Media on HuffingtonPost.com

Dickipedia: Ann Coulter

2008-05-17T20:42:41Z

Ann Hart Coulter (born December 8, 1961) is an American conservative pundit, a syndicated columnist, a best-selling author, a frequent television and radio guest, a self-described "polemicist," and a self-promoting dick. Best known for purveying hate, Coulter revels in the mass loathing she herself inspires, a delight so aberrational as to invite speculation that she may in fact be an alien life form. That, actually, would explain a lot.

Alison Rose Levy: Do You Believe in Objective (Ha! Ha! Wink, wink!) Science?

2008-05-17T19:17:37Z

As confidence in authorities plummets, one cherished bastion remains: the hallowed halls of medical scientific research. There we picture white-coated scientists making objective research determinations. Upon that bedrock, we make health decisions.

But does our image correspond to reality?

"The pharmaceutical companies say they're about the science, but they're really about marketing," Melody Petersen, author of Our Daily Meds, told Bill Moyers on television last night.

A former New York Times reporter with privileged entrÃ©e into the pharmaceutical world, Petersen, over eight years of research, sought to find just one scientist, who was not on a drug company payroll and could validate research science. None could be found. The so-called independent and objective experts were all in pharmaceutical company employ.

The "trustworthy expert" is a PR fabrication, first developed back in the 1930's by Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, who applied Freudian psychology to mass media marketing. According to Trust Us, We're Experts, Bernays' time-tested formula (still used today) was hiring seemingly independent experts (and front groups) to manufacture the illusion of credibility in order to sell product.

"Whether a medicine helps or hurts is secondary to profit," says Petersen. "A lot of money is spent selling drugs that don't work. The FDA found that 100,000 people die annually from drugs correctly prescribed and taken. That's a life and death matter."

But doesn't research, conducted by qualified independent scientists, weed out harmful or ineffective drugs"

Not necessarily, says Petersen. "The ad agency writes the study, and then hires doctors to put their name on it as authors," she told Moyers. "They put their words in the mouths of someone who looks independent."

Studies can also be manipulated, says Petersen, so that the outcomes will demonstrate greater efficacy or safety. Whenever research results favor the drug tested, the companies will "get that research published over and over in many journals," Peterson found. "But if another study produces unfavorable results, that study will disappear. That's why some scientists view the medical literature as "propaganda.""

Where are the gatekeepers? Doctors are on the payroll with research monies, junkets, and cash fees. Peer-reviewed journals rely on pharmaceutical advertising. Companies pay the FDA huge sums for drug review, so that the regulators are beholden. Drug company lobbyists outnumber Congressmen by two to one. And then there's the media.

TV advertising of pharmaceuticals:

First, allows PR firms to medicalize often minor health problems and "rebrand" them as worrisome new conditions, requiring drugs.

Second, undermines the media's independence to question science (or report objectively on lower cost options.) Drug companies are big advertisers.

The net effect? Yes, it's rising health costs and people taking pills in record numbers. But it's also lack of critical reporting and information. How can people make the right health care decisions in a muddle of misinformation? How can we can consider all available health options in the divisive and opinionated environment created by a profit dominated health sector?

Last winter, I reported on a study finding that, for the majority of people, taking antidepressants was no better than taking a placebo.

"Placebo" is biological science's term for the effects of psychology, belief, emotion, and conditioning on biological parameters. In pharmaceutic dominant research, placebos are deemed unworthy of study. But on the other side of the hallway, in the Marketing Department, accessing the placebo effect to influence people's feelings and beliefs about health is the name of the game.

We have yet to study how drug advertising conditions its audience. Manipulating you to make you believe you're sick? That reminds me of Charles Boyer in the film, Gaslight. No, thanks! This is an instance of the "nocebo effect," the negative impact of words and images on one's health. Ingrid Bergman may have cowered in the corner, but I prefer to change the channel the moment a drug ad appears.

What happens when we all submit to powerful images telling us to trust so-called experts? What's the health impact of repeated messages that we suffer from mysterious and newly minted "health conditions?" How does the sum total of all this market-driven entree into the hearts and minds of our nation, influence our health status individually and collectively? The U.S. currently ranks below all other developed nations. Can we still afford to believe that this is objective science?

There's no doubt that some drugs are beneficial and even life-saving, but there's no way to know which ones are truly effective or necessary until all the real outcomes-- biological, psychological, economic, and sociological--are considered. And until the independence of science, free of vested interests, is restored.

Please sign up at www.health-journalist.com for more information.

Hillary Turns Fire On The Media

2008-05-17T19:11:16Z

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is increasingly aiming its punches not at her front-running opponent Barack Obama, but at the media.

On the campaign trail, in a new ad and in her meetings with donors and superdelegates, she blasts the D.C. punditocracy for counting her out and urges anyone who'll listen to ignore the hardening storyline that places Obama as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Hillary Hate: Making Sexism Acceptable

2008-05-17T17:18:45Z

Two great op-eds in the Washington Post yesterday, on the presumptive Hillary Clinton post-mortem: Misogyny I Won't Miss by Marie Cocco and Belittled Woman by Libby Copeland. Both women make the point that dislike and opposition of Hillary Clinton has been expressed in a multitude of sexist ways, sometimes shockingly so. Is it Hillary? Is it sexism? And why are people so stubbornly resistant to allowing that sexism might have been part of this campaign? (By "people" I mean those who insist that there are plenty of reasons to hate Hillary Clinton that have nothing to do with being a woman, and that there are plenty of reasons she (presumptively) lost the nomination that have nothing to do with that, either. (See a collection of them here.) My response is usually that while there are definitely legitimate reasons to dislike/disagree with Clinton, the expression of that dislike is what has so often taken sexist form). For those of you who still doubt, see what Copeland and Cocco have to say about it.

First Copeland:

There is something about that woman -- that woman! -- that refuses to bend, and something about a large portion of this country that despises her for it. The person who once conjured a vast right-wing conspiracy now refuses to exit a race she's almost surely lost, and it Drives. People. Crazy.

"Poor Hillary" is their response, an attempt at death by condescension. "Poor Hillary" means Clinton finally is being brought low (she is forever being brought low, isn't she?), the know-everything who tries so hard but never gets enough votes to be class president.

..."Poor Hillary" speaks volumes about an old truth: Clinton's wounds have always defined her. The haters are always on the lookout for her comeuppance, and the lovers love her more for what she has endured. The women who turn out to see Clinton holler for her to stick it out, tell her they like her grit

Copeland concludes by wondering: "Is it about her womanhood? Or is it about this woman? Is that a false distinction?" Cocco, for her part, thinks it's something that's being wondered far too late in this campaign, and by far too few people.

Cocco reels off a list of things she won't miss once Hillary is gone: Hillary nutcrackers (with stainless steel thighs!), "Bros Before Hos" shirts, comparisons to crazy bunny boiling stalkers, anti-Hillary groups with vulgar acronyms, comparisons to first wives and scolding mothers, whores and bitches. Says Cocco:

I won't miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign. To hint that sexism might possibly have had a minimal role is to play that risible "gender card."

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't publicly uttered a word of outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?

There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.

Two smart op-eds from two perceptive women. I hope someone forwards them to Maureen Dowd.

Marie Coco: Misogyny I Won't Miss [WaPo]
Libby Copeland: Belittled Woman [WaPo]

Late-Night Jokes Of The Week (VIDEO)

2008-05-17T15:01:48Z

Another week and dozens more jokes from the late night hosts. From Edwards' endorsement to Bush's trip to the Middle East, there was no shortage of fodder. Here are some the best from Dave Letterman, Jon Stewart, Conan O'Brien, Stephen Colbert and Jay Leno.

Watch:

California Shock Jocks Gleefully Try To Taint Juries

2008-05-17T13:43:25Z

There is such a thing as tainting a jury, and then there is what two Southern California talk show hosts say they are engaging in -- "blatant tainting" of a jury.

Indeed, the actions of the two "shock jocks," John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou of KFI-AM in Los Angeles, have prompted defense attorneys for a former Orange County sheriff facing federal corruption charges to ask the judge to move the trial.

Dan Brown: Newt Gingrich and Me: A Charged Moment at an Education Blogger Summit

2008-05-17T02:56:06Z

Ed in '08, the Gates/Broad funded advocacy campaign, hosted the first-ever education "blogger summit" this week at the Hotel Palomar in D.C. You may wonder, what happens at an education blogger summit? Were there intellectual cage matches for snarkiest wit? Gold stars for citing the most stats in the latest Education Sector report on inequity in school funding?

Not exactly, but there were some lively discussions about the future of public education, agreement on the need to turn up the volume on education issues, and some really good brownies.

However, I'm pretty scared about some of the ideas being advanced on revolutionizing schools. There is a growing chorus of powerful, mostly right-of-center voices declaring public education a failed experiment. These voices (including keynote speaker Newt Gingrich) want a brave new world of schools in America. After all, test scores show the U.S. falling farther and farther behind her international competitors. Our teachers have failed us! We're a nation at risk!

I asked the first question to Newt, equating the bypassing of educators in crafting education reform to America's disastrous de-Baathification policy after invading Iraq. Some eyebrows were raised.

Here's where I was coming from:

It's safe to say we all agree that American public schools need drastic improvement. However, Gingrich and his ideological compatriots' wholesale slapping of the labels "OBSOLETE! FAILED! CO-CONSPIRATOR! on all public schools and everyone in them is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. This kind of dismissive rhetoric paves the way for ideologues to impose their will unchecked.

Newt called today's public schools a "monopoly of failure," tossing the blame for the decline of public education at "departments of education, schools of education, and unionized bureaucracy." In other words, everyone who works in or near public schools. Newt argued that people from any of his three culpable camps are inherently corrupted by their stake in the failed system, and will blindly defend that system to protect themselves.

This automatic dismissal of everyone currently within the struggling system feels parallel to the disastrous de-Baathification process following the US invasion of Iraq. Everyone affiliated in any way (even against their wills) with Sadaam's party was outcast from decision-making, or even a job. This exclusion of such vast intellectual and human resources was a calamity. Isn't labeling everyone within public education as corrupted "defenders of the monopoly of failure" a similar fiasco in the making?

Gingrich didn't acknowledge the parallel. He maintained the monopoly of failure must be replaced, and that any defectors from the monopoly to his camp would be welcomed with open arms.

Framing the debate on public education this way is dangerous. This puts public school advocates in the uncomfortable position of propounding change yet denying that all public schools are a wild west of zero substantive learning. It makes the "blow up the schools!" hawks look tough and the reformers who want to talk about nuance and incremental change appear wuss-like.

I'm not buying it. Public schools need help, but they don't need ideological, for-profit crusaders taking over. Teachers, parents, and principals have quite a lot to contribute to improving the system. You cannot effect meaningful, positive change on people via satellite. The stakeholders of public education (families, teachers, school officials) know the on-the-ground needs of students. By listening to and supporting those who are the lifeblood of schools, we can reap long-term benefits in our local communities and in the global marketplace.

Dan Brown is a teacher in the Bronx, and the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle.

Leslie Griffith: Lions for Lambs -- America in Need of Reporters

2008-05-17T00:51:46Z

Lions for Lambs and a velvet censorship exposed

The movie Lions for lambs damn near brought on the Post-Traumatic- stress that is someday inevitable for most reporters. Our eyes have to comprehend images that can never be erased and any sane person would never commit to a job that includes witnessing targets of tragedy and hate on a daily basis

We learn to cultivate ice in our veins until the PTS rolls in like fog. But Lions for Lambs doesn't drift, it jolts. As jolting as sticking a tongue into a light socket. My hair felt as if it was on fire, and the heartburn in my stomach moved into my throat. My daughter sitting next to me kept asking, "Mom is this the way it was, is this the way it is?" I bowed my head, felt the ice in my veins melt and began weeping.

Finally someone understood and put on record "America's velvet censorship."

Tear ducts aren't anatomy parts used much by reporters. Crying is debilitating, inconvenient and unprofessional. If one is unlucky enough to be an anchor as well as a reporter, it makes the eyes and nose red, and viewers are ruthless with rumors. "Could she be stoned, perhaps she's an alcoholic?" Cruelty is an epidemic in America today. You've read the tabloids, its ugly out in the open. Everyone's taking a shot.

Now that Lions for Lambs is on HBO, enough time has passed, and I believe I can write about it while avoiding too much sappy sentiment.

I don't always wait for credits after a movie, but when Lions for Lambs ended, sitting in a deserted theater in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, I could not leave the chair. I was dumbfounded. Considering all that I had witnessed in the last seven years since 9/11, I sat with my mouth open in a catatonic cantaloupe stupor. I could not move from the chair if I had wanted to. I needed to honor Robert Redford, and I needed to see who wrote it. I had to commit the name to memory. "Fire!" my daughter said playfully trying to get me to move. I would not budge.

Lions for Lambs was written by Matthew Cornahan and produced and directed by Robert Redford who reaches into the depths of human nature and knows how to pan the fool's gold from the nuggets that are real. He is a keen observer of human nature, and he was brave to do this film. The Bush administration is vindictive. The older Redford gets, the deeper he is drawn into the heart of any matter. And this film matters.

When I got home, after a menopausal outburst in the shower(as not to frighten the kids,) I pulled it together and Googled Matthew Cornahan. I could not find out much about his personal background. Was he a politician? Was he a reporter? Was he a college Professor? Could he have been a soldier? How did Cornahan and Redford understand every nuance of what a velvet censorship is like? Had Carnahan lived under a dictatorship?

Meryl Streep played the part of the seasoned reporter who wakes up to find she has to chose between stenography and propaganda, and writing what she knows from her experience to be true. I will not tell give the ending away, but the reporter Streep plays has a choice to make. Does she do what she is trained to do, or does she regurgitate a press release and let the manipulators put more lives at risk?

Matthew Cornahan and Robert Redford 's knowledge of the events following the invasion of Iraq is nothing less than brilliant. "The Velvet Censorship" was a complicated erosion of values and the turning points are right there on screen to witness.

Now that the film is out on HBO, I took a deep breath and decided to watch it again.

As I did, I thought of the journalists who recognized the censorship and refused to play a role in it. I thought about the corporations running newsrooms today and how they censor by encouraging infotainment. I thought about today's reporters who don't know their history and are incapable of helping viewers put things in perspective. I thought about the corporations who now own once great newsrooms--corporations who curry favor with the White House to keep gobbling up more Television and Radio stations. I thought about the courage it took to speak up knowing it could cost careers.

Fear is a powerful sedative, but there are many town criers (reporters) who refused to report only what the White House told them to. This is for them. They are American heroes.

Helen Thomas: Who would have thought after all those soft ball questions all those years lobbed at every President since John f. Kennedy, she would turn out to be a pit-bull? I am ashamed I did not see it before. I want to thank her for insisting the President tell the American people what he was up to. She never did get many answers, and she certainly fell from grace at the White House, but she showed more gumption than anyone else in the White House Briefing" room. "Mr. President what is the mission?" "Mr. President how did Afghanistan turn into Iraq?" " Mr. President the military still hasn't captured Bin Laden." On she went with countless questions which turned the President's face crimson.

I will forever call her Mt. St. Helen now.

Dan Rather: The last of the big boys. He is one tough Texas SOB. CBS and Viacom needed to win favor with the White House and Rather, who breathed life into CBS for years, and earned---EARNED-- America's trust was thrown out like yesterday's garbage. He is now suing CBS. Rather refused to join the George W. Bush PomPom Brigade, he lost his job and now says he cannot get another one. We are talking about Dan Rather here folks. Then came the accusations against him. I cannot wait to hear his version of how CBS sabotaged his career after he criticized George Bush. I hope he has the fortitude to keep plugging. The world needs to understand what CBS did to him and how the "Tiffany" network is forever tarnished. Dan Rather is an American hero.

Paul Steiger was managing editor of The Wall Street Journal until Rupert Murdoch bought the paper. Steiger has formed an independent- non-profit- news organization called Propublica with some of the best reporters in the country on board. Steiger plans to deliver news to Americans without fear of retribution from commercial interests. He is a journalist in the true sense of the word. He is a stellar example of a man who still believes in the "Fourth Estate." Without it, citizens are uninformed and there is no democracy. Steiger is a patriot.

I thought of mark ash, the director of Truthout.Org. His on- line news service has been subjected to every shenanigan imaginable. His paper has been re-directed to subscriber's spam boxes with alarming consistency and his fortitude fighting to deliver alternative views to the American people is makes him a present day revolutionary. When this "velvet censorship" is over Mark Ash should be honored.

I also thought about the dozens of journalists from all over the country who have written me with stories such as this one: "There's a military base right across the street from our television station where soldier's bodies are brought home. We were told never to point our cameras in that direction or ask questions about what's going on there."

Lions for Lambs is for those journalists--not who tried to stop the war---but who tried and continue to try to get truth about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the public. There are many, many others. Perhaps you can make your own list. The names of those--many black listed today--who refused to become stenographers or spread propaganda--no matter how much we all want the lies to be true.

Seven years after 9/11, and a little more than two weeks before Memorial Day not much has changed. The mission in Iraq is still unclear. With few embedded journalists there, there is no way to know for sure who is telling the truth. PBS' Frontline recently did a story featuring one platoon who video-taped themselves doing their duty just in case the American people had forgotten them.

See: here

If only journalist would be allowed to do their jobs again, Hollywood, soldiers and others would not have to.

There are many journalists who have refused to cheer for the administration and read its press releases without checking for facts. But perhaps this film will help American citizens recognize manipulation and think twice before keeping quiet.

Leslie Griffith lesliegriffith.org

Anita Busch, Journalist Threatened By Anthony Pellicano, Calls For Investigation Of LA Times' Pellicano Reporter

2008-05-17T00:22:49Z

Anita Busch, a former L.A. Times reporter who was allegedly threatened by Anthony Pellicano -- has released the following statement regarding Pellicano's conviction:

I'd like to thank the judge and jury for their patience and wisdom on this case as well as the honest people in law enforcement who stopped others from being relentlessly attacked and terrorized. For that, I am eternally grateful.

The full story of Pellicano's reach has yet to be told. To Pellicano and his wealthy clients, 'winning' meant completely obliterating someone's life and livelihood. They saw the media as just another weapon in their arsenal and used and abused it to go after anyone in their crosshairs. For example, they used their PR connection to plant items in the New York Post's Page Six to slam victims like Bo Zenga and Garry Shandling. And when their targets became FBI agent Stan Ornellas and U.S. attorney Dan Saunders, they tried to smear and discredit these decent men in the pages of the L.A. Times. The Pellicano case coverage in the L.A. Times as reported by Chuck Philips (who told the NY Times that Pellicano was his longtime news source) should be examined. It's a case study of how Pellicano worked his media relationships to try to destroy his adversaries.

Matthew McConaughey Baby Pictures Up For Auction, Magazines Bid Over $1 Million

2008-05-17T00:04:34Z

TMZ has learned that McConaughey has hired "brand agent" Todd Shemarya -- who's already brokered deals for Brangelina and Xtina -- to help pull in some serious dough for photos of his child. So far, Mattyboy's gotten offers from three different publications -- EACH OVER A MILLION BUCKS! And the price is still climbing.

"The View" To Take Viewers Backstage For One Show

2008-05-17T00:04:32Z

NEW YORK — Daytime's "The View" will rerun one of its shows in two weeks from an entirely different view that lets fans know a little about what goes on backstage.

Producers will attempt the experiment with the Memorial Day episode, which is being taped a week earlier. That episode will feature an interview with Dina Lohan and daughter Ali, and a performance by Ryan Cabrera.

On Friday, May 30, "The View" will air a version of that show with backstage footage that explains what went into making it. Only about half of the original show will be seen.

The rest will catch what went on behind the scenes to put the show together, such as the meeting where the co-hosts discuss in advance what they'll be talking about on the "Hot Topics" session at the show's beginning, said Bill Geddie, executive producer. He said he believed the show's fans are savvy and will appreciate the extra access.

"Of all the daytime shows, `The View' is clearly the most raw," Geddie said. "You can tell when someone is hurt, you can tell when someone is angry."

If it works, the episode may prove to be a template for future programs, either on the air or as an online companion, Geddie said. "If it really (stinks), we won't do it again," he said.

Don't expect a glimpse of Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck or Sherri Shepherd pre-makeup, however.

"There are some things that will not be seen," Geddie said.

Oprah's Favorite Things For Summer: The Over-The-Top Crowd Reaction

2008-05-17T00:02:28Z

Despite Oprah's best efforts, her producers forced her to air an "Oprah's Favorite Things for Summer" episode, where she gave away things like bathing suits and grills and makeup. The giveaways were decidedly more low-key than her traditional pre-holiday "Oprah's Favorite Things" episode, but the crowd reactions were not. Below watch the screams, the hugs, the tears, and the freak-outs:

From ABC, 5/16

For a reminder of what the crowd's reaction was like last winter, watch the video here.

Jeffrey Feldman: For Assassination Joke, Huckabee Should Be Off TV

2008-05-16T22:55:18Z

Having joked less than a year ago about killing Mitt Romney (and his supporters), former Republican candidate for president, Mike Huckabee, has now made light of assassinating Sen. Barack Obama.

According to CNN, during his recent speech at the NRA convention in Louisville Kentucky, the former presidential candidate offered the following joke in response to a loud noise off stage:

"That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak...Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor." (from CNN PoliticalTicker.com)

As Huckabee transitions from presidential candidate to media pundit, his habit of joking about political assassination leads many Americans to question the place of violent rhetoric in the speech of high-profile political pundits, as well as the consequences that should result from it.

Legal vs. Civic Questions
Many would argue that joking about assassinating a Presidential candidate falls well within the realm of free speech and should not merit any particular consequences--legal, moral or otherwise. Indeed, past court rulings on the question of jokes about assassinating a sitting president suggest that it is very difficult to establish any kind of legal culpability in these instances. The question, it seems, falls down to two factors: (1) the often 'vituperative, abusive, and inexact,' nature of political rhetoric and (2) the legal difficulty of establishing intent to bring about actual harm in these instances (see Eugene Volokh, 'Jokes About Killing the President' Apr 27, 2005).

Legal questions, of course, are only one aspect of this issue. In addition to what is permissible by law, Americans are also deeply concerned with whether or not certain kinds of speech tend to undermine the necessary pragmatic nature of our civic process -- our ability to turn to the media and to each other to learn what we need to learn in order to achieve our common goals. When we turn away from legal questions and begin to examine the kinds of rhetoric that may undermine our deliberative democracy, we start to see that Americans are by-and-large opposed to violent jokes and speech tossed out by political pundits.

And yet despite this opposition on the basis of maintaining a healthy, civic process, violent-rhetoric from high-profile pundits continues largely unchecked.

In 2006, for example, Ann Coulter joked about the need for someone to assassination Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens:

We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," Coulter said. "That's just a joke, for you in the media. (Coulter Jokes About Poisoning Supreme Court Justice, FOX News)

A trained Constitutional attorney, Coulter understood the legal precedents regarding jokes about political assassination -- meaning that she knew how to craft a joke about political assassination such that it would not land her in any kind of jeopardy. Nonetheless, it is clear that Coulter also know that joking about assassinating a Supreme Court Justice would earn her a great deal of media coverage and have an impact on national debate on abortion.

In a political context where anti-abortion activists have assassinated medical practitioners on the excuse that they were stopping the doctors from performing further procedures, many interpreted Coulter's joke as having contributed to an atmosphere of violence and threat in American politics.

Citizen Outrage Ignored By Media Companies
Citizens' concerns over Coulter, however, were not in any way heeded by corporate media--both broadcast and publishing -- nor by political parties. Following her remarks, Coulter continued to earn huge book deals and continued to enjoy virtual open access to high-profile broadcast media.

What Coulter and Huckabee share in common is that they both used rhetoric that was legal, but nonetheless toxic to healthy political debate.

When a political pundit uses a high-profile political forum to joke about assassinating his or her political opposition, they result is that deliberative debate shuts down. Indeed, the response that violent rhetoric elicits in the minds of Americans is not the desire to censor speech in any way, but a call for violent-speech to be channeled towards entertainment where citizens are provided with the resources to make more informed choices about what they will and will not watch or hear.

In the meantime, Mike Huckabee's joke about an assassination attempt on Sen. Obama will lead to the same outcome as Coulter's joke about assassinating John Paul Stevens: disruption of deliberative debate followed by greater broadcast presence awarded to him by the media.

The outcome should be the opposite: media marginalization instead of aggrandizement.

For joking about the assassination of Sen. Obama, Mike Huckabee should be removed from the rosters of all the various cable and network stations on which he regularly appears.

Elizabeth Benedict: Read Any Good Books Lately?

2008-05-16T21:41:46Z

This month, Michael Cunningham, Oren Jacoby, Betsy West, and Sloane Crosley, are helping stave off the panic I felt earlier this year when I read "Twilight of the Books" by Caleb Crain in The New Yorker, subtitled "What will life be like if people stop reading?" It's a particularly informative piece about declining numbers of folks who read books, and about how much worry that should cause us.

It's familiar territory to those of us who publish fiction and teach writing workshops only to learn that some of our students want to be writers even though they don't much like to read! Many feel that reading fiction is on its way to becoming something truly rarified, like opera. And no one in the business much likes to think about the small matter of declining book sales.

As more newspapers cut back or cut out book reviews, and as newspapers themselves decline, I hope this column will be one of many effort to combat these trends. Every month I'll ask three or four people in the news and in the know - writers, business people, creative people, maybe even a pol or two - to share their reading lists. Just as important, this is an invitation to Huffington Post readers to tell us what you're reading. In this political year, on this very political website, I know there's a great range of engaged readers with book lists of all sorts. Here's your chance to spread some good news.

Michael Cunningham is the author of four novels, including Specimen Days, A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, and The Hours, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, as well as Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown.

"I'm always juggling books. I live in an ongoing state of book-panic, because every day they publish new ones and at the same time - I admit it - I still haven't read Stendhal's The Scarlet and the Black.

"Right now, I've got two going. I'm reading Mark Harris' Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood. It centers on the fives movies that were nominated for the Oscar for best picture in 1968: two great ones (Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate); a liberal feel-good fest (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner); a grotesque, zillion-dollar spectacular (Dr. Doolittle); and a solid little thriller (In the Heat of the Night), which won. It's a great idea for a book. Out of that one seminal year comes much of what anyone needs to know about the American movie business over the last forty years.

"I'm also in the middle of Andrew Sean Greer's new novel, The Story of a Marriage. Greer is one of my favorite young geniuses. I was knocked out by his previous novel, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, and this one is stunning, too. He's the real thing. I intend to read everything he writes for the rest of his (or my) life.

"I recently finished Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which deserves every single bit of praise it's received, not to mention that Big Prize it just won.

"A friend is urging me to read Keith Gessen's All the Sad Young Literary Men, and I always do what this particular friend tells me to. I've got Jhumpa Lahiri's new collection, Unaccustomed Earth, waiting on my desk..."

Oren Jacoby is an OscarÂ® nominated filmmaker who most recently directed, produced and co-wrote Constantine's Sword (link: www.constantinessword.com), now playing in theaters in New York and around the country. He is currently working on The Lost Hero, a French-American co-production.

"I just read and was blown away by Ali and Nino by Kurban Said, first published in Vienna in 1937. It's the saga of a beautiful but ill-fated Muslim-Christian romance (and almost subliminally, an appeal for Muslim-Christian-Jewish reconciliation) set in Baku, Azerbaijan, on the eve of the Russian Revolution. The Muslim-sounding author is actually the pseudonym of the Jewish born, Lev Nussimbaum, who may or may not have collaborated on the book with his Viennese lover, Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels. More likely, the pseudonym Kurban Said was registered to Elfriede because Nussimbaum couldn't publish, as a Jew, in Nazi Germany.

"The most remarkable thing about the novel is the protagonist, Ali. The dashing young sheikh is a brilliant and surprising creation because Said has somehow sympathetically evoked a Muslim's fatalist, violent and slightly misogynist world view. Ali is both tempered by and constantly struggling against the cultural values of his sophisticated, oil-rich, highly Westernized city and the tender love he feels for Nino.

"This was a perfect follow-up to Snow, the wonderful Ohran Pamuk novel which evokes the same clash of Islam and the west in the world of present day Turkey. Both novels look inside the Muslim soul, trying to understand, and perhaps explain to outsiders, the violent impulse so widely associated with Islam today. Neither author judges this inclination. Each shows how historical forces have left few choices for young men caught in a society where their identities are threatened by the overpowering wave of the modern industrial world.

"These books were a curious alternate reality for me, because during the months I read them, I was working on a film about a Catholic writer, James Carroll, trying to understand the origins and consequences today of the Christian impulse toward violence."

Betsy West is an Associate Professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism. She was previously an Executive Producer at ABC News and Senior Vice President at CBS News, where she oversaw the 60 Minutes II story on Abu Ghraib. She's a co-producer of Constantine's Sword.

"After working for four years on a documentary about an ex-priest, I was thinking of taking a break from the clergy. But then I found myself enraptured by the memoir, Here If You Need Me, by Kate Braestrup, a Unitarian Universalist minister who lives in coastal Maine. Eleven years ago she was a wife and mother of four young children when her husband, a Maine state trooper, was killed in a car accident. Still grieving, she decided to pursue what had been her husband's dream, to attend theology school. Now she is the official chaplain for the Maine Warden Service. 'If anyone needs proof that God has a sense of humor, here it is: I am a middle-aged mother of four who works primarily with young, very fit men,' she writes. 'And I, a famously loquacious person, have a job that requires me mostly to just show up, shut up and be.'

"It turns out her job gives her enough suspenseful, compelling and sometimes gruesome experiences to create a new rural edition of CSI. Braestrup writes with an extraordinary clinical attention to the details of death that seems somehow appropriate coming from a minister who must find a way to comfort the grieving. But she also writes about her singular line of work with a wit and wisdom that elevates these stories far beyond the standard crime genre. She confronts the most profound questions of theodicy--how to reconcile the existence of evil in a world with the belief in a benevolent God. She provides no easy answers, but preaches a gospel of love that speaks even to this agnostic.

"Yes, this is an uncommon book by a minister, and, in my book, a must-read."

Sloane Crosley's first books of essays, I Was Told There'd be Cake, was recently published to much acclaim. She works in book publishing.

"I read David Shields' The Thing About Life Is One Day You'll Be Dead on an airplane. Just having it in my possession was a source of dark amusement every time I got up from my seat and left the book on my tray table for the people around me to see. Apparently, most of Shields' books have a similar pattern that alternates between reminiscence and straight fact. There are certain things I had long-since forgotten from biology class, such as the fact that every fetus has the XX chromosome unless they get a signal from the mother's body to turn XY. Meaning, that female is kind of the default.

"A sales person at the B&N in Lincoln Square insisted I buy Jenny and The Jaws of Life: Short Stories by Jincy Willett and David Sedaris, which was reissued a few years back, and it was definitely worth the purchase (which is saying something when you work in an office piled high with dozens of copies of the same book. I joked with this staffer that sometimes I'll walk into a bookstore and forget that I can't just take a book even though there are piles of it in my office. She didn't find this particularly funny). In the end, the stories were a bit XX Chromosome for me. But they have heart and intelligence and humor in spades and I'm hardly one to fault a collection of stories or essays for something as incidental as female narration. . . .

"I have also, belatedly, read The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I avoided for the simple reason that I loved Drown and sometimes hype can have the inverse effect. The book is amazing, full of electric language, much more fast-paced and humorous than I had anticipated. Finally, I have just started Stuart O'Nan's Last Night At The Lobster, thus far a very detailed and beautifully precise description of the chain mall restaurant and an endearing portrait of the main character."

Dear Huff Po Readers, If you've read any good books lately, please send us news. Be sure to include the author's name.

Elizabeth Benedict is the author of five novels, including "Almost and Slow Dancing", and "The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers", widely used in creative writing programs. For a free copy of her essay, "What I Learned About Sex on the Internet," please click here.

Yvette Kantrow: The Wall Street Journal's "Really Personal" Finance

2008-05-16T21:13:52Z

No matter who you believe is at fault in the subprime crisis -- borrowers, lenders, Jimmy Cayne, Alan Greenspan -- it's clear that millions of people took out mortgages they simply couldn't afford.

Were they stupid? No, just sadly uninformed.

So primly argues the current issue of U.S. News & World Report, which includes a special report on "financial illiteracy." It's the kind of story that often pops up in times of crisis -- when things are flush, no one cares as much that most Americans have no clue how to calculate interest on mortgages or credit card debt. But with more and more people apparently in hock, the handwringing -- and, of course, the finger-pointing -- over the sorry state of our financial literacy is a hot topic.

It's also one that comes with its share of ironies, considering the plethora of media outlets now dedicated to helping people untangle finance. Never before have so many magazines, columns, Web sites, blogs, cable networks, etc., covered business and finance -- and in a way they say is supposedly palatable to Average Joe. Over the past year or so, CondÃ© Nast Publications has launched Portfolio as a business magazine for people who don't like business; Fox News started a business channel focused more on Main Street than Wall Street; and TheStreet.com rolled out MainStreet.com to deliver personal finance with a celebrity-heavy tabloid sheen. And they're not alone. The New York Times, particularly in its Sunday business section, and The Wall Street Journal have labored for years to make personal finance a topic regular people consume regularly.

But a funny thing happens when you try to dumb down finance to make it palatable and useful. It becomes, well, dumb. If you tuned into Fox Business last week, you caught Susan "Stop the Insanity" Powter (remember her?) urging people to exercise and, of course, buy her book; MainStreet.com told readers how to take a page from Drew Barrymore and deal with a hit-and-run accident.

Now we don't mean to pick on Fox or MainStreet.com (OK, maybe just a little). It's hard to get people to tune into or read about money, especially when everyone's gloomy. But the WSJ, of all places, provides a classic example of personal finance's slippery slope to cluelessness: Terri Cullen's ultrachatty "Fiscally Fit" column Wednesday on her family's decision to fire its lawn-care service and buy -- the drama! -- a lawn mower instead.

It's a first-person account (natch) of Terri's bickering with her husband, Gerry, over how to best care for their one-acre lawn (one acre!) in New Jersey. Gerry wants to buy a riding lawn mower; Terri worries about how that will interfere with Gerry's summer boating schedule; we wonder how much money this couple has. We learn about Gerry's ineptitude as a comparison shopper (and how Terri saves the day); we watch son Gerald hang around the garage; we hear Terri predict Gerry will give up mowing next year. By the time we finish, we're still trying to figure out exactly what financial lesson we just learned and why Gerry puts up with Terri.

The latter is a recurring feeling, as Gerry is a recurring character in Cullen's columns. So too is Gerald, Cullen's in-laws, parents and any number of friends and family members and their pseudofinancial foibles. The column overshares in a manner more closely associated with the blogosphere than newspapers. (Recent topics include her gambling trips with Mom to Atlantic City and Gerry's lingering anger over her parents' failure to fund their wedding.) But it wasn't always this way. Cullen's column started life on The Wall Street Journal Online in 2002 as your run-of-the-mill (read: dry) personal finance offering. But when a 2006 piece about her family's decision to pay off their mortgage early sent traffic soaring, her path beckoned.

As the Journal explained in a press release that year, Cullen's column was being recast "to put the 'personal' back into personal finance." From then on, Cullen would "use her own family's concerns -- from saving on grocery bills to dealing with health insurance -- as a springboard to examining issues" affecting readers. The pieces are now carried in the paper and online, and they are admittedly seductive in a "What-will-poor-Gerry-do-this-time?" sort of way.

But will they help anyone avoid a mortgage they can't afford? Probably not. After all, the Cullens seem to live in a really big house