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The increasingly inaccurately-named blog of journalist and futurist Chris Taylor. Either the most sporadically brilliant amateur blog, the most brilliantly amateur sporadic blog, or the most amateur sporadic brilliance on the Web since 2001.
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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.
Do you write any other blogs, by chance? Could that have something to do with the fact that Daily Blah isn't always Daily?
Yes -- the Future Boy blog for Business 2.0. And yes. If you want true, editorially-mandated daily coverage from me, that's probably the best place to look.
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... Thursday, September 16, 2004
Waiting for James Brown
Kerry is failing the alpha-male test, big time. So, according to stories in today's NYT and Chronicle, is the suddenly elusive Edwards. A profile in the New Yorker suggests that Bob Shrum, AKA Kerry's Brain, does not have the moxie to match wits with Karl Rove. Shrum started his speechwriting career with McGovern, the profile reminds us, is an old tarrif-raising populist from way back, and has never worked for a winning Presidential campaign. Kerry has also brought on board the head of Dukakis' campaign and Joe Lockhart, the ineffectual White House press secretary from the end of the Clinton era, who has a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look and very little in the way of claws. All of which makes me fear for his sanity.
Rove, according to a conspiracy theory unearthed by Maureen Dowd today, may well be ultimately behind the fake CBS air guard documents (thereby drowning the essential truth they contain in an arcane debate about anachronistic fonts). Rove, Dowd reminds us, is a man who allegedly bugged his own office in a prior political campaign to suck the oxygen of media attention away from his then master's opponent. Rove is pure evil, but he's also a master of old-school, take-no-prisoners politics. Somewhere up there, LBJ and Mayor Daley are looking on with grudging admiration.
I look at the electoral college map, as more and more non-coastal states switch from light blue to light pink, and it suggests a mushy middle magnetically drawn to the side that demonstrates the most ruthlessness, the most desire to occupy the White House. Four years of disaster and shocking decline is nothing next to a billion years of evolutionary programming, which tells them to feed the hungry alpha-male first. The Bushies, as they demonstrated in Florida, just wanted the prize more than Gore, who spent the last crucial morning before election day with his mother. Clinton clearly wanted it more than the doddering Dole and Bush senior, who kept looking at his watch during the debates as if he had somewhere more important to be. Dukakis had a certain pleading neediness, but that's not the same as hunger. Don't even get me started on Mondale and Carter.
Kerry is a strong finisher, they tell us. But what will that strong finish look like? I keep picturing James Brown, Godfather of Soul, towards the end of his concerts, hobbling from the stage with a towel wrapped around his shoulders and a roadie at his arm. Then all of a sudden he casts off the towel, raises his arms, and bingo -- he's back, he's bad, he's funkier than ever. Kerry has been hobbling towards the exit with a towel around his shoulders for a couple of weeks now, and I find it hard to believe it's for real. He's smarter than this. He's playing patsy. He's going to let Bush think he's dead, then annihilate him in the debates. Edwards is going to resurrect his lawyerly zeal and treat Cheney like just another mendacious CEO in the dock. They cannot, with more than half the country still thinking it's time for a new President, with mounting Iraq carnage and swing-state job blues and Osama forgotten and a deficit the size of Texas, they cannot be so dumb as to throw away these gifts. Can they?
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