I have gotten so far behind on it it's hard to get going. I mean, here I have three Newsweeks waiting to be vetted for crappy last sentences and the only thing that is making me do it is that I have bugged out of kickboxing because a) my Achilles tendons have been barking at me all day and b) it's a substitute, so I don't feel like I'll be letting down my usual instructor, the partial-to-Ricky-Martin Regina. Honestly, the past couple of classes when the aerobicised version of "She Bangs" comes on I want to do the William Hung dance instead of knee lifts.
But back to Newsweek.
In the 2/14 edition I spy with my little eye:
A somewhat dry desert of bad last sentences. Heart be still!
"But isn't it just like him?" (After a personality profile of Barry Manilow. The set-up: Barry, who I adore for no good reason, says he always tips piano bar singers (awww!), and the writer said it should be the other way around because the Manilow magic (my phrase) makes "their tip jars sing.")
"That will leave plenty of time for more talk, more campaigning, more blogging — and more rock concerts." Oooh, they used the word "blogging." How HIP!!!
"Perhaps. But that would require a coherent policy first." I like snark, but I'm not sure it's called for at the end of an article that purports to show how the state dept. and the dept. of defense have tagged one group of Iranian rebels as either terrorists or good allies. This isn't about policy. This is about a burgeoning Nicaragua-style situation where there is going to be a policy that the MEK should not be helped but the shifty America-firsters, even if it costs our reputation and future security, will undermine that through gov't channels. That's just my prediction; if I were Seymour Hersh I'd look into it in — when did Scott Ritter say we'd be on the ground in Iran, June? Yeah, I'd wait till five months later.
So it was a boring week. Not that I don't have additional comments.
I am curious about the letters page. In 2005, isn't it about time Newsweek quit running letters with the tag "VIA INTERNET?" Because there are ways to verify where the writer is from. A phone call, for example, from a number supplied by the author. Most people who are asked to verify themselves for publication will do so in a NY minute. That's what I did when I got a letter published in the Gray Lady nigh on these many years (14? Really? Holy cow.) I think I might have squeeeed a bit as well.
Anyway, a geographical location for people — like Nkosinathi Sibanda — would be nice. Would Nkosinathi be of the East Egg Sibandas or the Palm Springs Sibandas? I mean, c'mon, it's the new millenium, but the internet is not a place in and of itself.
Speaking of irritating internet stuff, try this headline on for size: "You Don't Have Mail," about the FBI's incredibly FUBAR'd computer system. You know, the one that was supposed to spell out the salvation of interconnecting all those counter-terrorism agencies, the one that was supposed to lift the FBI out of the carbon copy and ditto sheet age, the one that was supposed to make it possible for agents in any place to do a basic database search? Basically, the one that would have brought the FBI halfway to where the teevee crime drama shows give it credit for being at?
Okay, I'm going to read the peice and, with nothing but the facts in the story and common idiomatic computer talk, come up with an alternative of approximately the same length and twice the compellingness. Ready?
Ooooo, complication number one rears its ugly head: The story is actually about email!!! Can Callie do it? Can she beat the Newsweek headline writers while referencing the email issue????
Here's what I'm working with: email shut down because hackers got in the system, the FBI has to tell its agents not to use their kids' names, etc., as passwords, and all the FBI honchos have basically been ignoring even their own safety precautions by using the public, non-sensitive "fbi.gov" email channel instead of the private one with the unknown URL (P.S. Newsweek didn't make that last bit as explicit as I just did).
How 'bout:
"You've got security breeches"
Which relies also on the tired AOL thing, but at least it includes the evildoing instead of just making the FBI look somewhat retarded. Honestly, it wasn't that they were so bungling as it was that the hackers (greasy men in their 20s who live on Domino's Pizza and Mountain Dew, I wager 7-1) were so much more creative.
or
"The Oops Files"
Which isn't as compelling, but throws up a shout out to the X-Files.
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