Media Organizations Inadvertently Pranking Themselves

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Carl Franzen of TPM’s IdeaLab reports that for several hours today News Corp. was erroneously corroborating that the Twitter handle of @wendi_deng was in Twitter-speak a ‘verified account’. Turns out they were wrong, as was Twitter. . . . I detest seeing errors in books I’ve published–I get sick to my stomach the first time I see an error in a book I’ve edited–so my outlook here is informed by that. And yet, I know that I am fallible, along with other people, and that we’re all probably more mistake-prone in our screen-dominated age than in eras past. Mistakes will continue to occur in communications. But what’s inexcusable is to make errors on top of errors. Both companies here failed as organizations to correctly assess the matter at hand. I guess you might say they’re simply too complex to be simple when they need to be. // more. . .

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Time for a Laugh

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This is pretty funny–Matthew Yglesias considers what would’ve happened had the government tried to create time zones and enact daylight savings time in the current political climate. This is the brief piece from Slate.com.
“The Big Government Takeover Of Time: A Parable by Matthew Yglesias
As I watched the entire Eastern Time Zone engage in a chorus of syncronized “Happy New Year!!!!!”-ing last night, I couldn’t help but think that a modern-day version of the 1918 Standard Time Act would probably prompt no end of hysteria on Fox News about the big government takeover of time. Newt Gingrich would note that God put the sun where he wanted it, and that having congress monkey with it is the height of secular socialism. Rick Perry would cite the 10th Amendment. Ezra Klein would try to explain that this is an industry-backed proposal developed by railroad executives with a long history of Republican support. Tim Carney would retort that this just goes to show how far the big government so-called “progressive” agenda is entwined with corrupt crony capitalism. John Boehner would probably try to put some sunset provision into the proposal so that time itself comes to a grinding halt unless the Keystone XL pipeline gets regulatory approval.”

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Greg Sargent Nails the GOP Plan to Unseat Pres. Obama

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Now, according to Sargent’s cogent analysis, those same Repubs plan to channel the electorate into blaming President Obama for supposedly falling short of what he’d pledged to accomplish–and which a clear majority of the country was, and may well still be, eager for him to achieve. Apart from the transparent sabotage of the president and the economy that’s been the undeniable plan of the Repubs, it was never likely that Barack Obama could in four years repair what had been in broken over the previous eight years. This among many reasons is why I will work for the president to give him, and the country, the second term he needs to really do the job. Meantime, I’ll be reading Greg Sargent for lucid analysis of the shifting political tides. Thank you, Greg! // more . . .

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