Donald Fagan, voice of Steely Dan and godfather of Muzak, writes in Slate about Jean Shepherd, the man behind "A Christmas Story." In addtion to being an author and humorist, Shepherd was a very successful DJ in the early 60's. Fagan tells a long, surprisingly dark tale of the man's career.The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn has crafted a bizarre defense of the Big Three automakers, claiming the industry is "…a victim of something it did right: ensuring a middle-class lifestyle for bluecollar workers." The theory goes that carmakers, pushed by unions, gave workers high wages, comprehensive health benefits into retirement and workplace protection rules. Cohn admits that the "financial costs and managerial constraints" helped ruin the domestic carmakers. But, despite all evidence to the contrary, Cohn claims that "ultimate responsibility" lies "beyond Detroit." Yup. It's the Feds' fault. "In a more enlightened society, after all, government would have made those promises and extended them to all workers, thereby spreading the burden of financing them to all taxpayers."
That is, Detroit is broke is because the federal government isn't using massive social welfare programs to ensure that all American workers have the same cushy benefits as workers in Detroit. That's funny, we thought the problem with the Big Three automakers was that they make cars no one wants to buy.
On the subject of spending other people's money, Nicholas Kristof notes in his New York Times column that liberals "show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people," but are "cheapskates," when it comes to making individual contributions to charitable causes. Kristof is stunned to find that conservtives, broadly, give more money to chairty than liberals do. Also in the NYT, a front page story about how the housing crises was Bush's fault. Nevermind consumers who got mortgages they couldn't afford, lenders who pushed easy credit and Wall Street big wigs who loaded portfolios with risky, mortgage-backed securities.
The administration shot back, with White House press secretary Dana Perino accusing the paper of “gross negligence.” Perinio said the Times reporting "amounted to finding selected quotes to support a story the reporters fully intended to write from the onset" and ignmored anything that didn't fit their point of view.” Perino did not explain how that makes the New York Times different from any other newspaper.
