly critiqued Woodward's already well known heroically tinted D.C backroom portraits in six books about Gov't officials as "political pornography".

Woodward's peerless solicitousness toward his sources has made him rich and famous. But now that his deceit in attacking the Fitzgerald investigation without revealing his own role in the story has been unveiled, how can the Washington Post continue to assure its readers that they can trust him?

The Woodward saga has seen him go from hero to zero, and he now looks like he has made is way into Washington's elite by working his way up from hungry Watergate whistle blower of 30 years ago to a greedy ego inflated "info-crat" content with coddling powerful figures.

I see him almost like a palace portrait artist in the royal courts of yore, patiently waiting for a sitting with the great leaders who will buy the glowing portraits he paints of their greatness . Indeed that backslapping bourgeois banter he specializes in has irked former fans for years, and now he seems revealed as some sort of deposed truth juggling charlatan, holding back his judgement & the juicy stuff. More interested in peddling his pandering books than working a beat, he keeps his name entrenched on the masthead of the Nation's Capital daily paper so he can keep collecting his checks from the Post and stay in the Beltway loop...sad Bob, just sad.

Editor & Publisher print Woodward's Larry King transcript

meanwhile in other media-centric news:

Google has gone live with it's

http://base.google.com/ which helps users upload bulk lists of items, and aid in selling items and services in a way that could compete with E-Bay and other e-commerce search engines. Meanwhile the Washington Post has had excerpts of the new book by staffer David Vise about Google and the 100,000's of computers they utilize to build their empire and tap the net for all it's worth.

The Google Story

You can Read Chapter 26, "Googling Your Genes," from "The Google Story."

Ya like web enabled info?

Check out this :

You can now monitor the daily measurements of tropospheric NO2 above Europe. Blue indicates low NO2 levels, red high and grey no data. The south of the Netherlands is one of the most polluted areas in Europe. Only on Sundays the levels are lower.

In other web news Yahoo is adding blog content from Gawker site feeds to it's news page, "Yahoo has developed a certain weird geek chic," says Gawker founder Nick Denton, adding that "...This is the same younger audience that responds to 'The Daily Show.' "

A startup called Navio is hoping to break Apple's stranglehold on music downloads and is signing up companies like Sony BMG and Fox Music to its "rights-based" distribution technology that will let them bypass Apple and distribute through thousands of Web affiliate sites.

In other yik yak, looks like the Republican controlled Congress is getting ready to off load some of the "this land is your land" land, for a quick buck

According to the L.A Times : Slipped into a massive budget-cutting bill late last month by the House Resources Committee, headed by Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), the provision has been eclipsed by higher-profile battles over two other controversial plans that would expand oil drilling offshore and allow it in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Those proposals have been dropped for now, but the land-sale provision remains.The bill would lift an 11-year-old moratorium on the patenting — or sale — of federal lands to mining companies for a fraction of their mineral worth. While the patent fees would rise from $2.50 or $5 an acre to $1,000, the price would continue to exclude the mineral worth, which can amount to billions of dollars. In a rewrite of an 1872 mining law that reverses long-standing federal policy that the government keep public lands, the proposal also orders the Interior Department to sell land adjacent to mining claims for "economic development."

anyhow, here's some tunes for ya:

from one of the founding fathers of the American Folk Music Revival , a hero of the blues and beyond...Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly.

Who was Leadbelly? Born in 1888, but only recorded late in life by Alan Lomax in Louisiana's notorious Angola prison in the early 1930's, it became apparent Huddie was a talented and magnetic performer. The man had such a way with song, and in fact, legend has it twice he was able to get his prison sentences shortened by writing tunes.

Here's a tune decrying the conditions in an Alabama jail

Leadbelly - Birmingham Jail

Another that just can't be stopped...

Leadbelly - See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

here's a song that still describes Washington D.C to this day

Leadbelly - Bourgeois Blues

Lord, it's a bourgeois town

I got the bourgeois blues

Gonna spread the news all around

I tell all the colored folks to listen to me

Don't try to find you no home in Washington, DC

`Cause it's a bourgeois town

Supposedly written in 1938 after he and The Lomax's were kicked out of one place after another in Washington, D.C., where the management didn't permit interracial parties.

Leadbelly was no stranger to political material , even composing the 1940's crowd pleasing Hitler Song

LeadBelly- Hitler Song

Onto a folk band that at one time was America's biggest selling act, a group so popular that they were able to invest in some famous San Francisco real estate...

The Sentinal Bldg, now owned by Francis Ford Coppola, this green copper tinted North Beach landmark was once the mid 1960's home to the Kingston Trio's offices & recording studio...

Right across the street from the Purple Onion, this is the hood, where the band learned & laid down some of their biggest hits...

Here are the boys doing one of Woody Guthrie's most important & patriotic numbers...

Kingston Trio - This Land Is Your Land

and here's another track you can't help but love, especially in these war ravaged times...one that Dolly Parton is resurrecting doing a great job with on her new album & tour incidentally

Kingston Trio - Where Have all The Flowers Gone

now for something completely different:

here's a tune from a UK act that samples John Coltrane's version of "All or Nothing @ All"
...
Vanishing Trick - When The Sky Is Falling

& lastly

In honor of Dick Cheney's much hyped "Energy Commission" howz about the much hyped power thrust of Soundgarden's Chris Cornell & Rage Against The Machine

Audioslave -

Gasoline

that's all fer now folks...

here try Some Recent Archives
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005