Heartbreaking

It's heartbreaking to watch Notre Dame Cathedral burning down. There's a lot being said about this, on television news and online; I was struck by a link to a Time story dated July 27, 2017:

On an average summer day in Paris, about 50,000 tourists pass through Notre Dame cathedral, one of the finest buildings of the medieval era still standing. Visitors from dozens of countries gaze up at the spectacular stained-glass windows, tiptoe through its vast choir and nave and whisper in awe at the centuries-old sculptures and paintings that line the walls.

Notre Dame, which looms over the capital from an island in the center of the city, is a constant reminder of Paris’ history. It has seen more than its share of epic dramas, including the French Revolution and two world wars. But now there is another challenge. Some 854 years after construction began, one of Europe’s most visited sites, with about 12 million tourists a year, is in dire need of repairs. Centuries of weather have worn away at the stone. The fumes from decades of gridlock have only worsened the damage. “Pollution is the biggest culprit,” says Philippe Villeneuve, architect in chief of historic monuments in France. “We need to replace the ruined stones. We need to replace the joints with traditional materials. This is going to be extensive."

It will be expensive too, and it’s not at all clear who is prepared to foot the bill. Under France’s strict secular laws, the government owns the cathedral, and the Catholic archdiocese of Paris uses it permanently for free. The priests for years believed the government should pay for repairs, since it owned the building. But under the terms of the government’s agreement, the archdiocese is responsible for Notre Dame’s upkeep, with the Ministry of Culture giving it about €2 million ($2.28 million) a year for that purpose. Staff say that money covers only basic repairs, far short of what is needed. Without a serious injection of cash, some believe, the building will not be safe for visitors in the future. Now the archdiocese is seeking help to save Notre Dame from yielding to the ravages of time.

The architects of Notre Dame knew all too well about lengthy building work; it took more than a century to build the cathedral, beginning in 1163. It was periodically vandalized over the turbulent centuries that followed. Rioting Huguenots damaged parts of the building they believed to be idolatrous in the mid–16th century. During the French Revolution, mobs of people carted off or smashed some of its paintings and statues. The hated royalty suffered the brunt of the carnage, with crowds destroying 28 statues of monarchs from the building’s Gallery of Kings. After that, Notre Dame languished in neglect.

Then in 1831 came Victor Hugo’s book The Hunchback of Notre Dame, whose hero was the disfigured bell ringer Quasimodo. In it, France’s beloved writer raised alarm about the building’s decay, describing “mutilations, amputations, dislocations of the joints.” “Beside each wrinkle on the face of this old queen of our cathedrals,” he wrote, “you will find a scar.”

But for Notre Dame, Hugo’s book sparked fresh problems. The best seller inspired a restoration in 1844, which used low-quality stone and even cement, since France at the time could not produce the quantities of high-grade material that the job required.

Nearly 200 years on, that 19th century work is crumbling (though the medieval construction is mostly in better shape). One blazing hot day in early July, a staff member unlocked an old door off the choir and led TIME up a stone spiral staircase and out onto the roof, high above the crowds. Here, the site seemed not spiritually uplifting but distressing. Chunks of limestone lay on the ground, having fallen from the upper part of the chevet, or the eastern end of the Gothic church. One small piece had a clean slice down one side, showing how recently it had fallen. Two sections of a wall were missing, propped up with wood. And the features of Notre Dame’s famous gargoyles looked as worn away as the face of Voldemort. “They are like ice cream in the sun, melting,” says Michel Picaud, head of the nonprofit Friends of Notre Dame de Paris, looking up at them.

What is more, some fear the problem is getting worse. “The damage can only accelerate,” says Andrew Tallon, an associate professor of art at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and an expert on Gothic architecture. Having carefully studied the damage, he says the restoration work is urgent. If the cathedral is left alone, its structural integrity could be at risk. “The flying buttresses, if they are not in place, the choir could come down,” he says. “The more you wait, the more you need to take down and replace.”

The church was not fully aware of the extent of the problem, say those at Notre Dame. Until a few years ago, the government effectively made the private areas off-limits. “There used to be about 200 old keys, so it was very, very difficult,” says André Finot, a spokesman for Notre Dame. Eventually, the government standardized the keys and allowed its tenants to climb the hidden stone staircases and access the upper levels. “We were shocked when we got up there,” Finot says.

The government hasn’t completely ignored the cathedral’s plight. In 2012, its bells were replaced to mark its 850th birthday. This year, authorities budgeted an extra €6 million ($6.84 million) to restore the spire. Water damage to the spire’s covering is threatening the wood-timber roof, which the medieval craftsmen built using 5,000 oak trees. The restoration will begin in the fall. But a Ministry of Culture official says Notre Dame should not expect regular help of this kind. To the government, the cathedral is just one of many old buildings in need of care. “France has thousands of monuments,” says the official, who was not authorized to speak to the media. Among them, Notre Dame is not necessarily the most pressing case. “It will not fall down,” she says.

Still, there is plenty of alarm in the church. Finally accepting that the government would not pay to restore the cathedral, the archdiocese launched Friends of Notre Dame in October to appeal for help. It hopes to raise €100 million ($114 million) in the next five to 10 years. “There is no part of the building untouched by the irreparable loss of sculptural and decorative elements, let alone the alarming deterioration of structural elements,” the organization says on its website. The cathedral, it says, “is in desperate need of attention.”

Picaud, a retired software executive who heads the fundraising effort, says he is planning a marketing drive in Paris in November. But he believes the bulk of the money will come not from the French but from Americans, millions of whom know Notre Dame and who are less hesitant than the French about giving money to the church. “People don’t want to give money because of laïcité,” says Finot, referring to the strict secularism that infuses French law. “So our message is, This is not about religion. It is about our heritage. Notre Dame is open to Muslims, and everyone.” Finot and Picaud expect to raise most of the funds through large donations and are discussing with government officials whether to acknowledge that generosity with a plaque at Notre Dame. In April, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service granted Friends of Notre Dame tax-free status, and the organization is planning to hold a five-city American road show in spring 2018 in an all-out push to raise the money. By the time serious renovation work begins–perhaps sometime before the end of this decade–the damage could be worse than it is today. But at Notre Dame, history is counted not in years but in centuries. “We hope it will last forever,” Picaud says. “But it cannot last forever without this renovation.”

Apparently the repairs called for in this story have started to happen, because the church is currently under renovation. Was something connected to that work responsible for the fire? It's not known yet.

In somewhat random order, here's some of what I've seen on Twitter:

Notre-Dame de Paris en proie aux flammes. Émotion de toute une nation. Pensée pour tous les catholiques et pour tous les Français. Comme tous nos compatriotes, je suis triste ce soir de voir brûler cette part de nous.

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) April 15, 2019

French Civil Security agency feels it necessary, at moment of national grief, to rebut US president's suggestion of dumping water via helicopter on burning Notre Dame https://t.co/5iML0mpS15

— Kevin Liptak (@Kevinliptakcnn) April 15, 2019

Hundreds of firemen of the Paris Fire Brigade are doing everything they can to bring the terrible #NotreDame fire under control. All means are being used, except for water-bombing aircrafts which, if used, could lead to the collapse of the entire structure of the cathedral.

— Sécurité Civile Fr (@SecCivileFrance) April 15, 2019

This is Donald's suggestion, referred to in the tweet above:

So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2019

This 360° video, filmed in 2015 by CNNVR, shows the inside of the Notre Dame cathedral. On Monday, the cathedral was engulfed in flames.

Built in the 13th century, Notre Dame is considered a feat of architecture as much as a religious symbol. https://t.co/z2YDR8blyk pic.twitter.com/ZYdyy0mUxI

— CNN (@CNN) April 15, 2019

We are all without words today. Some of the names of parts of a cathedral might help in some discussions, coverage, and analysis. pic.twitter.com/VBoGwnH3sM

— Peter Sokolowski (@PeterSokolowski) April 15, 2019

BBC reporting that the stained glass in the windows of Notre Dame has melted.

This is just horrible.

— Doug Mataconis (@dmataconis) April 15, 2019

And from Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

Notre Dame is one of the world’s great treasures, and we’re thinking of the people of France in your time of grief. It’s in our nature to mourn when we see history lost – but it’s also in our nature to rebuild for tomorrow, as strong as we can.

A post shared by Barack Obama (@barackobama) on Apr 15, 2019 at 1:34pm PDT

This Day In History, 1979: C-SPAN - Updated

C-SPAN started live gavel-to-gavel coverage of House of Representatives 40 years ago this week: pic.twitter.com/VB5zR2I7S6

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) March 17, 2019

For bonus points, do you know what C-SPAN stands for? 

It's the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network. Read more here.

Wednesday morning update. Reporters had some fun with their younger selves:

Happy 40th @cspan - pictured: a much younger me definitely not knowing what to do about a caller. pic.twitter.com/zYUALAjtUn

— Jackie Kucinich (@JFKucinich) March 20, 2019

Here you go... pic.twitter.com/M3azlL5hbI

— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) March 20, 2019

“The” Politico pic.twitter.com/yXdRTw2E8J

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 20, 2019

pic.twitter.com/KlnHEKvA2e

— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) March 20, 2019

pic.twitter.com/ZRuDyQohfe

— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) March 20, 2019

Wait, I like this game: Ask me anything about the federal employee pay scale. March 2011. #CSPAN40 pic.twitter.com/SsILpluP1k

— Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) March 20, 2019

Hey everybody!  This is 2004 and my hairline looks amazing! pic.twitter.com/0hJqWpFM7K

— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) March 20, 2019

Is CNN Turning Into The Jerry Springer Show? Or Fox News?

CNN asked women if they believe Judge Kavanaugh.

This was not the response they were expecting.

Wow. pic.twitter.com/RCgZBBzpDF

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) September 21, 2018

What this tweet doesn't say, and CNN doesn't make clear:

@PodSaveAmerica @jonlovett @jonfavs @TVietor08 I'm generally a fan of @AC360 and @CNN, but this is journalistic malpractice. Why is CNN painting these women as average Republican voters? https://t.co/l8hegWBS9W

— Shawn Brandt (@realshawnbrandt) September 21, 2018

Lourdes Castillo de la Peña, in the white sweater, is a Republican operative who worked on Ted Cruz's campaign and hosted a $1000/plate luncheon as a fundraiser.https://t.co/vFeBCzv371

— Shawn Brandt (@realshawnbrandt) September 21, 2018

Irina Villarino, sitting in the middle, is a Trump supporter pictured sitting immediately to his left in the two pictures in this article (which is about a roundtable he held about the tax cuts with small business owners in Florida):https://t.co/YRq0SQnkDv

— Shawn Brandt (@realshawnbrandt) September 21, 2018

Gina Sosa, second from the right, was a failed Republican candidate to win Iliana Ros-Lehtinen's seat open House seat in Florida's 27th (impressively, she got less than 2% of the primary vote!):https://t.co/QOhxxqaUcr

— Shawn Brandt (@realshawnbrandt) September 21, 2018

Are they trying to paint the average Republican as more extreme than they are? Are they trying to downplay how opposition to Kavanaugh is becoming mainstream even among moderates and many Republicans? Did their producers just not do their homework?

— Shawn Brandt (@realshawnbrandt) September 21, 2018

The Root Of The Problem Is The President's Amorality - Updated

An anonymous "senior official" in the Trump Administration has written an op-ed, which has just been published by the New York Times. As you can imagine it's causing quite a fuss. Here it is, in full:

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside The Trump Administration

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

If the identity of the person who wrote this surfaces, I'll update this post.

Wednesday night update: Rick Wilson's Twitter page describes him as follows: "GOP Media Guy, Dad, Husband, Pilot, Hunter, Writer. Best-selling author of Everything Trump Touches Dies." I've quoted him here before and tonight, in the midst of the massive frenzy about the op-ed above, I thought I'd share his message to "Anonymous." It's a series of 7 tweets:

2/ This tells me you at least have some vague survival instinct and know that you need a marker on the board for when the walls close in for the last time.

I want you to apply that survival instinct and look to the near future.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) September 6, 2018

4/ C) Most importantly, you're going to get caught. I know. You were careful. The burner phone. The off-campus only contact. The careful opsec. 

You're still going to be caught. It's ok. You should welcome it. It's your chance to do the *actual* right thing, finally.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) September 6, 2018

6/ Your only value now is in pulling down the entire system.

First movers? Book deal. Last? "Welcome to Arby's."

The value of the tenth asshole from the WH who says, "I saw all this crazy, terrible, illegal, dangerous stuff and still tried to help" is exactly zero.

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) September 6, 2018

7/ No one in the WH will help you. No one there *can* help you.

The edifice is crumbling, the King is mad, and no amount of tweeting, no rally, no Fox filibuster will save it.

Run before they catch you. Tell it all. Save yourself, and help save the country.

/end

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) September 6, 2018

Based on what I'm reading, the writer won't be able to stay anonymous for long. My guess? We know the name by Saturday. Stay tuned.

This Day In History, 1851: The First Edition Of The New York Times

Happy Birthday to The New York Times which first published 166 years ago today. https://t.co/yCoLLwEvju pic.twitter.com/QBFwca7BQG

— NYT Archives (@NYTArchives) September 18, 2017

This Day In History, 1951: The First Coast-to-Coast TV Broadcast

WATCH: Today in 1951, the first coast-to-coast TV broadcast:

Pres. Truman speaks at the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in San Francisco. pic.twitter.com/YbNg9w77tT

— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) September 4, 2017

Fun With Headlines

Headline writers at CNN.com are having some fun this morning:

President spent 77 minutes at his campaign rally to deliver fact-free retellings of recent historical events

"Total eclipse of the facts" (A quote from anchor Don Lemon)

On a more serious note, there's also this:

Former national intelligence director questions Trump's fitness for office
This isn't the first "Is he fit?" article I've seen and there are bound to be more.

Update:
Trump in Arizona shows just how unfit he is Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post

I Wonder Why Not...

Brian Stelter is CNN's media reporter. He sent this tweet out at 7.49 this morning:

Dozens of GOP lawmakers ducking interview requests -- will this continue today? https://t.co/nTaxqxP3TX pic.twitter.com/Vv7F8GQ12q

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 17, 2017

Ivanka, But Not Really

Wednesday afternoon update: some interesting information about Us magazine:

Please note: Us is now owned by American Media, Trump family mouthpiece via The National Enquirer. This is a state-approved take. pic.twitter.com/aVtH9BWAlp

— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) June 7, 2017

Original post:
Issue dated June 19, 2017


People magazine is sticking with its "No Trumps on the cover" policy, at least for right now, but Us magazine goes for it, putting Ivanka front and center on the cover of their new issue. Just like Jennifer Garner last week, however, Ivanka may not be thrilled. The article at usmagazine.com, (read it here) quotes a "source close to Ivanka," "another Ivanka insider" and an "Ivanka friend," as well as previous interviews with Harper's Bazaar, Gayle King and the New York Times, but clearly Us did not speak to Ivanka directly.

Our Bach'ette Rachel gets a topline tease about her "Secret Dating History," which I assume refers to reports that she dated Kevin Durant in college.

This Day In History, 1980: The Debut of CNN

On this day: June 1, 1980, 1st 24-hour news network goes live. Happy birthday @CNN! https://t.co/jdbwpkQIyN

— Carl Lavin (@FromCarl) June 1, 2017

Good Advice

With today's unnerving events in London, some things to keep in mind about media coverage and information in general:

Fake News

Is Jennifer Aniston pregnant? Almost certainly not, but that didn't stop The Star magazine from publishing this cover story:



Star magazine, of course, is a tabloid, and one of the least credible ones out there. The New Yorker it isn't. On the other hand, it is an actual magazine, published every week and sold at supermarkets around the country. People here in America pay good money to read this stuff.

My point? It's not just in politics that some of my fellow citizens are susceptible to fake news.

"My Conscience Is Clean"

From Dan Rather's Facebook page, dated September 16, and for the record, I agree:

Donald Trump’s disdain, mockery, and antagonism of the press, whose freedoms are enshrined in the Bill of Rights and whose presence has provided ballast to our democracy since its inception, raises very serious questions about his fitness for the presidency of the United States.

For a long while, these thoughts have been coursing through my veins with concern and disbelief, and yet my abiding loyalty to the notion of fair, accurate and unbiased journalism held me in check from saying it out loud – much as I suspect it has muzzled the true feelings of many of my colleagues. But we must remember that Donald Trump knows this and cynically plays the press corps’ deep desire for fairness to his undeserved benefit. The latest, barring the traveling press from covering an event and using them as ridicule in a speech, are but the most recent chapters in a novel full of outrageous acts. And this sentiment apparently extends to members of his own family as witnessed by his daughter Ivanka’s actions in an interview with Cosmo.

I am well aware that I will be met with bile and venom for saying this, called a communist, a liberal in bed with Hillary Clinton, a washed-up joke. To quote Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, “frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Let others attack my motives. My conscience is clean. This is not about partisan politics, about who is right on immigration or gun control. This is about the very machinery that has allowed our American experiment to persist and thrive, a machinery which is far more fragile than we would like to believe.

Trump’s relationship with the press is at the heart of so much that is troubling about his candidacy - the secrecy, the lack of transparency on something as normal as tax returns, the flaunting of the very rules by which we elect our leaders, the appeasement of hate groups. And his embrace of Roger Ailes and Breitbart, institutions who have polluted press freedoms, is a further dangerous sign of decay.

And yet when presented with this challenge, too much of the press has been cowed into inaction. This is a man who can be fact-checked into obscurity by any second grader with an Internet connection. And yet when he issues a mealy-mouth non-apology about President Obama’s obvious pedigree as an American, here we are with too many in the press not acknowledging his years of lies (check your Twitter feeds about how the New York Times initially covered this event). All of this of course sets the stage for Trump to lie again about somehow birtherism being Clinton’s fault.

I fear that this mindset will infect the debates. Trump is already setting the stage for that. If you are moderating and are not going to fact check him, you might as well just roll campaign speeches live - far too many of which have been shown on television without being subjected to journalistic context. If these debates will be debates in name only, another opportunity for Trump to flout fairness by spewing his venom and bullshine, I say cancel them.

Enough is enough. It is a reality that every reporter must come to grips with. Trump is not a normal candidate. This is not a normal election. He will set a precedent that other demagogues will study and follow. Fear, combined with the lure of ratings, views, clicks and profits, have hypnotized too much of the press into inaction and false equivalency for far too long. I am optimistic the trance is being broken. Fear not the Internet trolls. Fear instead the judgement of history.

The Secretary Of Energy

Sunday afternoon update: Moniz's predecessor as Secretary of Energy was Steven Chu, who has a Ph.D in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997. His predecessor was Samuel Bodman, who has a Doctorate of Science in Chemical Engineering from M.I.T. 

Original Post: 
The current Secretary of Energy is Dr. Ernest Moniz. He has a Doctorate in Theoretical Physics from Stanford University, as well as a few other credentials, as outlined at energy.gov:  

Prior to his appointment, Dr. Moniz was the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was a faculty member since 1973. At MIT, he headed the Department of Physics and the Bates Linear Accelerator Center. Most recently, Dr. Moniz served as the founding Director of the MIT Energy Initiative and as Director of the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment where he was a leader of multidisciplinary technology and policy studies on the future of nuclear power, coal, nuclear fuel cycles, natural gas and solar energy in a low-carbon world.

From 1997 until January 2001, Dr. Moniz served as Under Secretary of the Department of Energy. He was responsible for overseeing the Department’s science and energy programs, leading a comprehensive review of nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship, and serving as the Secretary’s special negotiator for the disposition of Russian nuclear materials. From 1995 to 1997, he served as Associate Director for Science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President.

In addition to his work at MIT, the White House and the Department of Energy, Dr. Moniz has served on a number of boards of directors and commissions involving science, energy and security. These include President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the Department of Defense Threat Reduction Advisory Committee, and the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future.

A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dr. Moniz is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Humboldt Foundation, and the American Physical Society.

Dr. Moniz received a Bachelor of Science degree summa cum laude in Physics from Boston College, a Doctorate in Theoretical Physics from Stanford University, and honorary degrees from the University of Athens, the University of Erlangen-Nurenberg, Michigan State University and Universidad Pontificia de Comillas.

There are many things about Sarah Palin that annoy me, including the fact that she doesn't know what she doesn't know. To be blunt, she's too stupid to know how stupid she is. Her extravagant, preening, clueless self-regard was on full display this morning during her appearance on CNN, when she announced that she wants to be the Secretary of Energy. (And insisted that we should all just speak "American.") The fact that Jake Tapper had her as a guest and acted as if she was actually qualified to comment on anything is a sad comment on the state of our media and leaves me shaking my head in sadness and despair. Hopefully we can chalk it up to the holiday week-end with all of the regular pundits were all on vacation. Otherwise, seriously Jake, what were you thinking?  

An All-Girl Press Conference

Do you recognize the following names: (list from the Washington Post)

1. Carrie Budoff Brown, Politico
2. Cheryl Bolen, Bloomberg
3. Julie Pace, Associated Press
4. Lesley Clark, McClatchy
5. Roberta Rampton, Reuters
6. Colleen M. Nelson, Wall Street Journal
7. Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post
8. April Ryan, American Urban Radio

These are the reporters, the *only* reporters, who were called on at President Obama's press conference this afternoon. They're all from print, radio or on-line media (read: not television) and more interestingly, they're all women. 

As I was watching, I figured it must have been planned, which was confirmed by a tweet from CBS reporter Mark Knoller: TV reporters were advised in advance that @PressSec wanted other reporters not regularly called on to get to question the Pres.

Women really should rule the world!

Media Literacy: Is This News?

Warning: rant ahead. I'm stewing about another incident of dumbed down/sexed up this-isn't-really-news news on a news show.

I don't usually watch the network evening news shows, but last night I happened to see a segment on ABC that struck me as strange. It had something to do with a criminal in Australia who initially confessed to a reporter while crying, then pointed a gun and drove away in the reporter's van. I didn't watch the whole segment, but even so I found myself thinking, really? This is important enough, here in America, to rate a mention on a network's flagship evening news show? After that thought, I didn't think anything more about it until I saw the same segment on the local news this morning, then again, the very same segment on Good Morning America. You may have heard something about a member of AC/DC getting arrested for attempted murder, but this has nothing to do with that. The man with a gun in a car wasn't famous.

So why is this Australian criminal getting so much coverage here in America? Because there's video. CNN has the story too; you can see it here.

Where Were You?

Twenty years ago, on a nice Friday night in June, I went on a memorable first date with a man I'll call Brian. (Not his real name.) We had dinner at my favorite restaurant in Schaumburg, then, since it was such a nice evening, we decided to drive into downtown Chicago and go up to the observation deck at the top of the Hancock Building. Brian and I were enjoying the view when we noticed that we were the only people up there who were actually enjoying the view. Everyone else was gathered around the small gift shop, intently watching something on the attendant's tiny television set.

Curious, we walked over to see what was happening. What could possibly be so mesmerizing? (In those more innocent days, we didn't automatically assume that something terrible had happened. We also couldn't just check our phones. Smart phones and Twitter hadn't been invented yet.) Can you guess? It was the O.J. Simpson white Bronco chase, and today, June 17, is the 20th anniversary of that weird event in American pop culture.

There's been quite a bit of retrospective "where are they now?" coverage of the Simpson anniversary, and the trial itself has been credited with, or blamed for, giving birth to everything from reality television to the Kardashians. (Robert Kardashian, father of Kim, Kourtney, Khloé and Rob, and ex-husband of Kris, was one of O.J.'s best friends and served as a member of the "Dream" defense team. It was from his house that O.J. disappeared on the day of the Bronco chase.) If the Kardashian name hadn't become well known during the trial, would the E network have been willing to take a chance on a reality show about the family? No way to know, and anyway, I digress.

People who are old enough say that they'll "always remember where they were" when they first heard of JFK's assassination, the Challenger explosion and the events of 9/11. The white Bronco chase is sometimes included in that category, which tells you how big of a deal, or at least how surreal, it was at the time. The television networks all cut away from regular programming to show it live, presumably not wanting to miss the excitement if O.J. blew his brains out, which he apparently was threatening to do. Eventually he came home and surrendered to police, and the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Twenty years later the world is different in all kinds of ways. Robert Kardashian's children rule the reality TV universe. We have a black family in the White House, not something that would have been predictable given the polarizing racial divisions the O.J. case exposed, and his attorneys exploited. And of course, O.J. is rotting in jail, although for a separate crime. A fitting outcome to a very strange story.

Things I Don't Care About

Nicole "Snooki" Polizza is pregnant again.

On the other hand, I do think it's pretty funny that people.com currently has this news at the top of its site, complete with a bright red "Breaking News" banner. Really.

From One Disgraced Pol To Another

Anthony Weiner has some "been there, done that" advice for New York Representative Michael Grimm, who may not actually be disgraced but was forced to grovel and apologize one day after his tone-deaf and defiant "I expect respect" initial statement. Who's Michael Grimm? He's the Congressman who threatened to throw a reporter over a balcony at the United States Capitol after the State of the Union speech Tuesday night. Details (and video) here.

And of course, it's the "and video" that's really gotten him in trouble. If the cameras hadn't been rolling, there might have been some "he said, he said" coverage of the incident but it would have been a local New York story. It's the 10 gazillion replays of the "yes, you did threaten a reporter" video that have put Grimm in the company of Anthony Weiner and all the other politicians who've said or done something stupid on camera.

Thursday afternoon update:  An intriguing wrinkle in the story. It turns out that Michael Scotto, the reporter Grimm threatened, is a nephew of Anthony Scotto, who's a former boss in the Gambino crime family, or to put it another way, a mafioso. This isn't The Sopranos, so Grimm probably won't find himself wearing cement shoes at the bottom of the Hudson River, but this little tidbit of new information is keeping the story alive through another news cycle and that's not good for Representative Grimm.

Last Time Around

Nothing has changed on the #GreatKateWait, and I'm passing the time thinking about, or more specifically, trying to remember, how I heard the news that Prince William had been born, 31 years ago, which is also an exercise in "how things have changed" in terms of how we get information and news. Truth is, I don't remember exactly how I heard. In 1982, I lived in an apartment and went to work in an office every day. The prince was born at about 9.00 the night of Monday, June 21, which is early afternoon in Portland, Oregon where I lived. I don't remember if I had a computer on my desk in those days, but if I did, it would have been just a "dumb terminal" connected to a mainframe. There was no internet, no websites, no live-streaming Lindo Wing baby cam. Smart phones weren't around yet either so I couldn't check my Twitter feed every 15 minutes, which is pretty much what I'm doing now.

So how did we get information back in the olden days? I may have heard the news on the radio as I drove home from work, or on the evening news on television. It's even possible I didn't find out until the next morning, watching the Today show or Good Morning, America as I got ready for work. (How prehistoric does that sound? These days I fully expect to learn about this royal baby, pretty much instantaneously, on Twitter.) There was also a funny little document known as the morning newspaper, although even in those days I didn't subscribe to one. I do remember that a few days later I left work at lunchtime and drove to a grocery store to buy the new issue of People magazine, pictured above. It'll all be different when Princess Charlotte arrives and if you'll excuse me, I have to go check my Twitter feed. Stay tuned...