Gonna miss our weekly sips of True Blood. But this exceptional HBO episodic love-story, vampires-live, Louisiana lunacy returns next summer. Alan Ball, the creator of another HBO great, Six Feet Under, based this TV series on the Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris.

The show intro is as good as TV gets; “True Blood- Opening Credits” (music: “Bad Things” by Jace Everett):

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Sarah Vowell’s on The Daily Show this Tuesday night: . The day before Michelle Obama and Robert De Niro and after Tim Robbins. She keeps good company.

The Wordy Shipmates, her new book/audiobook, “revisits America’s Puritan roots:”

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Hearing Voices from NPR®:
031 The Stamberg Files— Essays, Audio-tours, and Interviews
Host— Susan Stamberg of NPR
Airdates— 10/1/2008 - 10/8/2008

The Stamberg Files (53:00 mp3):

Susan pulls some pieces she’s most proud of from the NPR audio archives:

She knits her way though history, takes us on a personal tour of DC, and tries to interest her colleagues in resurrecting her infamous relish recipe.

She talks with economist Milton Friedman, actor Judi Dench, writer Nora Ephron, and pianist Leon Fleisher.

In pursuit of patriotism, Ms. Stamberg de-France-ifies popular culture, then ends in a Parisian park, chatting with a world-class conversationalist. Photo © 2006 NPR by Antony Nagelmann.

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Wordle “is a toy for generating ‘Beautiful Word Clouds’ from text you provide.” For instance, to the right is The Constitution of the United States as a wordle (detail; click to enlarge):

The Java applet was writ by Jonathan Feinberg of IBM Research.

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“Mexico’s Red Days” by Charles Bowden in GQ on the escalating Juárez, Mexico murders:

The killings have the cold feeling of butchery in a slaughterhouse, and they are everywhere: done in broad daylight, on streets, in markets, at homes, and even in Wal-Mart parking lots. Women, children, guilty, innocent—no one is safe.

These are red, endless days.

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This from WBAI-NYC and RadioArt…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A James Joyce Celebration
Radio Bloomsday
June 16 on WBAI 99.5 FM and wbai.org, 7 PM - 2 AM
Starring Alec Baldwin, Anne Meara, Kate Valk, Bob Dishy, Alvin Epstein and Caraid O’Brien as Molly Bloom

NEW YORK, NY (June 11, 2008) - Radio Bloomsday is an intimate radio program featuring readings of James Joyce’s Ulysses plus selections from Joyce’s entire canon, performed by leading actors. Bloomsday is celebrated every year on June 16, the day Ulysses takes place.

“Radio Bloomsday will make the works of Joyce accessible to a 21st century audience — the newly initiated and devoted stalwarts alike,” explains host/producer Larry Josephson. “This year’s show begins with a survey of all of Joyce’s works, followed by a spotlight on the holy trinity of characters in Ulysses: Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and his wife, Molly.” Alec Baldwin plays The Citizen, Alvin Epstein (the original Lucky in “Waiting for Godot”) reads a tribute to Samuel Beckett, Joyce’s former secretary. Anne Meara will perform the role of Gertie MacDowell. Kate Valk reads Joyce’s poetry, and Amy Stiller will do a tribute to Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh. Caraid O’Brien rounds out the evening with a marathon performance of Molly Bloom’s famous monologue, unabridged and unexpurgated. Plus, contemporary reviews of Ulysses, letters from Joyce and the opinions of his peers will be read throughout the evening… Radio Bloomsday will be broadcast live on WBAI 99.5 FM and wbai.org, Monday, June 16, from 7 PM until the wee hours of the morning. (press release)

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The new book by Bush’s ex-spokseman, Scott McClellen (What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception) has the press blaming the Bush admin and blaming the author, but nary a news item about where the real blame lies in misleading America on the facts of Iraq: “”And through it all, the media would serve as complicit enablers… The national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.”

Scottie’s book has little new about how the White House sold the War or outed CIA-op Ms. Plame. What is new is his opinion that the people he saw daily on the other side of podium, i.e. the DC press corps, weren’t doing their jobs: “The media would neglect their watchdog role, focusing less on truth and accuracy and more on whether the campaign was succeeding”

The media have rose as one to ignore the the accusations in their typical hear-no-evil fashion; as in this from the LA Times, D.C. journalists to Scott McClellan: Huh?.

There are a few exceptions:

Editor & Publisher, Media, Who Got War Wrong, Take Exception to Scott McClellan’s Charges— “Most, on Wednesday, still defended their coverage. But few have ever really come to terms with the magnitude of their failure.”

CJR, Pre-Iraq War Coverage: “Pretty Good Job” or “Embarrassing?” and Yellin: News Execs Pushed For Positive Bush Stories— “When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.”

Salon, Scott McClellan on the “liberal media”— “The New York Times and The Washington Post both trumpet the fact that McClellan made statements harshly critical of Bush. But they completely ignore McClellan’s far more significant indictment of their ‘deferential,’ Bush-enabling conduct. Isn’t it rather self-evidently newsworthy that Bush’s own press secretary blamed the American media for allowing Bush to get away with all sorts of falsehoods?”

The Salon article refers to an excellent earlier press self-eval by Howard Kurtz:

WA Post (2004), The Post on WMDs An Inside Story: Prewar Articles Questioning Threat Often Didn’t Make Front Page— “‘The paper was not front-paging stuff,’ said Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks. ‘Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we’re going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?’”

And congrats to Jake Tapper for extensive press-related quotes from the book:

ABC News, McClellan: Media During Run-Up to Iraq Were “Complicit Enablers”—

“And through it all, the media would serve as complicit enablers. Their primary focus would be on covering the campaign to sell the war, rather than aggressively questioning the rationale for war or pursuing the truth behind it… the media would neglect their watchdog role, focusing less on truth and accuracy and more on whether the campaign was succeeding. Was the president winning or losing the argument? How were Democrats responding? What were the electoral implications? What did the polls say? And the truth–about the actual nature of the threat posed by Saddam, the right way to confront it, and the possible risks of military conflict–would get largely left behind…”

“If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should have never come as such a surprise. The public should have been made much more aware, before the fact, of the uncertainties, doubts, and caveats that underlay the intelligence about the regime of Saddam hussein. The administration did little to convey those nuances to the people, the press should have picked up the slack but largely failed to do so because their focus was elsewhere–on covering the march to war, instead of the necessity of war.

In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”

“The network that can find a way to shift from excessively covering controversy, the conventional horse race and image-driven coverage to give a greater emphasis to who is right and who is wrong, who is telling the truth and who is not, and the larger truths about our society and our world might achieve some amazing results in our fast-changing media environment.”

The press is likely comforatable continuing to pretend it wasn’t the principle percussionist beating the 2003 war-drum. The public, however, may not be: Make Mainstream Media Answer for Spreading Propaganda.

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Writer Rebecca Flowers has produced some stellar radio for HV. Her first novel is now out has her frist novel out on Nice to Come Home To.

“A lovely, funny story about the saving graces of surrogate families and unexpected love. The narrator, Pru, has such a self-effacing, irreverent sense of humor that I couldn’t help but root for her all the way.”
—Lolly Winston, New York Times bestselling author of Good Grief and Happiness Sold Separately

“So fresh and funny and warm, it echoed in my head long after I had closed the book . . . Beautifully written, with wit and heart to spare . . . She’s Jane Austen gone mod, and I can’t recommend this hopeful and endearing tale strongly enough.”
—Joshilyn Jackson, author of Gods in Alabama

“Rebecca Flowers is a genius of the small and lucent, the details that make a character live and breathe: revelatory moments, quirky and dead-on metaphors, searingly funny observations. ou will know Pru Whistler the way you know real people and you’ll miss her the second you finish the book.”
—Marisa De Los Santos, author of Love Walked In

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