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Full Court Press(continued)
SOFT IN THE MIDDLE? Obama (Photo: Getty Images) Winner: The Los Angeles Times for digging deeper into the administration's plan to shoot down a wayward satellite and finding an expert who doubted that the main purpose of the exercise was anything other than a test of an anti-satellite missile in space. Winner: Jennifer Saranow's hilarious piece on online personal ad plagiarism in the Wall Street Journal. "These identity thieves don't want your money. They want your quirky sense of humor and your cool taste in music." Winner: Jeffrey H. Birnbaum for a fascinating feature in the Washington Post magazine about the travel industry's failed attempt to convince the federal government to finance an ad campaign to attract foreign visitors to America. An enlightening look at the repellent, self-perpetuating lobbying process. 
100% JUICED Roger Clemens at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on steroids in baseball (Photo: Getty Images) Winner: Stephen Metcalf for his piece in Slate about the disastrous Clemens hearings, which even Congressman Henry Waxman realized were a mistake the day after he held them. Metcalf includes this fine description of what makes the sports pages in the New York Post the finest in the city: It delivers exactly what the sports consumer most craves: rumor, innuendo, supposition, and scurrilous gossip. Above all, it delivers opinion—not with the white-glove judiciousness of the Gray Lady, but with the barstool surety of a delightful, irresponsible, and thoroughly knowledgeable drunk. Among the New York sports opinionati, the back page of the Post operates as a kind of final verdict. Is your favorite slugger a Boy Scout or a philanderer? A stalwart or a crybaby? A hero or a bum? We report; we decide. Winner: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose: Paul Kramer in the New Yorker, for a splendid piece on all the parallels between American intervention in Iraq and American intervention in the Philippines a century ago—including our use of water torture in both places. Reporters: Thomas Rogers and Richard Vanderford Seen Something? E-mail to alert me to anything you see that warrants high praise or high dudgeon. Charles Kaiser is the author of The Gay Metropolis and 1968 in America. He has been media editor for Newsweek, a member of the metro staff of the New York Times, and a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the press and book publishing. To learn more, visit charleskaiser.com. READ MORE • FCP: Charles Kaiser on Howard Kurtz's conflicting interests, and the CNN pundit's love affair with the right • FCP: Charles Kaiser talks to Bill Kristol on his role in setting McCain's foreign policy • Today's Top Stories 
It's wonderful that Radar labels Gov. Spitzer a "winner" eventhough his Op-Ed ignores the fact that most subprime originations causing problems today were originated by state-licensed under the exclusive regulation of state regulators. The ability of states to regulate these lenders had nothing to do with federal preemption. See Comptroller of the Currency John C. Dugan's response to Mr. Spitzer, where he says, "Nothing the OCC has done has prevented the states from regulating and preventing abuses among the lenders that they license - lenders that are the source of most of today's problems. The states have ample authority - as well as clear responsibility - to set standards for these lenders and enforce them. It defies logic to argue that preemption was an impediment. National banks are bound to obey the strict standards enforced by the OCC everywhere they operate - even in states that had far less rigorous standards. The states should have applied equally rigorous standards to the non-bank lenders that were responsible for the bulk of the problems." http://www.occ.gov/ftp/release/2008-16.htm Posted by: hubbardbk on February 20, 2008 4:20 PM Advertisement < BACK TO Features |
    
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