News

Losing common ground

DAVID KISH — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:52:17 GMT

A rift between science and activism is undermining progress in the fight against AIDS
Among the chaos of fractious voices at the 17th International AIDS Conference, it’s hard to discern a clear message, and even harder to know who might be receiving it.

MEXICO CITY — I cross the street where Cortez crushed the Aztecs, and things start to bubble. A crowd forms, banners appear, T-shirts are donned, chants overtake other chants. From pickup trucks, women distribute free strips of condoms to giddy men who hold them over their heads like trophies. Police are everywhere, some foppish in sombreros on horseback, most deadly with fingers on triggers of automatic weapons. Someone thrusts the string of a pink balloon into my hands and suddenly I’m in an AIDS protest. The mob moves and, surrounded, I move with it. Caught in the frivolity and righteousness of the moment, we inch toward the vast Zocalo plaza where Annie Lennox, in halting Spanish, will encourage us to keep doing what we’re doing. But what exactly are we doing? Among the chaos of fractious voices, it’s hard to discern a clear message, and even harder to know who might be receiving it.

Mexico’s capital, renowned for its street demonstrations, hosted the 17th International AIDS Conference a few weeks ago. It was the first time the International AIDS Society held its signature event in Latin America, where infection rates are on the rise. The classic AIDS red ribbon, deftly redesigned to resemble the local ancient god Quetzalcoatl (the plumed serpent), became the official logo and was plastered everywhere: lampposts, billboards, buses, buildings, tote bags, literature, and (in the form of temporary tattoos) even people. Under this unifying banner 30,000 scientists, activists, politicians, students, and journalists descended upon the largest city in the Western Hemisphere to take stock of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. Far from a united front, however, the week-long conference highlighted a growing disconnect between the tactics and expectations of AIDS activists, and the scientific realities facing researchers.

The previous conference was held in the much less chaotic city of Toronto, where scientists were optimistic that a cure was in sight. But it has been a very bad year for HIV research; two human trials of Merck’s most promising vaccine were stopped when it was realized that the vaccine may have actually increased HIV susceptibility among some subjects. The problem may have been the adenovirus (common cold virus) used to deliver the candidate vaccine, since everyone’s immune system responds differently to the common cold. But no one’s really sure. Several trials of other potential vaccines have now been delayed. International AIDS Society executive director Craig McClure admitted, “In terms of scientific breakthroughs, this is not the year for breakthroughs.” One word notably scarce in this year’s multifaceted discourse was “cure.”

Photos: Bulls on parade

KATHY CHAPMAN — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:28:58 GMT

"Security" at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN, September 3, 2008.

Law-enforcement officials from as far away as Arizona converged on St. Paul for the Republican National Convention this past month. With them they brought tear gas, Tasers, and riot gear, as well as a police-state attitude that led to approximately 800 arrests and several violent clashes with protesters.

Photo by Kathy Chapman

Since Harvard came out

HARVEY SILVERGLATE — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:23:23 GMT

Freedom watch
It was a typical Harvard alumni event, but not a typical, self-congratulatory Crimson “glory days” fest.

Among the Republican thugs

ANNE ELIZABETH MOORE — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:32:41 GMT

Fear and pepper spray in St. Paul
Minnesota is known innocently enough as the Gopher State, but for one terrifying, riot-gear-and-grenade-filled week this past summer, it was a police state.

Police use pepper spray to break up a group of protesters during a rally at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., Monday, Sept. 1, 2008. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

• Rolled: Where's the outrage over media mistreatment at the RNC? By Adam Reilly.

• Photos: Bulls on parade: "Security" at the Republican National Convention. By Kathy Chapman.

• Photos: Republican National Convention 2008

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA — Since 11 am on Tuesday, September 2, the first (albeit rejiggered) full day of the Republican National Convention (RNC), masses of cops indistinguishable from one another had suited up in riot gear pulled from the backs of open Ford Expeditions. Now, they were forming a thick perimeter around the St. Paul Capitol grounds, where happy young people had gathered to listen to bands, flirt, and trade colorful flyers advertising varieties of social justice. These men were dressing for a specific kind of evening on the town, and by 8:30, they were hot and bothered. Had they gotten all dressed up with no place to go?

They’d seen action the night before, of course, with 284 arrests, and in raids for several days beforehand. Millions of bucks in federal funds had been shelled out for their new gear, along with a massive insurance policy to cover lawsuits in the event of misuse. But having trailed a march for several hours to a downtown location in front of Mickey’s Dining Car, the officers were ready for more.

That’s when the rumbling began. Not low stomach rumbling, a literary device conveying impending danger. This was the sound of motors rumbling. From snowplows, dump trucks, massive city vehicles. The trucks were establishing a blockade on the dark summer streets of my hometown, forming the outer barricade in a series of three impasses — the two others created by rows of riot cops — penning in politically engaged Americans.

Confused, hungry, and with a sudden awareness that conspiracy to document a riot might be considered a felony under Minnesota’s USA PATRIOT Act, I headed in the opposite direction for dinner, hoping to meet along the way with an exhausted videographer whose two camera people were still in jail. A young girl walking nearby turned to me. “I’m not a protester,” she explained. She was heading to the capitol to sit on the grass to rest.

Clearly, she’s from here, I thought: that’s exactly the kind of boring night I used to have in this town when I was her age.

Rolled

ADAM REILLY — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:39:49 GMT

Where’s the outrage over media mistreatment at the RNC?

‘WELL-CONNECTED’: After taking the photo above, of a conflict between law enforcement and RNC protesters, Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke was himself tackled and bloodied by police. He was arrested and held for 10 hours, then released without being charged.

• Among the Republican thugs: Fear and pepper spray in St. Paul. By Anne Elizabeth Moore.

• Photos: Republican National Convention 2008.

Given the media’s reputation for self-absorption, it’s remarkable how little attention the press has paid to the crackdown on journalists during September’s Republican National Convention. While the exact tally varies from source to source, it seems that close to 50 journalists were detained or arrested in St. Paul (out of approximately 800 arrests total) while covering protests outside the convention. Some of them were treated gently and released quickly, but others were held at length or roughed up by the police. What’s more, a pre-convention raid on a St. Paul home targeted members of I-Witness Video, a New York group whose work exonerated hundreds of protesters following the 2004 RNC. And while St. Paul city attorney John Choi announced, on September 19, that many cases against journalists wouldn’t be pursued — in particular, those involving the possible misdemeanor count of presence at an unlawful assembly — these decisions are being made on a case-by-case basis and are far from complete.

Oddly, though, the jeopardy that journalists faced in St. Paul never became much of a story. There wasn’t a news blackout, exactly: the Associated Press (AP) and the local Minnesota media covered the issue, as did left-leaning outlets like the Nation and Salon, and national heavyweights like ABC News and the Washington Post gave it some early, blog-based coverage.

The problem, instead, is that the story was ignored or minimized by other important organizations — the New York Times being the most prominent example — and, as the weeks progressed, never seemed to generate any sort of sustained concern inside the media itself, the efforts of groups like the Society for Professional Journalists notwithstanding. In the words of Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, “It never really got into the conversation at a level where it had an impact.”

What’s especially strange about this is that the activity that got these journalists into trouble — monitoring the exercise of government power — is one of the most important things the fourth estate does. So why the muted response to their plight?

Stock stupidity

KARA BASKIN — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:57:11 GMT

Self-declared financial ignoramus revels in the fact that investing ‘geniuses’ probably know less than she does
In my wildest dreams, I never thought my stock-market ignorance would be something to brag about.

In my wildest dreams, I never thought my stock-market ignorance would be something to brag about. But, as you probably know by now — unless you’re even more of a financial rube than me (not possible) — Wall Street has been reduced to rubble. Lehman Brothers? The Jonas Brothers are now more reliable and solvent prognosticators. And the government’s taken control of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG. I’m no economic scholar, but I think this means that the US is now more communist than China.

I won’t attempt to unravel the minutiae of this fiasco, as I’m fairly sure my humble editors frown upon plagiarizing Wikipedia. So I’ll write from the heart, which is where most people are affected by this crisis, anyway (besides their wallets, of course): I’m the type of person who, in better times — in other words, up until this past week — watched with envy as friends bought McMansions with impossibly crafted, illogical mortgages that looked like pyramid schemes. I cursed my stock stupidity when people offhandedly referenced their juicy investment portfolios.

Flipping through Money magazine always left me with load rage. The worst were the profiles of people in financial “distress.” I loathed the smug couples with their cookie-cutter homes and their tales of woe: “But we only have $500,000 in savings! Oh, Tripp, how will we ever afford our second property on a golf course?”

Me? Once, tipsy on Yellowtail chardonnay, I logged onto sharebuilder.com and bought a couple stocks. The only one I remember purchasing is Harley Davidson, and that’s just because its stock symbol is HOG.

As for the rest of my assets? I’ve got one paltry bank account and a slightly anemic 401(k) plan. I don’t know why I never got motivated to learn more about investing. Maybe it’s because I dropped out of math in 11th grade. Maybe it’s because my version of “financial planning” is throwing myself and three pounds of crumpled receipts at the mercy of a robotic H&R Block representative every April 14.

Regardless, I could never escape the feeling that most people out there knew something I didn’t, that I was somehow inferior as a crazy creative type. There must have been a secret investing handshake that no one told me about, because while I furnished my rented apartment with IKEA’s finest plywood furniture, everyone else was leasing BMWs and coming up with fat down payments on mini-manses in Weston.

Captain chaos

STEVEN STARK — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:33:57 GMT

Steering a suddenly lost GOP ship,
The past two weeks or so have seen at least one historic meltdown.

The past two weeks or so have seen at least one historic meltdown — the virtually unprecedented disintegration of the credit markets. The question that won’t be answered until November 4 is whether they’ve also witnessed a secondary collapse — the self-destruction of the John McCain candidacy.

If so, the two will have been obviously related. When the economic crisis hit, it was bad news for the country, but also a godsend for Barack Obama’s campaign — as long as voters are focusing on the economy, it benefits the Democrats. And, more important, the crisis and the bailout that could have dearly cost taxpayers reminded voters how much they dislike the incumbent, George W. Bush, who, incidentally, hasn’t covered himself in glory over the past fortnight. Anyone connected with him — and in case you needed reminding, he and John McCain are members of the same party — was bound to suffer as a result.

But so far McCain has taken a bad situation and made it worse. In a presidential campaign, voters evaluate the candidates to see how they will handle the rigors of the office. This situation offers an ideal test of coolness and vision in a crisis. So far, Obama has successfully navigated it; McCain has hit an iceberg.

Impulsive to a fault, in the past several weeks McCain has certainly been anything but steady at the helm. The economy is good — oops, no it isn’t. I’m for the Paulson plan — no, maybe I’m not. I won’t be going to the debates unless there’s a bailout deal — oh, I guess I’ll go. All along, McCain’s trump card had been that Obama was too inexperienced to offer voters the stability the nation requires. That argument looks a lot shakier today.

Against all odds, again
If it persists until Election Day, that impression of volatility will particularly hurt McCain among women. Commentators frequently misunderstand the gender gap. Women voters actually don’t tend to be that much more liberal than male voters, as is commonly thought, but rather, historically speaking, they tend to be more risk averse. That is why Richard Nixon actually carried the female vote against John Kennedy in 1960.

Since then, however, with their threats to partially dismantle the welfare state, Republican presidential candidates have usually come across as riskier and more bellicose, thus appealing less to women than men.

Bringing up Baby

JIM SULLIVAN — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:47:40 GMT

The most famous three-legged, barkless dog in the world
Few things in life are certain, but this is: a gentle, white miniature poodle named Baby is the most famous three-legged, barkless dog in the world.

Few things in life are certain, but this is: a gentle, white miniature poodle named Baby is the most famous three-legged, barkless dog in the world. She’s also the only one to tour the country in a bus with her likeness emblazoned on the side, and have her picture taken with, among others, Barack Obama, Bill Maher, Amy Sedaris, Steven Tyler, Jane Fonda, and Eric Idle. “She transcends political parties,” says Jana Kohl, her owner. “People from so many walks of life are so moved by her.”

Baby has gone from rags (in a puppy-mill cage, where she spent most of her life in squalor) to riches (this past week she was riding in a plush baby carriage at the Four Seasons). She is on the road with Kohl, who’s wrapping up a 30-plus city tour promoting her book, A Rare Breed of Love, and exposing the horrors of puppy mills (as well as championing other animal-related issues). Kohl, 49, and Baby met for a vegan lunch with some folks this past Thursday in a function room over the Bristol Lounge.

I sat next to Baby, who made loving eye contact and was pleased to be petted. Kohl — a psychologist from Chicago — was on Baby’s other side. Baby, now 12 or 13, is a rescue dog. By age eight or nine, she was a worn-out birthing machine in a Californian puppy mill. The breeder had cut her vocal cords so she couldn’t bark. Her bones were brittle; she had osteoporosis. (That later led to a leg break and amputation.) Her breeding use had ended.

As for Kohl, her previous dog, Blue, had died and it was time for another. The journey to Baby — who she found on a rescue Web site — started with exposure to the inhumane world of puppy mills, where breeding stock like Baby are kept alive, caged, and pregnant so they can churn out litter after litter for retail sale. Kohl saw shit, piss, and insects. She collected comments from breeders such as, “Animals don’t have feelings.” Little did Kohl — granddaughter of the founder of the Kohl’s department stores — suspect then that she’d become a leading critic of the mills. (Kohl has a cat, too, a stay-at-home named Kitty Pie, and she considers cat-breeders — catteries — just as vile.)

The people's gravelly voice

CLIF GARBODEN — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:00:10 GMT

Alan Lupo, 1938–2008
There’s a lot to be said about Alan Lupo. All of it good. Much of it colorful as hell.

Odium at the podium

STEVEN STARK — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:09:21 GMT

This year, with such a close contest, the debates could have an impact like never before. Here’s what to watch for.
In most presidential elections, the importance of the debates is over-rated.

In most presidential elections, the importance of the debates is over-rated. Most voters end up deciding that the winner of the debates is the candidate who they were already leaning toward. In fact, there have been only two campaigns — 1960 (Kennedy vs. Nixon) and 1980 (Carter vs. Reagan) — where the debates arguably changed enough minds to affect the outcome.

This year, however, the debates will likely have a profound impact on the election. Part of that is because this race is so close. But it’s mostly because — for the first time since 1928 — neither presidential candidate has any formal connection to an incumbent or a former administration. As a result, both Barack Obama and John McCain are still relatively unknown, and the impression they make in their three widely watched joint appearances will probably prove decisive.

Who will benefit the most from the debates? Apply these rules and you’ll know.

1) Debates are about memorable lines and key moments
What voters tend to recall are knockout lines and exchanges. This is especially true in that the media replays these moments again and again, reinforcing their importance.

In 1980, the headline replay was Ronald Reagan’s “There you go again,” and later, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” (which came in his closing summary, so voters could really remember it). In 1988, it was Lloyd Bentsen’s riposte to Dan Quayle, “You’re no Jack Kennedy.” Note that, in each case, the comment was short (the better to be rebroadcast on the news) and that two of these three comments were directed at the other candidate (rather than the audience), thereby highlighting the drama.

2) Gaffes take center stage
The annals of presidential debates are filled with far more instances of candidates who hurt themselves with their performances than help themselves. This helps explain why these joint appearances seldom end up moving many voters: the candidates are so afraid of making a mistake that they don’t take many chances, either.

What defines a debate gaffe? They’re not really factual mistakes, but instances when candidates reinforce the public’s worst fears about them. Gerald Ford’s description of Poland as “free” in 1976 confirmed for many that he might not be intellectually up to the presidency, just as Michael Dukakis’s professorial defense of his opposition to the death penalty (in answer to a question of what he’d do if his wife were raped or murdered) indicated to many that he was a member of the elite and out-of-touch with the common voter.

Blunt object

CHRIS FARAONE — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:06:06 GMT

The political fight over a November marijuana-reform ballot question has sparked a Battle of the Bong
Question 2 supporters claim Massachusetts district attorneys committed “at least 15 violations of Massachusetts campaign-finance and election laws” in the runup to the marijuana-decriminalization vote.

These days, Howie Carr is not the only smug bully stereotyping pot smokers as dangerously naive dingbats. With Election Day’s Question 2 ballot initiative threatening to reduce the penalty for less than one ounce of weed to a mere civil slap and $100 fine, Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe is leading a coalition of the Commonwealth’s heaviest hitters — including the other 10 Massachusetts district attorneys, Governor Deval Patrick, Mayor Tom Menino, and Attorney General Martha Coakley — to stand united against marijuana reform. But, as the state’s fiercest civic power brokers are quickly finding out, the war over Question 2 is not your typical suits vs. stoners scrum.

Firstly, operatives with the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy (CSMP) are hardly Spicoli-styled dimwits. Together, they gathered signatures from more than 125,000 constituents representing all but one Massachusetts municipality (Mount Washington in the Berkshires) to actually get Question 2 on the November ballot. They’ve also raised nearly $650,000 since 2007, which is a major bummer for Question 2 opponents, who have stashed fewer than $28,000, and who resent CSMP’s feasting on out-of-state contributions, such as the $400,000 the committee received from billionaire Wall Street–tycoon-turned-liberal-activist George Soros.

The CSMP accuses O’Keefe’s organization (dubbed the Coalition for Safe Streets) of more than just openly opposing statistical evidence, scientific research, and the will of Massachusetts residents. In a press conference held outside the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse this past Thursday morning, CSMP Campaign Manager Whitney Taylor claimed the district attorneys committed “at least 15 violations of Massachusetts campaign-finance and election laws.” Among the alleged infractions: the Coalition for Safe Streets began accepting contributions and spending funds before it registered with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF), and the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association (MDAA) published lies about the CSMP initiative on its Web site.

“Their opposition statement against Question 2 promoted false statements about what the question would do if passed,” says Taylor, who stressed that CSMP is not a libertarian group looking to get high, but is instead seeking to minimize consequences for small-time offenders who are often denied access to student loans, housing, and employment due to Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) reports that are filed upon arrest. Currently, even first-time pot offenders are placed on probation.

Twitheads

ADAM REILLY — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:45:36 GMT

Is it time to dial down journalism’s latest fad?
Is Twitter bad for journalism?

It’s always dicey to question technology’s forward march: do so, and you risk being labeled a fogey, a Luddite, an enemy of Progress. But every now and then, something happens that makes it acceptable to question whether the new and shiny is necessarily the good. Nuclear power had Three Mile Island. Cloning had Dolly, the short-lived sheep. And Twitter — or, more precisely, the use of Twitter by journalists — had the Rocky Mountain News’ (RMN) coverage, earlier this month, of the funeral of three-year-old Marten Kudlis.

Some background: on September 4, Francis Hernandez, a 23-year-old illegal immigrant from Guatemala, broadsided a truck in Aurora, Colorado. The truck and Hernandez’s vehicle then careened into a Baskin-Robbins, killing the truck’s two occupants and Kudlis, who was in the ice-cream store with his mother. The tragedy quickly became fodder for anti-illegal-immigrant activists, such as former Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo, who accused Colorado’s Democratic governor and Denver’s mayor of having “blood on their hands.” (Hernandez had been arrested for traffic violations in the past but had never been reported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency that could have had him deported.)

Fast forward to five days after the crash, when RMN reporter Berny Morson used Twitter to report live from Kudlis’s funeral. Twitter, for the uninitiated, is a social-networking mechanism that lets individuals give and receive real-time status updates — but only in 140 characters or fewer. (Here’s how twitter.com puts it: “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”) Sign up for Joe Blow’s Twitter feed, for instance, and you’ll be contacted every time Joe has something he’d like to share. Sign up for a news organization’s general Twitter feed, and you’ll be informed when new articles are published. Sign up for a specific feed, and you’ll get updates from a particular correspondent, or on a particular topic.

In the case of Kudlis’s funeral, that meant such observations as the following (where “RMN_Berny” serves as the reporter’s online handle):

RMN_Berny: people again are sobbing. rabbi again asks god to give
marten everlasting life.
09:46 AM September 10, 2008 from txt

RMN_Berny: pallbearers carry out coffin followed by mourners.
09:48 AM September 10, 2008 from txt

RMN_Berny: cars queueing [sic] up to follow hearse
09:59 AM September 10, 2008 from txt

RMN_Berny: procession begins
10:01 AM September 10, 2008 from txt

Are universities selling out to oil nations?

HARVEY SILVERGLATE — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:16:28 GMT

As big bucks beckon, Gulf campuses of American universities are booming
As Academia searches for elusive dollars in a downward economy, oil-rich nations are enticing American schools to open satellite campuses in the Gulf.

Oil's well: American universities with Persian Gulf campuses. By Harvey Silverglate and Kyle Smeallie.

Old school? No way.
Dozens of elite American universities are establishing satellite campuses in the United Arab Emirates, a region with bottomless petro-dollars but — in the modern era — limited (if not restrictive) academic history and culture. Some of these campuses have the look and feel of an upscale theme park. The UAE University is the oldest institution in the country, established in 1976. Walt Disney World, in Florida, is five years older.

I arrived on the Princeton campus as a bewildered, Brooklyn-born-and-bred public-school product, suddenly thrust into the Class of 1964. The first week, at dinner in the freshman commons, I glanced across the 12-man table (it was only men in those days) to see two austere, well-dressed, neatly bearded undergrads. Overhearing their conversation with another student, I learned that the two fellows bore the last name al-Faisal. “Any relation,” I naively asked, “to the dictator of Saudi Arabia?” Promptly, both stood up and exited. It turned out that they were indeed members of the royal family; one, Prince Saud al-Faisal, would later become the long-serving minister of state for foreign affairs of Saudi Arabia.

For better or worse, this type of encounter will become increasingly more rare in the United States. That’s because foreign potentates, especially those from oil-rich sheikdoms, no longer need to send their children to this country to hobnob with the heathens (and boors) in order to acquire world-class degrees. Enticed by seemingly bottomless petro-dollars, American universities are flocking to the Persian Gulf to establish satellite campuses. And these aren’t the traditional study-abroad programs — they are, rather, elegantly designed campuses with state-of-the-art facilities that bear such prestigious names as Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Carnegie Mellon, and New York University. Now, the well-born-and-bred children of well-heeled oil billionaires no longer have to wander far from the royal palace to do some learning — they can get an American degree right at home.

This development raises questions for universities involved in exporting education — indeed, whole campuses — to far-off very wealthy lands: how will a foreign branch affect the home campus? Will Western educational values clash with the very different cultures of these foreign states? Will certain subjects, such as humanities courses that challenge traditional views about academic freedom or gender roles, be taboo? Will earning a Georgetown degree in Qatar — not DC — require the same intellectual rigor and hard work? And, most fundamental, what is motivating American academic institutions to set up remote campuses in such seemingly unlikely places where a culture of learning as we know it has not exactly taken root? The answer tells us much about the trend toward the corporatization of American higher education.

True dat?

ADAM REILLY — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:02:01 GMT

Rory O’Connor ponders the future of journalistic trust at Harvard
Rory O’Connor’s timing couldn’t be much better.

Rory O’Connor’s timing couldn’t be much better. We’re in the midst of a presidential campaign where the very notion of Truth-with-a-capital-T seems to be at risk: think Barack Obama’s alleged Muslim-ness or Sarah Palin’s alleged rejection of the Bridge to Nowhere. And now O’Connor — the veteran journalist and media critic and alum of the Phoenix, the Real Paper, Boston magazine, the Globe, WGBH, and WCVB — has returned to Boston from New York for a fellowship at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, where he’ll be pondering the future of journalistic truth and trust. An edited excerpt of his recent conversation with the Phoenix follows; for a fuller version, visit the “Don’t Quote Me” blog.

What is the goal of your study at Harvard?
How do we know that what we see and hear is really true? That goes both ways. There’s a high level of distrust between the citizenry and the professional journalism priesthood, whether they’re on the right or the left. And the professionals are up in arms, too. They don’t trust citizen journalism at all; they’re afraid of people getting their news and information from viral e-mails; they know things are changing rapidly throughout the mainstream media; they feel, quite rightly, like they’re under assault. What I’m going to be looking at is trust, journalism, and social networks, and the role they can play in enabling people to get news and information they can trust. Obviously, that’s really vital to having a fully functioning democracy. And one could argue we don’t have one at the moment, or that we’re right on the edge of not having one.

So are John McCain and the GOP being savvy in telling people, “don't get your information from the media because they’re not trustworthy”?
Attacking the media hasn’t worked so well in the past, but I think it's working better now because of personalization — my Yahoo, my news, my Republican Party, my Democratic friends. And as people move away from mainstream transition belts, everything becomes media. You’re getting pushed directly from the campaign, or seeing their information on YouTube — that’s media. You’re mashing it up and making something new: photoshopping and putting Sarah Palin’s head on top of somebody in a red, white, and blue bikini, holding a giant gun, which also wasn’t true. That’s media. The other thing I want to look at is the mainstream media playing in fields of Facebook and MySpace. What are they doing? YouTube just partnered with the Pulitzer Center; CNN has a new thing going with Digg; Reuters built a bureau in Second Life. Nobody knows if any of this stuff’s going to work, but they know something’s happening.

Debatable

EDITORIAL — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 03:19:42 GMT

Can Obama show grit? Will he connect? Can McCain stop lying? Will he remember?
With the presidential debates about to begin, political pundits are full of advice for Senators Barack Obama and John McCain.

With the presidential debates about to begin, political pundits are full of advice for Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. Obama, according to conventional wisdom, should try to provoke McCain’s legendary temper. McCain, the thinking goes, must ruthlessly attack Obama’s inexperience and elitism — to make sure, as his own campaign manager recently said, that this election is not about issues.

Our advice: forget the conventional wisdom. Voters desperately want that “straight talk” McCain once prided himself on, but which, in his run for the White House, he has abandoned in favor of crooked and warped pandering. They want to hear what the candidates really think is happening in the world, in the country, to the economy, and in Washington — and how the two men hope to tackle those problems.

As it happens, we have reached this stage of the campaign with two presidential candidates who, for whatever reasons, polls show most Americans like, trust, and respect. That’s certainly a testament of some kind to the voting public, who in extraordinary numbers took part in the careful selection of the nominees.

But the two choices for the office have enormous differences in policy, ideology, and priorities that voters need to hear — unscripted, unfiltered, and preferably without the petty squabbling over trivialities that has so far been a hallmark of this campaign.

Presenting such a serious debate will require some adjustment for both candidates. Obama, always a better orator than debater, needs to present specific ideas without lofty grandeur — and yet be compelling and forceful, rather than, as he often is in these situations, cautious and humorless.

McCain, a skilled panderer — and a quick wit — used those skills to outperform his Republican primary rivals in front of audiences who knew what they wanted to hear. Now, McCain must forgo easy point-scoring temptations if he is to convince swing voters that he is the right man to tackle challenges for which they themselves — and even he and Obama — don’t know all the answers.

On foreign policy — the pre-arranged topic for this Friday’s debate — McCain, mainly because of his age, tough talk, and former POW status, is presumed to hold an advantage. But Obama needs to stick confidently to his guns: he is right in his more nuanced, diplomatic approach, and the electorate agrees.

In particular, Obama should repeatedly demonstrate that McCain approaches world affairs with the same “us-against-them” cowboy mentality that people negatively associate with President George W. Bush.

Personally speaking

DEIRDRE FULTON — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 03:15:45 GMT

Abortion and Life tells whole truths
For decades, feminists have rallied behind the phrase “the personal is political,” meant to remind us that our personal lives are intrinsically affected by politics.

"I had an abortion: A Portland woman’s story," by Anonymous

"Where they stand: McCain and Obama on repro rights," by Deirdre Fulton

For decades, feminists have rallied behind the phrase “the personal is political,” meant to remind us that our personal lives (including our reproductive choices) are intrinsically affected by politics. Yet even while they remind society that public acts can penetrate private spheres, many members of the pro-choice movement still shy away from telling personal abortion stories, finding it more comfortable to talk about reproductive rights as intangible concepts rather than concrete situations.

This keeps the pro-choice cause stagnant, and struggling to be relevant to a wider audience. It also hurts women who have had abortions. Jennifer Baumgardner’s new book, Abortion and Life (Akashic Books) is one step toward shifting that paradigm, first by acknowledging that many people (feminists included) are still “afraid to discuss abortion in polite company,” and then by underscoring the importance of storytelling.

Part of the lingering stigma attached to abortion is based on anti-choice rhetoric and scare tactics. But just as insidious is the pro-choice movement’s reluctance to delve into the emotional nuance that comes with terminating an unplanned pregnancy. For example, it’s largely unacceptable for a pro-choice woman to be ambivalent about her own abortion (she would seem too vulnerable). Nor is it considered appropriate for a woman to express an excess of relief, or an outright absence of emotion, about the event (too callous). It’s as though women’s experiences of abortion have been passed through a filter for years, with only “on-message” stories allowed to reach the public. The results: a society that still considers abortion a clandestine act; a diverse group of women who feel both isolated and lumped together; and a movement that feels quite impersonal and manufactured, focused single-mindedly on a concept rather than a reality.

Enter Baumgardner’s “pro-voice” strategy, which started taking shape in 2004. That year, as a throwback to second-wave feminist efforts in the 1970s “to put a face on this diverse issue,” she made the first batch of T-shirts that read: “I had an abortion.” The T-shirts, distributed first at an abortion-rights march in Washington DC and then nationwide through Planned Parenthood, were wildly popular (and controversial) — more than she’d ever expected them to be — and indicated an untapped desire among women to destigmatize the abortion experience.

I had an abortion

ANONYMOUS — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:07:07 GMT

Forty percent of American women have abortions by the time they're 45. I'm one of them.
Does anyone think about us, the people who have actually gone through with an abortion, and accepted that it was the right decision, for whatever reason, at that time?

"Where they stand: McCain and Obama on repro rights," by Deirdre Fulton

"Personally speaking: Abortion and Life tells whole truths," by Deirdre Fulton

Every few months, the abortion debate comes back into focus in the mainstream media — like it did a few weeks ago, when the news broke of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, and her mother’s stance on abortion rights. That’s when I started feeling guilty, and angry.

The circumstances of my abortion were incredibly mundane. I was 19 years old, a junior at a college in Boston, deeply in love with my boyfriend (J.), and doing well in school. I worked full-time at our school newspaper, heading there daily after class and staying regularly past midnight. I was taking birth-control pills, but my schedule — which forced me to value every last moment of sleep — made me irresponsible about taking the pills at the same time every day. Sometimes I would miss doses entirely and take two in one day to make up for it. Occasionally, I would have (what I didn’t really think of as) unprotected sex; I believed I was protected not only by my inappropriately administered Ortho Tri-Cyclen, but also by young-adult invincibility.

I found out I was pregnant on a Sunday, thanks to a home-pregnancy test that I bought at CVS after discussing with J. that my period was late. I don’t remember being nervous about taking the test. But when I saw the results — positive — I left my dorm suite bathroom and literally crumpled to the floor just outside the door, weeping out of fear and for the decision I knew I would make.

I wasn’t ready to have a child. That’s it. Not financially, not emotionally. There was nothing else to think about. I called J., called Planned Parenthood, and scheduled my abortion for Halloween 2002.

My memories of that day are unformed. They aren’t fuzzy, or hazy, as people describe memories; I believe they literally never took shape. I know that we walked to the Planned Parenthood clinic across the street, and made our way past the protesters who stood — only a few strong — in a cluster outside the state-designated “buffer zone.” Inside, I found out that I was approximately six weeks pregnant. I know that a Planned Parenthood doctor gave me one RU-486 pill at the clinic, and another to take at home. (I’d decided to have a medical abortion, rather than a surgical one, because I thought it would be less physically painful and less invasive — more private. Also, I was within the eight-week time frame when it’s still an option.) She warned me that shortly after taking the second pill, I would experience some pain.

Harold Wells made up this headline, too

BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:46:21 GMT

Letters to the Boston editor, September 26, 2008

Naming convention

LANCE GOULD — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:17:16 GMT

We asked, you answered: our readers text in votes for Sarah Palin's next baby name
Gwyneth had Apple. Posh had Brooklyn. And moose-killing miracle mom Sarah Palin beat them all with Trig Paxson Van Palin, a name so cool that it rhymes with “Eddie Van Halen.”

Granite up for grabs

DAVID S. BERNSTEIN — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:32:45 GMT

Why McCain, Obama, and their supporters are swooping down on New Hampshire
Presidential candidates and their surrogates spend most of their time in high-population, close-contest areas.

‘All’ for none
This year, for the first time, New Hampshire voters will not be able to vote a straight party-line ballot in one motion. The state banned “straight-ticket voting” in July, which will force voters to fill in their ballots in each race — previously, they have had the option of filling in an “all Democrats” or “all Republicans” oval at the top. Roughly a quarter of all voters in the state used the straight-ticket option in 2006.

Both parties are claiming that the change will help them. Democrats say that, historically, straight-ticket voting has helped Republicans. GOP sources point out that, in 2006, thanks to intense anti-Republican anger, most straight-ticket voting was Democratic.

Presidential candidates and their surrogates spend most of their time in high-population, close-contest areas, swinging quickly on runs through Minnesota-Wisconsin-Iowa, for example, or Michigan-Ohio-Pennsylvania. But in the past week, Barack Obama, John McCain, and Joe Biden went out of their way to visit New Hampshire, a small prize far removed from any other 2008 electoral contest.

There is no big secret to the gush of interest in the Granite State, which has affixed itself to the short list of presidential battlegrounds. Had Al Gore received just 7000 more votes in New Hampshire eight years ago, he would have received the state’s four electoral votes — and there would have been no President George W. Bush.

The past two presidential contests went late into election night, as states tallied their razor-thin margins with the fate of the free world in the balance. With national polls again showing a dead heat, and electoral-college projections similarly neck-and-neck, it is very possible that a few votes in one state could again make the difference.

But not knowing which state — of at least a dozen close battlegrounds, according to analysts — holds that key, campaigns are going all out for every last possible vote, in all of them. They are fighting with street-by-street urgency not only in Florida and Ohio, but in Virginia, and Colorado, and, yes, in little New Hampshire.

“New Hampshire is obviously very important,” says top Obama campaign advisor David Axelrod, in Concord this past Friday evening with his candidate. “It’s a state we have to keep a strong focus on.”