There’s an old newspaper adage that “If it bleeds, it leads” that helps explain the current obsession with knife crime. But there’s another old truth that it would be useful to remember: news, almost by definition, is defined by what is rare and unusual, not what is common. The more coverage an event or pattern
Good grief. From the Guardian’s theatre blog: Shortly before the inauguration of Barack Obama, I received a press release from the RSC with the subject line: “Obama: Is he an Othello for our times?” To the best of my knowledge, the 44th president of the United States has never once murdered his wife in a
That’s not, of course, a contradiction in terms. (Which may be why I’m less spooked than some by the idea of “Progressive conservatism”) Another way of putting this is, as Harvard’s Edward Glaeser did in the NYT, “small-government egalitarianism”. Key point: Libertarian progressivism distrusts big increases in government spending because that spending is likely to
Anne Kornblut, normally a reliable reporter, was given a turkey by her editors yesterday. Here’s how she begins her WaPo story on Caroline Kennedy’s (mercifully) brief Senate bid: With her abrupt exit this week from consideration for the Senate, Caroline Kennedy added her name to a growing list: women who have sought the nation’s highest
How did I miss this tragic news? The man who invented the donor [sic!] kebab has died. Mahmut Aygun, was suffering from cancer and died in Berlin at the age of 87. Known as the “kebab king” he was born in Turkey and moved to Germany at the age of 16 to open a snack
Markets all-around: Across Asia, the going rate for a kidney is usually agreed in the backstreet surgery of some unscrupulous doctor but in Singapore the government will soon be setting the price for this much in-demand organ. A controversial amendment to legalize the payment of compensation to organ donors was put before the Singapore parliament
Not a bad start for the new President: “For a long time now there has been too much secrecy in this city,” Obama said. “The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed. That era is now over. Starting
Sure it’s only January, but there’s already an obvious contender for the prized title of Headline of the Year: Former French President Chirac hospitalised after mauling by his clinically depressed poodle.
Apparently the new issue of Prospect carries a piece by Philip Blond of Demos in which He calls on Cameron to lead a massive redistribution of power and wealth, to restore Britain’s “lost” civil society and local pride, to break up monopolies, protect small businesses and promote microfinance and self-improvement for the poor. If this
Seriously. You cannot escape Mr Obama. The splash in this week’s edition of The Southern Reporter, out today, is headlined “Hope and fear as Parker and Moore welcome Obama”. That’s David Parker, leader of Scottish Borders Council and Michael Moore MP. For good measure, the new president claims the main picture on the front page
Disappointing to see that the government has retreated from its plans to exempt the disclosure of MPs expenses from being ocvered by the Freedom of Information Act. Yes, yes, everyone is supposed to hail this as a victory for transparency and, perhaps, as Iain Dale says, for online activism and lobbying too. I fear we
Mark McKinnon, Bush’s advertising man who left the McCain campaign because he didn’t want to work against Obama, reports from the plane taking the Bushes back to Texas yesterday: And while I’m reluctant to quote the president directly from private conversations, I think I can fairly report that he feels a genuine warmth for President
George W Bush has earned praise for the manner in which he has left office: dignified and quiet. Fair enough. And at least unlike his predecessor he didn’t cry tears of self-pity. Nor, by and large, did Bush disgrace the Presidency by handing out a bundle of pardons to friends and cronies. With one exception
I also enjoyed the Alice Miles article Peter links to at the mother-blog, not least because I’ve never bought the notion that Gordon Brown was anything other than a long-term liability to this government. This, however, made me laugh: But does Labour have a Barack Obama of its own? The most hotly tipped contender is
One of the advantages of the satellite TV revolution is being able to compare the way different countries view historic events. Russia Today, the Kremlin’s English-language outreach channel, for instance, was extremely revealing, if sometimes unintentionally, during the Russo-Georgian mini-war last summer. Yesterday it didn’t bother with live coverage of Barack Obama’s inauguration, featuring instead
In many respects this was a deeply traditional inauguration speech. It didn’t reach the heights of Obama’s “Jeremiah Wright” speech in Philadelphia, but it didn’t need to and was, in any case, an address given to a very different kind of occasion. The Wright speech was interesting, not merely because of how Obama addressed the
I had thought that the Scottish Tories suggestion that they would invite Barack Obama to come to Scotland to collect his “Obama tartan” represented the most shameless attempt to hop aboard the Change We Can Believe In Express. But not so! Segolene Royal claims the prize: “Yes, I inspired Barack Obama and his team copied
Whatever else you might want to say about Peter Wehner’s reasons for why Americans should thank George W Bush (and there’s lots you could say!) you can’t accuse him of setting the bar at an intimidatingly high level: “Restoring dignity to the Oval Office, acting with civility and grace, loving his country, and serving her
At dinner the other night I was asked, “Do you think he will live?” The he in question, of course, being Barack Hussein Obama. Nor was this the first time I’d been asked this. I suspect that such fears are more widely held than you might care to think. And that left me thinking that
Remember Mark Penn? Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist provided much entertainment during the primary campaign. It’s especially worth reminding you of the most famous memo he sent Hillary in which he promised that Barack Obama was, well, toast: His roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a