The Wausau Daily Herald published an editorial Sunday expressing essentially the same opinon that I shared on The New Vernacular in September. The Daily Herald adds a detail that I missed in my critique: the $30 million in tax dollars lost during the holiday would come directly from the state transportation budget. The state would either need to cut funding for transportation or get that money from somewhere else. And as the budget debates this summer show, the state coffers aren’t overflowing with extra cash.
Why is that a bad idea?
For starters, the bill would eliminate the tax but not the annual increase built into the state’s transportation budget. See, every penny of Wisconsin’s gasoline tax is dedicated to road construction, repair and maintenance. Those costs keep increasing, so the transportation budget keeps increasing.The senators who introduced the bill instead want to take money from the general fund and use it to fill the hole left by eliminating the gas tax increase. In other words, they’re robbing Peter to pay Paul because taxes are taxes - they all come out of our pockets.
The hole would be about $30 million a year - the first year. It would be about $60 million the second year, $90 million the third and so forth.
And what does eliminating the 0.8 cent increase do for you?
If you drive an average car the average number of miles every year, about 15,000, eliminating the annual increase would save you about $4.
That’s right. Four bucks.That four bucks translates into $30 million when multiplied by every motorist in the state - including those who drive much more than average.
Those millions buy us pothole repair, snow plows, transit systems, safety programs and other transportation benefits.
…We can eliminate the 0.8 cent increase, but we’ll have to either cut $30 million in road services or make up the money from somewhere else.
Wausau Daily Herald: Tinkering with gas tax is no solution
Badger Herald: Nass seeks gas holiday
I said this after I saw the first episode; The Colbert Report is going to be great… for about a week. Stephen Colbert is a talented comic who has a strong grasp onhow to turn current events into sharp-witted material, but his bit as a cocky, Bill O’Reilly type of pundit works best in small doses.
It seems as though the folks at USA Today and The Baltimore Sun agree.
An entire half-hour of Colbert mocking his loud-mouthed, no-spin zone counterparts five times a week is tough to keep fresh, especially when the premise of the comedy remains unchanged from night to night. This isn’t to say that the show is a total flop. Colbert is fine for 15 minutes when he’s on his own, but the comedy is strained when Colbert fires non-sequitors at guests who don’t have the comedic intuition to fire back a witty response. And even if they did, the mock-interviews wouldn’t have the value of those on The Daily Show.
Even the interviews on The Daily Show could use some improvement. Jon Steward has come a long way in his interviewing tactics since his missed opportunity with John Kerry, but reactions from the live studio audience continue to undermine any serious discussion that may materialize. When Stewart interviewed Bill O’Reilly recently, the tone of the exchange took a severe dive after Stewart’s hardcore liberal audience began jeering at almost everything O’Reilly said. The rest of the show depends on audience reaction for the jokes to work, the interview portion would be improved if the audience was instructed to refrain from negative feedback during interviews.
Lost Remote: USA Today pans ‘Colbert Report’
USA Today: ‘Colbert’ tries a bit too hard
The Baltimore Sun: Funny turns tedious on ‘Colbert Report’
With the rise in gas prices over the last few months and a slightly decreased demand for fuel, you’d think that oil companies would be losing money. If outside factors such as foreign confict and hurricane damage are the reasons for increased prices, oil companies shouldn’t be increased profits… they should be passing off all possible price breaks to consumers. Or they could just keep them as profit.
AP story from MyWay.com:
Exxon Mobil Profit, Sales Soar to Records
By STEVE QUINNDALLAS (AP) - Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) rewrote the corporate record books Thursday as the oil company’s third-quarter earnings soared to almost $10 billion and it became the first public company ever with quarterly sales topping $100 billion. Anglo-Dutch competitor Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA) wasn’t far behind, posting a profit of $9 billion for the quarter.
Those results led Democrats in Congress to demand a new windfall profits tax. “Big oil behemoths are making out like bandits, while the average American family is getting killed by high gas prices, and soon-to-be record heating oil prices,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement.
But Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said President Bush opposes such a move and is instead considering a wide range of proposals to help cushion consumers, including the creation of an emergency reserve of gasoline and other refined products.
Thursday’s outsized earnings are a result of surging oil and natural gas prices that pushed pump prices to record territory after Hurricane Katrina. They come on the heels of similar eye-popping gains reported this week by BP PLC (BP), ConocoPhillips Inc. and Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO) Chevron Corp. (CVX) reports its earnings on Friday.
Some Republican members of Congress called on the industry to invest in ways that will increase production so that consumers get a break at the pumps or when they pay their heating bills. But analysts said telling the industry how to spend its money was unfair, if not futile.
“Exxon is a good corporate citizen but it does not work for the welfare of the country,” said oil analyst Fadel Gheit at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York.
Exxon Chairman and Chief Executive Lee R. Raymond did not mention of the record results in the company’s earnings release. Instead, he noted that the world’s largest publicly traded oil company “acted responsibly in pricing at our company operated service stations, and we also encouraged our independent retailers and distributors to do the same.”
Full AP Article: Exxon Mobil Profit, Sales Soar to Records
MSNBC Article: Oil industry awash in record levels of cash
President Bush announced the withdrawl of Harriet Miers as his nominee for associate justice of the Supreme Court this morning:
Today, I have reluctantly accepted Harriet Miers’ decision to withdraw her nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States.
I nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court because of her extraordinary legal experience, her character, and her conservative judicial philosophy. Throughout her career, she has gained the respect and admiration of her fellow attorneys. She has earned a reputation for fairness and total integrity. She has been a leader and a pioneer in the American legal profession. She has worked in important positions in state and local government and in the bar. And for the last five years, she has served with distinction and honor in critical positions in the Executive Branch.
I understand and share her concern, however, about the current state of the Supreme Court confirmation process. It is clear that Senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House disclosures that would undermine a President’s ability to receive candid counsel. Harriet Miers’ decision demonstrates her deep respect for this essential aspect of the Constitutional separation of powers and confirms my deep respect and admiration for her.
Excuse me, Mr. Bush, but it wasn’t because they wanted internal documents you wouldn’t give them… it was because she had no qualifications except that she had a major crush on you! While we might not have known all of John Roberts’s political and constitutional views, he is a respected, qualified lawyer. Harriet Miers was your Texs crony. She wasn’t going to get confirmed (in my opinion).
Looking at the story from another angle, the AP is reporting that Bush withdrew the Miers nomination due to political pressure from the convervative right.
Under withering attack from conservatives, President Bush abandoned his push to put loyalist Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court and promised a quick replacement Thursday. Democrats accused him of bowing to the “radical right wing of the Republican Party.”
The White House said Miers had withdrawn because of senators’ demands to see internal docuents related to her role as counsel to the president. But politics played a larger role: Bush’s conservative backers had doubts about her ideological purity, and Democrats had little incentive to help the nominee or the embattled GOP presimdent.
I’m sure that pressure from the right had a major impact, but it’s my opinion that Miers probably did have a major role in removing herself from the nomination. It got to be tough to see that basically no one on either side of the aisle thinks you’re fit for a position to which you’ve been nominated. And the fact that Bush “reluctently” withdrew the nomination makes sense. He knows her political views exactly and realizes that she would probably just make judicial decisions based on her beliefs and not any sort of constitutional philosophy. Unfortunately, that’s not how the Court is supposed to work and I think a lot of people (excluding the conservative right) have recognized that.
Update: ABC News has the letter that Miers sent to President Bush, withdrawing as a nominee
A group of zombies descended on Madison, demanding their rights last Saturday. The march of the undead began on the steps of the Capitol and continued down State Street to the Memorial Union. Living protestors from Advocates of Zombie Attack Preparedness (AZAP) were on the scene to show their concern over the rising zombie population.
Signs at the event displayed messages such as “the undead are people too”, “life is wasted on the living, ” and “got brains?”
Similar lurches have been spotted in Montreal, Vancouver, Austin, and San Francisco.
From TheDailyPage.com:
Variants of re-animated corpses included rocker zombies, dress ball zombies, child zombies, and even a Super Mario zombie. As remarked to me by one of the undead (in a moment of lucidity), it was a remarkably well-behaved lurch, particularly considering the vocal calls for flesh, brains, and other cellular ephemera. The zombies stuck to the sidewalks, apparently too shy for the middle of the street. Nevertheless, they did their best to conform to expectations as they made their way west, moaning at pedestrians, banging on restaurant and tavern windows, and even attempts at re-animation with more gameful of onlookers. Indeed, the lurch grew progressively larger as it progressed down State, resembling to a slight extent a zombie infection simulation.
I think the new NBA dress code is pretty ridiculous. It’s only intent is to get rid of the hip-hop aura surrounding the game and make the players dress more like the fans dropping a couple-hundred bucks to go see a game. While the league has every right to enforce a dress code, owners should make a greater effort to communicate with the players intead of simply handing down decrees from on high.
In USA Today, Golden State Guard Jason Richardson made a point that could be directed at the guys who came up with the dress code: “You still wear a suit, you still could be a crook,” Richardson said in Oakland. “You see all what happened with Enron and Martha Stewart. Just because you dress a certain way doesn’t mean you’re that way.”
Slate.com has a few suggestions as to how players can obey the dress code, but still express themselves:
Embrace the suit: This is not 1957. Today, a suit can mean a lot of things. Commissioner Stern of all people should know that. He stands at the podium every draft day and watches the basketball youth take the stage wearing mustard-colored blazers and fire-engine-red waistcoats. And those aren’t even the European players. Put it this way: We’ve seen Cedric the Entertainer wear a suit without sleeves before. There’s room for creativity here.
Use your heads: Headgear not allowed? Bring back the visor. While a visor does boast a brim, we believe that it is technically not a hat as it does not satisfy the main hat qualification: covering your head. In reality, it is more akin to the headband. Hell, accountants wear visors, and it does not get more straight-laced than that.
Accessorize: No medallions, no problem. You need your bling, put it on an earring. Want us to rhyme one more time? Fine. If it’s telling time, where’s the crime? Bring back the pocket watch and chain. Get your medallion fix while letting everybody know “what time it is.”
Make your injury work for you: Riding the pine with a torn ACL? Walk that one off with a diamond-encrusted cane. We’re talking about your health here. You’d be surprised what an emerald-studded walking cast can do for a nasty case of plantar fasciitis.
Give yourself props: Bump that folding chair up a notch. Who says you can’t sit on a throne and go from a Sacramento King to the king of Sacramento? And get yourself a pair of pumas. We’re not talkin’ sneakers here—those are on the don’t list. After a tough loss, stroll to the press conference while flanked by two adult female pumas. Then we’ll see if that beat writer chastises you about the fade away three-pointer you took in overtime.
Slate.com article: Fashion Victims - How NBA players can get around the league’s awful new dress code.
After a week-long campaign, The New Vernacular emerged as the winner of MKEonline.com’s Blog of the Week contest! Thanks to everyone who voted.
If you’ve been watching the playoffs lately, you might be tempted to ask why they don’t have instant replay in baseball.
Case 1: In game 2 of the ALCS, White Sox batter A.J. Pierzynski swung on a low third strike that was then caught by Angels catcher Josh Paul. Doug Eddings, the home-plate umpire, signaled the out… and a few seconds later, Pierzynski bolts towards 1st base. For some reason, Eddings reneged on his original call after Paul had turned to head into the dugout and the White Sox went on the score the winning run.
A quick look at video of the pitch would have remedied the situation and the right decision would have been clear.
Case 2: I’ll hand it to Steve Safran of Lost Remote for the play-by-play of this one: “Bottom of the second, Angels have men on first and third and they are down 3-1. Angels’ CF Steve Finley swings at a pitch and his bat clearly hits the catcher’s glove. The play unfolds as a double play, and the White Sox get out of a jam. BUT… The replay shows the catcher’s glove folding over as it comes in contact with the bat - and that’s interference by the catcher. No question. Finley should have been awarded first base, and the bases would have been loaded with one out.”
So, why don’t the MLB owners chip in for TiVo and put controversy to rest. For one, fans, especially casual ones, have been complaining about the length of games for years. With all of the close calls that occur over the course of a baseball game, you’d have to tack on at least another 20 minutes per game.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but baseball is the only sport where an official makes such a vital call on every play. If we instituted the instant replay for caught balls and close tags, the question would be why don’t we use it call balls and strikes?
Human judgement and human error are all part of the sport. Just like you’ve got to adjust your swing depending on the pitch, you’ve got to adjust you strike zone depending on who’s behind the plate.
If baseball had instant replay, we wouldn’t managers charging on the field and laying into umpires. The arguments… the tempers… some of the most dramatic moments of the game would be gone. We wouldn’t be talking about game 2 of the ALCS after the series ended. And we wouldn’t have posts like this from White Sox fans who don’t believe the videotape.
Foxsports.com: Baseball, instant replay … not a winning pair
Senator Russ Feingold has been getting a lot of attention lately regarding his trips to electorally significant locations around the country and his plan for setting a timetable to remove U.S. troops from Iraq and the coverage doesn’t stop with Wisconsin media and liberal web sites.
CBS News has an article titled “Solid Feingold”, toting the Senator’s consistent stance against the war in Iraq and his possible position as the true anti-war candidate in 2008.
One Democrat who has offered another course — and he must be feeling very lonely — is Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. He has urged the United States to make a commitment to get all combat troops out of Iraq by the end of 2006. As Feingold says, we need a coherent alternative to either “stay the course” or “cut and run.” That alternative is phased withdrawal.
Feingold told a Los Angeles audience in late August: “The president and others say that if we leave, it will just be chaos in Iraq. Well, right now when you come to Iraq, you can’t even drive from the airport to the Green Zone.” Even inside the supposedly secure Green Zone, Feingold recounted, he was given a helmet and flak jacket…
Feingold is no radical. He gets elected in a swing state as a man of integrity and independence. He teamed up with Republican John McCain on campaign finance reform. He voted in favor of John Roberts for chief justice.
If the war is still going on in 2008, an antiwar candidate such as Feingold would be an odds-on favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination over bigger names disabled by their own fatal caution.
Wired Magazine has announced that they will no longer be capitalizing the words “internet,” “web,” or “net”. Why does this matter? Because capitalization signifies some sort of ownership, like a brand or a specific object or place. But the internet is a medium, just like print, radio, and television. It isn’t owned by any individual or group, it’s just out there. And it’s more accessible to the average person than are print, radio, and televison.
I think the word has been problematic because it’s often referred to as “the Internet” or “the Web”, as though it’s a singular system that can be turned off all at once. It’s much more decentralized than that.
I’ve already done this to an extent, but from now on I’m going to deviate from the AP Stylebook and follow Wired’s cue in dotting the “i”.
Just one less time I have to hold down the shift key.
The New Vernacular has been entered in the Blog of the Week contest over at mkeonline.com. The contest pits blogs from Southeastern Wisconsin against each other to see who’s got the top blog.
Voting is open from October 13th through October 19th.
According to A.J. Jacobs, editor for Esquire, pretty much anything we want. In his article, My Outsourced Life, Jacobs describes the month he hired several “remote executive assistants” from Asia to take care of most of his everyday tasks like writing e-mails, buying presents, and even calling his parents.
I first read the article in the September issue of Esquire and I’ve been waiting to find it online. I don’t know how much Jacobs’s parents enjoyed talking to an Asian representative instead of their son, but it seems like it went pretty well.
Every weekend, I place a dutiful call to my parents. It’s a nice thing to do, I figure — but it’s also a huge time vacuum. This weekend it’s Mom and Dad’s anniversary, so I can expect it to eat up even more of my day than usual. Mr. Naveen to the rescue. I email Mr. Naveen — the YMII employee who will be on duty at the time — a few concerned-sounding questions and a couple of filial sound bites. Next day, I get this email:
I made an out bound call to Jacob’s parents. They very happily received my call. I first introduced myself to them. Then I wished them Happy Anniversary they both told me thank you. . . . I asked them how is the weather in their place. They told me that it is pretty nice temperature here and the garden looks beautiful.
I won’t reproduce the whole transcript, but apparently my mom’s sprained foot has gotten better (though the rain does not help), and my dad’s law practice is going along very well. As for me, I had a good week, apparently. This was highly successful outsourcing, saving me at least half an hour of sweaty-eared phone time.
Tom Still explains an concept developed by Bruce Meredith, the general counsel for Wisconsin’s teachers union, that lays out a plan for public education based on the model for pro sports.
“Competition and deregulation may improve education, but only if carefully implemented and controlled,” wrote Meredith, who served as interim director of the Wisconsin Education Association Council during a recent leadership transition. “Sports leagues, which are grounded in competition, have learned that only fair and carefully controlled competition can improve the quality of play and produce long-term, self-sustaining successful franchises.”…
Meredith argues that’s precisely how public education should function. It should not be run as a commodity product in a totally free market, but as a service to society provided under market rules that give all “teams” – schools and the children within them – a realistic chance to win.
Meredith says the existing rules of play in education aren’t uniform or clear. The creation of private-school voucher programs, while founded on the notion of competitive choice, have created situations in which private schools can “de-select” students who are too hard to educate. Rules also vary in the administration of charter schools and public school “choice,” which allow some transfers among schools and school districts. Finally, the federal “No Child Left Behind Act” has imposed another set of rules on schools previously guided by state and local standards.
The combination “makes it difficult to determine whether deregulated schools are providing a better education or simply educating better students,” Meredith wrote.
This “plan” addresses the biggest problem I have with school choice and the voucher program: the fact that if you give the opportunity to some kids to go to different schools that may provide them with a better education, you do NOTHING to improve the schools that those children left. Plenty of children are still stuck at underperforming schools and getting inadequate educations. Abandoning the public school system to help just a few kids isn’t going to solve the larger problem.
Salon.com has an interview with possible Presidential candidate, Senator Russ Feingold. In it, Feingold discusses his plan for Iraq and some of the reasons for Kerry’s loss in 2004. Feingold also discusses his vote in favor of John Roberts and his problems with the nomination of Harriet Miers.
From the interview:
But you have Roberts on the bench. Harriet Miers is heading toward the bench.
Don’t count on that.
Well, whoever the president’s next nominee is, it’s very possible that the person could eat away at a number of legal principles that are Democratic foundations.
It’s very possible.
But you voted, still, for Roberts.
I have this odd sense that George Bush is going to pick whoever the justice is. So those who are yelling and screaming, apparently, have forgotten who gets to make the nomination. So the question is, what’s the best we can get from George Bush? It was my judgment that John Roberts, based on everything I saw and heard, directly and indirectly, was the best possibility we could have to pick somebody who would be non-ideological in his nature, who would try to do the right thing on the court, even though he is certainly more conservative than I am, and who I think in the end will probably be less partisan than his predecessor, Chief Justice Rehnquist.
So I thought it was the best possible scenario for the future of progressive concerns. I may be wrong. But that was my judgment and I think people who wanted a different choice than Roberts would have found out they got something worse.
What is your take on Miers?
I am puzzled. I don’t really understand. I will need to be convinced that this is a person who is of the highest standing, who is qualified, in the first place, for the Supreme Court. Secondly, I am really troubled by the notion that her qualification is that she has a close personal relationship with the president. That strikes me as the opposite of the independence and objectivity that I actually admired with Roberts.
It’s not only Americans that are dying in Iraq. It’s also Asian workers who have been tricked into leaving their homeland and indebted to those who sent them away. And we’re the ones paying for Halliburton to hire them. The Chicago Tribune has an amazing series on the plight of these exploited workers.
Tribune Investigation:
Pipeline to Peril
• Part 1: Lured into danger
• Sidebar: U.S. cash
• Part 2: Into a war zone
• Sidebar: Rescue
American tax dollars and the wartime needs of the U.S. military are fueling an illicit pipeline of cheap foreign labor, mainly impoverished Asians who often are deceived, exploited and put in harm’s way in Iraq with little protection.
The U.S. has long condemned the practices that characterize this human trade as it operates elsewhere in the Middle East. Yet this very system is now part of the privatization of the American war effort and is central to the operations of Halliburton subsidiary KBR, the U.S. military’s biggest private contractor in Iraq.
To document this system, the Tribune retraced the journey of 12 Nepalese men kidnapped last year from an unprotected convoy en route to an American military base in Iraq. The Tribune’s reporting found that:
* To maintain the flow of low-paid workers key to military support and reconstruction in Iraq, the U.S. military has allowed KBR to partner with subcontractors that hire laborers from Nepal and other countries that prohibit citizens from being deployed in Iraq. That means brokers recruiting such workers operate illicitly.
* The U.S. military and KBR assume no responsibility for the recruitment, transportation or protection of foreign workers brought to the country. KBR leaves every aspect of hiring and deployment in the hands of its subcontractors. Those subcontractors often turn to job brokers dealing in menial laborers.
* Working in tandem with counterparts in the Middle East, the brokers in South and Southeast Asia recruit workers from some of the world’s most remote areas. They lure laborers to Iraq with false promises of lucrative, safe jobs in nations such as Jordan and Kuwait, even falsifying documents to complete the deception.
* Even after foreign workers discover they have been lured under false pretenses, many say they have little choice but to continue into Iraq or stay longer than planned. They feel trapped because they must repay brokers’ huge fees.
* Some U.S. subcontractors in Iraq–and the brokers feeding them–employ practices condemned by the U.S. elsewhere, including fraud, coercion and seizure of workers’ passports.
Thanks for the heads up, Joel
My prediction is that over the next decade, personal computing will go beyond laptops to become more portable and useful. Yahoo has an article on flash drives, a technology that has grown quickly over the last couple of years and allows you to carry files and software with you from computer to computer. Really, the only things I need on my home computer are music and video… things that I only want to have at home anyway.
I’m on the computer much more at work or at the library than I am at home. It’s great to be able to sit in the library for a half-hour and chat on IM, check my e-mail, post to my blog, and write an assignment for my next class. Web applications are gaining ground on normal software… soon we’ll be able to use a browser to do pretty much everything we need. You can already log onto AIM using a browser. Rumor has it that Google will soon introduce a type of “Google Office” complete with word processor and spreadsheet applications.
One development that hasn’t gone mainstream yet is truly mobile Internet. I’m talking about a mobile browser that looks and acts exactly like it does on a PC. I want to be able to have a small phone/computer with me at all times so that if I’m looking for information, I can use Google or check my e-mail easily to find it. We do have Blackberry’s and other forms of searching Google and looking at altered forms of certain Web sites, but they’re both too expensive for my purposes and limited to certain tasks like checking sports scores and the weather.
With the expansion of (hopefully free) wi-fi networks in urban areas and the development of communication software (think Google Talk Mobile), we’ll be able to type, e-mail, talk, search and surf from the palm of our hand for practically free.
Eventually you’ll only need your home PC as a file server to store files and larger programs like games. Almost everything else will be available on an Internet browser.
From LostRemote:
In a first for NBC’s The West Wing, the series will broadcast a live debate between presidential candidates Congressman Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) and Senator Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) on Sunday, Nov. 6. Also, NBC.com will soon launch campaign sites for the candidates.
Sure, it’s a little gimmicky, but then again, I’ll be watching. I like the idea of the campaign Web sites. Now if they’d only bring Aaron Sorkin back to write the last couple of episodes.
Also, NBC just revamped their Web site with a modern, red and white tech design. The design is the same that they’re using in their on-screen graphics in prime-time.
This from ABC’s “The Note”, a daily round-up of basically everything going on in U.S. Politics:
If you care about the political health of the ruling party, ask yourself how much confidence you have in the following:
- Rove attorney Luskin’s judgment and strategic vision.
- Harriet Miers’ capacity to be a strong witness.
- The ability of congressional Republicans to make spending cuts that will help their 2006 electoral prospects.
- The rate at which Iraqi military forces are being trained.
- The skill level of the White House to keep the Miers nomination moving forward, with no backsliding.
- The DeLay and Abramoff (and Frist) investigations concluding without serious collateral damage.
- The Democratic Party ignoring the excellent advice it got yesterday from Galston and Kamarck (louder than Shields and Yarnell LINK, but just as clear).
- Patrick Fitzgerald’s willingness to not indict for indictment’s sake.
- The federal government’s progress on bird flu, gas prices, and Katrina relief.
- A compassionate conservative, a reformer with results, and a charge to keep — all rolled into one.
What does this say about the current political situation in the U.S.? It’s hard to say, but I feel like the tide is turning.
update: The latest CBS News Poll
Hopefully my friends aren’t all thinking of buying this shirt.
I wrote Monday that Jon Stewart basically ripped on the editors of several major magazines at a panel he was invited to host at an event put on by the Magazine Publishers of America. Well, it turns out that some members of the MPA got a little upset at the direction Stewart took the panel.
From WWD.com (apparently the site for Women’s Wear Daily?):
Four days after Jon Stewart laid a comic smackdown on four top editors during an event hosted by the Magazine Publishers of America, many industry voices were still grumbling that MPA had shelled out a quarter of a million dollars ($150,000 for Stewart, another $100,000 for the event, according to a source) only to have “The Daily Show” host question the relevance of print in front of a roomful of advertisers.
And then there were the shots he took at the panelists: Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter, Cosmopolitan’s Kate White, Time’s Jim Kelly and Men’s Health’s David Zinczenko. “I think it’s safe to say we probably all felt a little ambushed,” said White afterward. “We were led to believe it was going to be not a roast or anything of that nature, but a dialogue. The biggest frustration was how poorly prepared he was. He didn’t know where to go, and the only thing to do was get nasty or toss it to the audience.”
Really, how could you put Jon Stewart on stage with the editors of Cosmo and Men’s Health and not expect that he’d make fun of them for taking their jobs too seriously.
Adfreak post: More gnashing of teeth over Jon Stewart event
In other Daily Show news, Broadcastingcable.com has an interview with Daily Show Executive Producer Ben Karlin:
Onion Guy Makes Good
Executive Producer Karlin hits funny bone on a Daily basis
I can’t wait for The Colbert Report to premiere. It starts Oct 17th.
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