Wednesday, February 16, 2005

805 Enjoying a vacation--cut the stress

I have not been following the Jason Eason/CNN/Bloggers flap. I saw only a few snippets of Floridian news last week (seems to be a very bad state for needy children and parents with problems). That’s what makes a vacation, in my opinion--turning off the news and not reading a newspaper. But I’ll just cut and paste this bit from Hugh Hewitt on how mainstream media journalists can conduct themselves, still be left of center, but maintain integrity:

“Here are the rules: Don't serially slander the military as assassins and torturers, and you can say whatever you want at Davos. Don't pass off obviously forged documents as super-"Scoops!" in the middle of a presidential election, and you can intone all the absurd "anchor" sayings you want. Don't cover for plagiarists, and you can be the off-the-cliff lefty editor for as long as you want. Don't say the memory of Christmas-Eve-in-Cambodia is "seared, seared" in your memory and then say "oops," you were mistaken, and folks won't question your credibility on other war-stories. Don't appear to endorse segregation, and you can be the Leader. These aren't high bars. Cross them.”

Hewitt is a conservative radio host whose little book In, but not of is on our book club list for next month. I went into Amazon.com and read 9 reviews and the introduction. I think it is quite popular as a graduation gift, but I can only find one copy in OhioLink (and it won’t let me place a save) and none at the local or metropolitan public libraries. It looks like a book on setting goals, Christian life, ambition, being the best you can be. One reviewer said he was 58 and still found it useful, so maybe I’ll benefit--and then pass it along to a younger family member (since I can’t get it from a library). Librarians, as I’ve reported before, as a group are politically very liberal, but I hope this doesn’t account for its scarcity on library shelves. I like to think my profession is above partisanship--and clever enough to work the crowd. His new book on Blogs is also quite unavailable locally.

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