The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.
Al Franken, liberal host
: Well, I’m hurt I wasn’t invited.
Eric Alterman reports that he and “about a dozen and a half journalists, writers and the odd historian, poet and cartoonist” were invited to Al Franken’s livingroom to talk with John Kerry. He also namedrops that Rick Hertzberg and Art Spiegelman were there. Wouldn’t you love to see the rest of that guest list? La creme de la Upper West Side.
Eric says he doesn’t endorse candidates but this sure smells like an endorsement:
Let
Jeff, I wonder if Kerry used any of the same language at Franken’s house that he used in his new Rolling Stone magazine interview.
I’m not sure if the get-together with Al, Eric and the rest came before or after the RS interview, but perhaps Kerry is planning to roll out the as-of-yet-never-tried Andrew Dice Clay strategy towards winning the Democratic presidential nomination…
John Dean?
He was the guy who ratted out Nixon. Is there something we don’t know about that you’re hinting at but ain’t telling us?
Why not put James Dean’s words in Kerry’s mouth?
“There’s a cancer on the presidency”
— John Kerry
Better yet, Jimmy Dean, the restaurant/sausage guy.
Okay, so the Dems want to nominate a candidate who is reportedly, in private, a dynamic, thougtful, and even witty guy, full of vision and vigor– yet who on the stump gives the impression of a wooden, condescending robot who changes his core convictions hourly.
Oh, and he’s a Vietnam Vet, too. All Kerry has to do is claim to have invented the Internet and he’s their perfect candidate.
Ah, Jeff, if you roasted your own coffee you wouldn’t care about Starbucks ever again!
Jeff, have you noticed that Starbucks will sell you coffee, for those times when the jones is on you but the Starbucks isn’t open?
What Mike G. said. I never understood why anyone thought Kerry would take off; he’s comes across as a big old Vulcan with a toothache.
Namedropping, indeed! I’m glad you never do that.
Phew… This reads like a meeting of the Living Dead. I mean it. A group of people who haven’t changed their minds about one thing in twenty-five years. What’s the fancy word? Reification?
Reification, also called hypostatization, is the logical fallacy of regarding an abstract concept, such as “society” or “technology” as if it were a concrete thing.
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Reification is not regarded as a fallacy by those who take up the viewpoint of epistemological idealism.
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Epistemological idealism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via Google. (all of the definitions were, by the way, my linker doesnt work so I cut and paste)
The philosophical position, a subcategory of subjectivism, that what you know about an object exists only in your mind. Opposed to epistemological realism.
Butt out Roger, we epistemological idealists here will save the world, at least from bad coffee.
No epistemological realists allowed here.
As reported by Jeff Jarvis,
“There is a canker on the presidency”
— John Kerry
My thought was similar to Roger, to wit: Alterman likes him? Fageddaboudit.