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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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Daily Blah FAQ
Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Historical Justice
It's stories like this that make you believe -- however momentarily -- that the system works. The Justice Department inspector general, a lone holdover from the Clinton administration, has released a report confirming what we suspected all along but never dared suggest in the new, uberpatriotic America: that immigrants detained post-September 11 were "abused," stripped of most all their rights, and generally treated in a very medieval way. Ashcroft's troops have harrumphed about this, and defended their actions in the manner of a drunk tenaciously clinging to his side of the argument. They say they've implemented "some" of the report's 21 recommendations, but we're not told how many. A few? A handful? Half?
Obviously, the DoJ wants this internal audit to go away. And they'll probably get their wish in the short term. Newspapers are too afraid of being labeled liberal to pursue this kind of travesty for more than one cycle; TV news might like it, but there are no pictures. Historians, however, will be all over it. When all is said and done, when this administration is as safely behind us as Taft, Hoover and Nixon, they will remind us that the post-9/11 goodwill was squandered in dingy Federal cells where men who were not terrorists were clamped in leg irons and told they would die there. The system works -- not for our sake, and certainly not for theirs, but at least for the sake of future generations.
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