Via Digby, a wonderful blast from the past from the late great Lars-Erik Nelson:

Daily News (New York)

September 22, 1995, Friday

POLS WHO TALK NICE AND ACT NAUGHTY

BYLINE: BY LARS-ERIK NELSON

Washington Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) came to the Senate floor with a look of sad concern on his face. He was deeply troubled, he said, at the vulgar, morally repugnant content of the new TV season. "We are lowering the standards of what is acceptable in our society and we are sending a message to our children," he said. He denounced an "acceptance of rude language, foul imagery and gross behavior in the entertainment mainstream."

. . . Funny thing: The previous morning, Lieberman had been a guest, as is his regular custom, on the Don Imus radio show on WFAN, a program that seems to get the bulk of its yuks from penis references.

. . . Lieberman worries, on the Senate floor, that the increasing vulgarity of network TV "is lowering the standards of what we accept on television, particularly in what used to be family programing hours."

But he's talking out of both sides of his mouth. This week's moments of supposed humor on Imus, broadcast at an hour when children are rising for school, included a reference to Attorney General Janet Reno in crotchless pantyhose, an interview with Screw Magazine's Al Goldstein and a drunken woman saying "s---" over the air. Teehee.

I miss Lars Erik Nelson.

The plot thickens:

We have also been advised that there may be RNC e-mail traffic relating to Republican Party concerns about the United States Attorney in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, prior to his announcing, on the eve of the hotly contested 2006 gubernatorial election, that he was indicting an official in the incumbent Democratic governor's administration.

TPM is killing on this story. Can a blog get a Pulitzer?

You know what bugs me about Al Sharpton in this whole Imus mess? Why doesn't he fight against rapper lyrics? Oh wait:

Aired March 9, 2005 - 07:30 ET

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome back, everybody. It's just about half past the hour on this AMERICAN MORNING. In just a few minutes, a new battle plan in the rap wars. The Reverend Al Sharpton is our guest. He's got a new hard-line proposal to make artists quit using violence to sell records. Is it going to work? That's ahead.

O'BRIEN: Well, he is known as a straight shooter. Now, the Reverend Al Sharpton is taking direct aim at rap music, the FCC and also major advertisers. In just a moment, we're going to talk with the former presidential candidate about his new campaign, one that he hopes will prevent artists from cashing in on a culture of violence.

Ooops, never mind.

Brian Williams is a uniter, bringing Dean Barnett of Hugh Hewitt's blog, Andrew Sullivan, Atrios and now me together. Here is why:

"You're going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe. All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I'm up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn't left the efficiency apartment in two years" -- Brian Williams, anchor of the "NBC Nightly News," speaking before New York University journalism students on the challenges traditional journalism faces from online media.

He opened the credentials door and Barnett walked right through:

How unbelievably rich is that? . . .[T]his Catholic University drop-out still thinks the blogosphere consists of shut-in half-wits. Perhaps Williams would enjoy matching résumés with Hugh to prove his point. I especially enjoy the risible self-regard of a guy who refers to his tireless development of “credentials to cover my field of work” when said “field of work” primarily consists of reading words off a teleprompter.

For the record, I graduated from college AND law school. Also did a bit in the Media. No teleprompter reading I'll grant you. Williams has me there.

This is pretty darn shocking:

According to Mr. Kelner [RNC counsel] . . . as a result of unspecified legal inquiries [Fitz probably], a "hold" was placed on this e-mail destruction policy for the accounts of White House officials in August 2004. Mr. Kelner was uncertain whether the hold was consistently maintained from August 2004 to the present, but he asserted that for this period, the RNC does have alarge volume of White House e-mails. According to Mr. Kelner, the hold would not have prevented individual White House officials from deleting their e-mail from the RNC server after August 2004.

What kind of "hold" is that? I wonder if Fitz knew about this.

Mr. Kelner's briefing raised particular concems about Karl Rove, who according to press reports used his RNC account for 95% of his communications. According to Mr. Kelner, although the hold started in August 2004, the RNC does not have any e-mails prior to 2005 for Mr. Rove. Mr. Kelner did not give any explanation for the e-mails missing from Mr. Rove's account, but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.

Holy crap! Um, Fitz, you got any questions about this?

I am seeing this announced on TV. Reporting by AP. More in a moment.

AP:

CBS announced Thursday that it has fired Don Imus from his radio program, following a week of uproar over the radio host's racist comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team. "There has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society," CBS President and Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves said in announcing the decision. "That consideration has weighed most heavily on our minds as we made our decision."

Quick thoughts. This was a business decision for CBS and NBC's prior move put CBS on the spot. Let's face it, while this last outrage from Imus was especially appalling, his track record was plenty for deciding to get rid of him.

Bumped. -BTD See also barb

Reuters via CNN.com reported last night that the e-mails Congress seeks that were sent on the GOP system to avoid the government e-mail system, and, therefore, accountability, were deleted or otherwise lost.

Some White House staff wrote e-mail messages about official business on Republican Party accounts, and some may have been wrongly deleted, the administration said Wednesday in a disclosure tied to the inquiry into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

The White House said it could not rule out the possibility that some official e-mails relating to the firings had been deleted and are lost.

Jessica Takes a Cheap Shot:

Misogyny in our midst

By Jessica Valenti

Last week I wrote an article for The Guardian (UK) about online misogyny, using Kathy Sierra's experience as a jumping off point.

One of the things I wrote in detail about in the article was the unbelievable responses to Sierra's story. . . . Sadly, I expected to find these kinds of reactions in certain places on the internet. What I didn't expect was to find them so close to home, and from a progressive "leader" in the blogosphere, no less!

Kos on Kathy Sierra and female bloggers being harassed and getting death threats:

Look, if you blog, and blog about controversial sh*t, you'll get idiotic emails. Most of the time, said "death threats" don't even exist -- evidenced by the fact that the crying bloggers and journalists always fail to produce said "death threats" ...Email makes it easy for stupid people to send stupid emails to public figures. If they can't handle a little heat in their email inbox, then really, they should try another line of work.

. . . Seriously though, it's one thing to argue--as Markos does--that a blogger code of conduct would be ineffective. Fine. But dismissing online misogyny and Sierra's experience (without even bothering to do any research on the subject, to boot) is reprehensible. Though predictable given the source.

Jessica accuses Markos of misogyny for not writing about the misogny issues regarding the Kathy Sierra issue? As Jessica noted, Markos' point is a code of conduct ain't gonna stop it.

In a new memo, James Carville and Stan Greenberg acknowledge that The Politics of Contrast is working:

The competing narratives of the parties is . . . the most important new Democratic advantage. . . . [T]here is room for growth as Democrats crystallize the choice before the country

And what is the most important issue for crystallizing that choice? Iraq. I think it can be our realigning issue:

we may be achieving the best possible political program - our Presidential candidates will run against the GOP's Iraq Debacle. Now, if we can just get Obama to hold a strong partisan tone - adopt the Politics of Contrast Senator, and we can stride with great confidence into 2008 knowing that we may achieve the permanent political realignment we all dream of - Obama, Edwards or even Hillary, can then be our FDR.

I think all good Democrats should be demanding that our politicians seize the moment and oppose Bush's Iraq Debacle as fiercely as possible. To me that means supporting the Reid-Feingold bill.

Some folks may get upset that some video of Barack Obama answering a question from a Fox News reporter was aired on Brit Hume's program. This is ridiculous. The context proves that Obama did absolutely nothing inconsistent or wrong:

The Obama interview occurred with a group of reporters asking questions, one of whom was from FNC.

Obama did not go on Fox, he held a press availability. Public figures and politicans can not exclude even fake news organizations like Fox from press availabilities.

Whatever the merits of the Fox Dem debate controversy, political candidates can not exclude news organizations from press conferences. That would be totally unacceptable imo. Obama, on this point, did absolutely nothing wrong.

The main talking point you hear now from some of the Imus enablers is 'what a shame he is crucified for one remark' and of course the ever reliable 'what about Al Sharpton?' and its corollary 'what about rappers?' Personally, I think NBC and CBS can do what they want (and MSNBC already has) and people will react to what they do as THEY want. It is a free country right?

But let's stick to the facts when discussing the issue. First, the idea that the issue with Imus is 'one remark' is ludicrous. Imus has been spewing racist and sexist talk for a long time. He has broken pledges to not continue doing it.

Let's start by going back to 1998:

MIKE WALLACE: You told Tom ANDERSON, the producer, in your car coming home that Bernard McGuirk is there to do "nigger" jokes.

DON IMUS: Well I've n-- I never use that word.

MIKE WALLACE: Tom?

TOM ANDERSON: I'm right here.

DON IMUS: Did I use that word?

TOM ANDERSON: I recall you using that word.

DON IMUS: Oh, okay, well then I used that word, but I mean-- of course that was an off the record conversation-- [LAUGHTER]

MIKE WALLACE: The hell it was!

And the sordid saga continued.

Kurt Vonnegut has died.

Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle," died Wednesday. He was 84.

Vonnegut, who often marveled that he had lived so long despite his lifelong smoking habit, had suffered brain injuries after a fall at his Manhattan home weeks ago, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz.

When I was in college, I read and loved Cat's Cradle. Later I enjoyed many more of his books. His passing is a real loss. May he rest in peace.