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Wednesday, Dec 31, 2003

pressing information

"Press think has terms of art, and one of them is "master narrative," borrowed from literary critics. I use it to describe a part of the press that too easily eludes attention: the big story, sometimes the back story, often a fragment of a narrative, that generates all the other stories, which are smaller pieces."

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man united

"Hallin's device helps us grasp the tension between someone like Krugman and others in the press. For he actually places the current Administration in the sphere of deviance. Or rather, he argues that Bush and company have tried to take policies from beyond the pale straight into "consensus" without being forced through the space of legitmate controversy. This, he thinks, cannot be done without the acquiescence of journalists who patrol these boundaries."

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Monday, Dec 29, 2003

its his fault/my teeth hurt

man, that was a funny rant. lost down the memory, whole. just between me and the key lime pie. i say/blame steve.

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within oakeshott

"However, it didn't happen in this universe. And there was no Plan B."

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mine games

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO WIN IRAQI HEARTS AND MINDS TODAY?"

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blog wars

antiwar.com has a blog now.

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potusluck dinner

the blogging of the president: 2004

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wheres the beef?

i guess we can rest assured that there will be no shortage of bullshit coming out of the white house because of this.

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red sighs at night

just your ordinary everyday rightwingnut.

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Saturday, Dec 27, 2003

oll klear

"In these articles Read reports on further
research undertaken after the 1941 article cited by the Funks (and then posted by Fromkin), showing that though the term first gained wide acceptance in the 1840 presidential election when it was taken over as an abbreviation for "Old Kinderhook", it actually originated in Boston as part of a craze
for comical abbreviations in 1838-39. This craze started in the summer of 1838, and Read documents it with dozens upon dozens of citations from the Boston press. The craze started with acronyms such as "O.F.M" for "Our First
Men" (a very popular phrase at the time), "N.G." for "No Go", "S.P." for "Small Potatoes", "G.T." for "Gone to Texas", and many more. The first printed use of "o.k." found by Read is in the Boston Morning Post of March 23, 1839, in which it is used in a humorous context and explicitly glossed as "all correct". This was part of a turn the acronym craze had taken toward using comical misspellings as the basis for the initials, including "K.G."for "no go" ("Know Go") and "K.Y." for "no use" ("Know Yuse"). This was undoubtedly done to increase the "in-group" status of the acronyms as they gained wider use, somewhat similar to the Cockney rhyming slang of today."

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