you're penny rich and dollar dumb


Burgeoning Brainstorm, by Heather Levy, who currently is showing some of her work at Cafe Luna (P Street, wdc).

* Editor & Publisher on saving the first admendment from Karl Rove. excerpt:

"In 99.9 percent of cases I know, journalists must not break the bonds of appropriate confidentiality, to protect their ability to report, and to defend the First Amendment. I’ve testified in court to that end, and would do so again.

"But the Valerie Plame-CIA case that threatens jail time for reporters from Time and The New York Times this week is the exception that shatters the rule. In this case, journalists as a community have been played for patsies by the president’s chief strategist, Karl Rove, and are enabling him to abuse the First Amendment, by their invoking it.

"To understand why this case is exceptional, one must grasp the extent of Rove’s political mastery, which became clearer to me by working with him. When we taught 'Politics and the Press' together at The University of Texas at Austin seven years ago, Rove showed an amazing disdain for Texas political reporters. At the same time, he actively cultivated national reporters who could help him promote a Bush presidency.

"In teaching with him, I learned Rove assumes command over any political enterprise he engages. He insists on absolute discipline from staff: nothing escapes him; no one who works with him moves without his direction. In Texas, though he was called 'the prime minister' to Gov. George W. Bush, it might have been "Lord," as in the divine, for when it came to politics and policy, it was Rove who gave, and Rove who took away.

"Little has changed since the Bush presidency; all roads still lead to Rove."
...
"The problem, as always, in dealing with Rove, is establishing a clear chain of culpability. Rove once described himself as a die-hard Nixonite; he is, like the former president, both student and master of plausible deniability. (This past weekend, in confirming that Rove was indeed a source for Matthew Cooper, Rove's lawyer said his client 'never knowingly disclosed classified information.') That is precisely why prosecutor Fitzgerald in this case must document the pattern of Rove’s behavior, whether journalists published, or not.
...
Reporters with a gut fear of breaching confidential sources must fight like tigers to protect them. But neither reporters Cooper nor Miller, nor their publications, nor anyone in journalism should protect the behavior of Rove (or anyone else) through an undiscerning, blanket use of the First Amendment that weakens its protections by its gross misuse."

* Michael Chabon writes script for Disney Kung Fu Snow White. excerpt:

"The Wicked Queen will not know what hit her. Snow White is about to be transformed into a martial arts epic with Shaolin monks replacing the seven dwarves of the original Grimm Brothers fairytale.

"In a sign of the times, Walt Disney is behind the kung fu retelling of its 1937 animated classic, which is part of an intensifying strategy to make inroads into the Chinese cinema market ahead of Hollywood rivals.

"Tentatively titled Snow and the Seven, the story - scripted by Pulitzer prize-winning author Michael Chabon - will be set in a British concession of colonial China in the 1880s.

"The remake is part of an attempt by Hollywood studios to capitalise on the relaxation of controls on film-making and screen building in a potential market of 1.3 billion people."

* "The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurement anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them." -- George Bernard Shaw