Very little, as it turns out.
The smart and eloquent Stewart Wolpin has a good look on the Huffington Post about privacy, timely given that today is Data Privacy Day. (And yes, it's real.) As he notes, though, "Shouldn't every day and every month be dedicated to data privacy?” He has some very good, realistic analysis about why Internet privacy is a myth. He has one point I don't completely agree with, though I understand his larger point: that if you open the door to your data (which most people do in so many ways), you can't complain. I do think if you open your door, you still can complain if some steals from you, you just shouldn’t be remotely surprised that it happened, or think your actions didn’t make it easier. You can read the whole article, "Why Privacy is a 21st Century Myth," by clicking here.
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I meant to post that piece about Arlo Guthrie earlier in the day, but...well, I was kicked out of my place for four hours. Today was Visit #2 by the pest control fellow. (Yes, my issue is still ongoing, though it's headed in the right direction.) There will be three visits overall, the next one in about 20 days.
The little critters are still around -- they tend to show in the morning and generally on the bedroom walls-- but it's been clear that the numbers are dropping each day. When I spoke with Mr. Pest Control, he said that the numbers still showing up are normal and to be expected, adding that when he did his next two sprayings, all should be well and they should be gone. 'Tis my fondest hope that he's correct. At the moment, all my drawers and shelves are emptied and put in boxes mostly in the living room, where they fight for space with my clothes in plastic bags. So, I'm largely living out of a few things I put aside. And trying to remember which marked-boxes hold items I might need. When not at my computer desk, I spend most of my time in the only open chair that's well-positioned for watching the TV. (I love it when people ask, "Did you see the game on Sunday when...?" I laugh and say, "Are you kidding? All I could do is sit in my chair and watch games all day." Happily there was a Law & Order marathon on Saturday and Monday on the Sundance Channel. But things do seem to be moving in the right direction. So...hopefully...the end is in sight. Yesterday we had a song from Pete Seeger, and I mentioned that if you looked closely you could see Arlo Guthrie on guitar. Well, from that same concert -- at the Wolftrap Music Festival -- you don't have to look nearly as closely. Here's Arlo Guthrie on piano, singing one of his biggest hits, and for all the people who think that he wrote the song, he sets the record straight (as he always did) with the story of how Steve Goodman brought him, "The City of New Orleans." I far prefer Steve Goodman's rendition of the song over anyone's. But not only was Guthrie's the version that put Steve Goodman on the map (which he was always publicly grateful for), but this particular rendition -- with the audience singing loudly and joyfully along -- and with Pete Seeger and his grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger playing and singing along is way up there. We watch the news so's you don't have to. MSNBC announced a lineup change for its daytime broadcasting. Two of the new shows are to be hosted by Joy Reid and Ronan Farrow, the son of Mia Farrow and (perhaps) Woody Allen. In announcing the change, MSNBC president Phil Griffin said, “Ronan and Joy are two of the most thoughtful and impressive journalists out there and I’m excited for what they will bring to the afternoon.” Ronan Farrow is an extremely bright and talented guy. He may well host an absolutely wonderful show. He's an accomplished lawyer and political activist. He is not a journalist -- and most especially not an "impressive journalist." As far as I know, he's just written a bunch of op-ed commentaries for newspapers. But that doesn't make him a journalist, it makes him an expert. This is a minor point, but there's a reason I mention it. It's one thing for someone to refer to him as "an impressive journalist." It's another for the president of a news organization to do so. I can accept others having some wiggle-room in their definitions. I expect the president of a major news organization to be demanding with high standards of what makes journalism. Call Ronan Farrow a thoughtful and impressive political analyst. Say he will soon be one of the most impressive journalists on television. But please, if you're the head of MSNBC News, don't say someone who has zero experience as a journalist is a journalist, let alone one of the most "impressive journalists out there." It puts your standards in deep question. Frank Rich had a fascinating article in New York magazine in which he makes the case that Fox News is in decline, to the point of being in trouble. His thesis is that the audience for Fox is a quickly aging, white, limited-focus audience in a changing world. There is a lot of merit in his perspective, even while acknowledging how huge that audience is today. However, there's one particular passage I had more trouble with. It's when he writes, "The only people who seem not to know or accept Fox’s decline, besides its own audience, are liberals, including Barack Obama, whose White House mounted a short-lived, pointless freeze-out of Fox News in 2009, and who convinced himself that the network has shaved five points off his approval rating." While the "freeze-out" may have been pointless -- or not, that's subjective -- it happened in 2009, five years ago, when the landscape was very different from the "dying" audience Frank Rich is describing today. And also, though Fox New may be "dying" (or not), that's something for the future, not today when, as Rich acknowledges, it still has the most mass audience of all news channels. So, to suggest that such a powerhouse today would have no impact on shaping approval ratings over five years of attacks, seems thoughtless. I think the world of Frank Rich. I love his writing, his thinking, his perspective and talent. But he's either way off base here or being a bit disingenuous. Andrea Mitchel is one of the most actually thoughtful and impressive journalists around today. So, it came as a bit of a shock when she interrupted her interview with Rep. Jane Harmon for the big "breaking" story that Justin Bieber had been arrested. To her credit, she publicly addressed the flack and clearly wasn't happy about it, saying, ""It was obviously awkward and unplanned. All I can say is, so be it. It's the luck of the draw." She noted correctly, "I have more foreign policy coverage five days a week on my program than any other program on television, so you can imagine that this was unusual."
It was unusual, and unfortunate. If MSNBC wanted to cover the "story," at least don't interrupt the actual news -- especially when it's from the accomplished Andrea Mitchell -- and present it instead at another time when people who might care would be watching. More unfortunate though was the comment CNN president Jeff Zucker, who said he was "incredibly comfortable" with how his network dealt with Biebernews. Given that it was Jeff Zucker though whose heart for real news coverage is probably not terribly high, I suppose his comfort level is to be expected. Pete Seeger died today at the age of 94. I'm not going to go into a long biography of the legendary folksingers accomplishments. There will be plenty of those in the coming days. I'll just say that I happily got the chance to see him in concert at UCLA, performing with Arlo Guthrie, and it was a total joy. What I most remember is that not only did he insist on getting the audience singing on almost every song, but that you got the sense something would be missing if you weren't singing along. There are a handful of people I'm glad to say I saw perform live, and Pete Seeger is on that list. I'll also say if you want to celebrate Pete Seeger, or learn more about him, watch the documentary Wasn't That a Time, an utterly joyful, life-affirming film about a reunion of The Weavers in the 1980s. Or track down the American Masters production that PBS did a few years ago. Other than that, I'll just post a video of Pete Seeger singing one of his renowned songs. That explains most of it anyway. So, here he is singing with his grandson, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger. (And if you look closely, on the left with long hair and playing guitar, that's Arlo Guthrie.) And getting the audience to sing along. This is a wonderfully hidden Puzzler. Once you know the song, it's a head-slapper, "How could I have missed that??," but on first listen it's very tough. The composer is gettable, I think. Though I didn't...
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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