Saturday Open Thread [5.5.12]

Filed in Open Thread by on May 5, 2012

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  1. nemski says:

    You can watch President Obama’s rally in Ohio here.

  2. MJ says:

    OMG – a horse named Bodenmeister was one of the favorites in the Kentucky Derby. He lost (just like our own St. Bodie Girl).

  3. Liberal Elite says:

    This is awesome… must see.

    The life of Julia:

    http://www.barackobama.com/life-of-julia/

  4. Liberal Elite says:

    “Murdoch’s Pride Is America’s Poison”
    by Bill Keller
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/opinion/sunday/keller-murdochs-pride-is-americas-poison.html

    “In this beleaguered family of news enterprises, Fox is the good son. It is the most reliable profit center, expected to net a billion dollars this fiscal year. It is untainted so far by the metastasizing scandals. It is a source of political influence more durable than Murdoch’s serial romances with British prime ministers. This year the Fox News Primary probably did more to nominate Mitt Romney than New Hampshire or Michigan.

    And yet I would argue that — at least for Americans — Fox News is Murdoch’s most toxic legacy.

    My complaint is that Fox pretends very hard to be something it is not, and in the process contributes to the corrosive cynicism that has polarized our public discourse.”

    “I would never suggest that what is now called “the mainstream media” — the news organizations that most Americans depended on over the past century — achieved a golden mean. We have too often been condescending to those who don’t share our secular urban vantage point. We are too easily seduced by access. We can be credulous. (It’s also true that we have sometimes been too evenhanded, giving equal time to arguments that fail a simple fact-check.)

    But we try to live by a code, a discipline, that tells us to set aside our personal biases, to test not only facts but the way they add up, to seek out the dissenters and let them make their best case, to show our work. We write unsparing articles about public figures of every stripe — even, sometimes, about ourselves. When we screw up — and we do — we are obliged to own up to our mistakes and correct them.

    Fox does not live by that code.”