Media

Do you like being pandered to? Do you like being presented with a mirror so that you can admire yourself? Time magazine sure hopes so.

The venerable but not-much-venerated newsweekly is sucking up to you, its hoped-for audience, pure and simple. In naming "you" as its Person of the Year for 2006 -- complete with reflective plastic on the cover -- the fading publication demonstrates how its weakening financial condition has led to a weakening of editorial judgment.

For generations, being a big-city mayor was akin to being confined to the political equivalent of Devil’s Island. Even if you escaped imprisonment, it was only with the shirt on your back.

But today, mayors across America are riding an unprecedented wave of upward mobility. Here in California, for example, the men most widely touted to become governor once the Terminator terminates are not any of the myriad of statewide Democratic officeholders, but two high-profile mayors, San Francisco’s Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles’ Antonio Villaraigosa.

It was a little like Pravda running an expose on Lenin’s sex life, or The Wall Street Journal editorializing on the fetishes of conservative economist Friedrich Hayek. Three weeks ago, the L.A. Weekly, once the most reliably left-wing publication in the city, published a cover story all but alleging that the late union chief Miguel Contreras died in a brothel in South L.A.

Homogenizing the image of the "other" has always been a way for groups to marginalize undesirable minorities and foreigners. Two dozen centuries ago, Hippocrates wrote that the Scythians -- nomadic people whom the Greeks considered barbaric -- all looked alike. By contrast, the good doctor could discern that his own people came in all shapes and sizes.

I don’t know what was more disturbing, the lame attempt to suppress immigrant voter turnout in California’s 47th Congressional District or the breathless reporting and hyper-indignation that followed it.

It's a paradox of our time that the Amish, arguably the least technological people in America, have nevertheless proven to be extraordinarily effective at communicating what they believe. In a time of proliferating techno-clutter, they got their message across the old-fashioned way: through the blood sacrifice of martyrs.

People have always wanted to communicate, not to mention bloviate, and so the op-ed as an idea is perfectly safe. But the expression of that idea -- the mode of communication -- is subject to change. Big change. Yet if op-editors can keep up, they could find themselves with an even bigger role in the streaming future.

People have always wanted to communicate, not to mention bloviate, and so the op-ed as an idea is perfectly safe. But the expression of that idea -- the mode of communication -- is subject to change. Big change. Yet if op-editors can keep up, they could find themselves with an even bigger role in the streaming future.

So what to make of the Mark Foley "Pagegate" scandal? And of Republican efforts to "de-Foley-ate" themselves of collective blame for his actions in time for November? Four points:

It is conventional wisdom that the new democratic activists of the "netroots" are strong on political tactics but don’t have much to contribute to the war of ideas. Matt Bai, writing in The New York Times Magazine, charged disparagingly that "leaders of the netroots... will tell you that Big Ideas are overrated."