The Washington Post has better national political coverage than the New York Times. But it still sucks great green gator balls. Today’s Exhibit A — James Hohmann:
THE BIG IDEA: [Is that what we’re calling compressed turds of conventional Beltway wisdom these days?] It took grit and gumption for Donald Trump to call out House Republicans yesterday.
Maybe he did not fully comprehend the risks of criticizing the very lawmakers who he needs most to advance his agenda, but two tweets from the president-elect were pivotal to saving the Office of Congressional Ethics from being declawed and neutered. The bottom line is that there will be more rigorous oversight of lawmakers than there would have been otherwise because he chose to speak up when he could have stayed silent.
Did not “fully comprehend the risks” of criticizing Republican lawmakers? Five minute’s study of baboon dominance displays will be infinitely more instructive in understanding Trump than five years of poring over US legislative history or five millennia spent cataloging all the things Trump doesn’t “fully comprehend.”
And if we’re going to credit Trump with saving the OCE, let’s credit Mrs. O’Leary’s cow for the modern Chicago skyline. Hohmann knows public outrage prompted the GOP walk-back on the OCE, and he even admits Trump didn’t question the propriety of the proposed gutting — only the timing of it.
But you see, the Daily Motherfucking Caller has informed Hohmann that there’s this new disease abroad in the land, Trump Derangement Syndrome, and it threatens Congressional comity:
As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told CNN in an interview that aired last night, “The only way we’re going to work with him is if he moves completely in our direction and abandons his Republican colleagues.”
Think about how Schumer would have responded if Mitch McConnell made that statement about a President-elect Hillary Clinton…
Yes, how awful if McConnell had said something like, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama Clinton to be a one-term president.” Hohmann’s pearls would have been crushed to powder in his sweaty little fist. Good thing that didn’t happen! He goes on:
[Trump] operates so far outside the norms of how business has always been done in Washington, and his manner seems so gauche, that he provokes a visceral, occasionally irrational, reaction in serious, normally sober-minded people.
Sweep, weeping Jeebus take the fucking wheel. Look, we don’t object to Trump because he operates outside the fucking Village parameters; we oppose him because he’s an unprincipled, unqualified, narcissistic buffoon who is a walking, talking affront to every principle we claim to uphold as a nation. And if some of us have a “visceral” reaction to Trump, perhaps it is because he spent the last year and a half demonizing and objectifying us.
Trump could spray liquid gold leaf on the White House and hire the shades of Saddam Hussein and Liberace to decorate the interior with nary a peep from me if he hadn’t run the most sexist, racist, xenophobic campaign since George Wallace.
Trump could wind his several remaining hairs around his bald pate in an intricate pattern without critical comment from this quarter if he weren’t assembling a horde of grifting parasites and plutocrats to loot the Treasury while handing the day-to-day running of the country over to a pack of hypocritical, bible-humping austeritarians.
In other words, the core issue isn’t that Trump is a strutting, loud-mouthed, tacky embarrassment; it’s that he’s an unhinged demagogue who is a danger to the country — indeed, the world. And it is a problem that prominent national correspondent James Hohmann of the Washington Post doesn’t seem to understand that.
Okay, back to Eagle Cam.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
The WaPo is only slightly better than the NYT. Just because one reporter dug into one aspect of Trump’s history does not give them a pass on the rest of their awfulness. They suck just like every other MSM outlet. Fuck ’em.
Thru A Glass Darkly
Gators have balls? Never been that close to check…
Trump is a privileged buffoon surrounding himself with simpering psychotic sycophants. I wouldn’t support him however his campaign had been run.
All the usual suspects running with the “Trump saved the ethics board” crap is nauseating. And don’t get me started on Chuck.
My gut hurts so much from this s###. Reaching for @EmrgencyKittens now…
Villago Delenda Est
I know this is repetitive, but my nym.
Cheeto-face’s criticism of the House ethics thing was that while having actual oversight is “unfair”, it should be on the back burner while the rest of the governmental apparatus is gutted and destroyed.
The vermin of the Village, though, can’t read the second tweet.
Wipe them out, all of them.
Mark-NC
You should change this to “The Spit or Swallow” column. So when you report on the press giving Trump a BJ you can ask the proper question: Did you spit or swallow?
O. Felix Culpa
Love the title, Betty! So, for reliable, resourceful reporting, where do we go? I got a subscription to The Washington Monthly for Christmas. Any other suggestions?
P.S. Am totally loving eagle cam and wasting huge swaths of time watching avian mini-movements.
Major Major Major Major
Well put.
Although as a follower of the Berlusconi Theorem, I need to add that his policies would bankrupt the country, destroy the environment, take healthcare from millions, and steal hard-earned savings from you, the voter, to give to corrupt billionaires.
Hunter Gathers
I’m sure this is somehow Obama’s fault. What with his Unforgivable Blackness and whatnot.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
You made it past that opener? what about pluck, moxie and choo-tz-paw? we will no longer speak of spunk, pace Lou Grant.
Whenever I read shit like that, the first thing I do is look at the writer’s bio to see where they came from and any books they published, this guy– this guy is just a “political correspondent”?, and the Post has so many fucking subsections of political coverage, I can’t tell what’s supposed to be opinion and reporting. What the fuck is a “Power Post”?
Chris
“The risks?” Judas Priest. Trump is a rock star to all the voters that those “lawmakers” need to stay in office. If they try to screw him, he can screw them right back. With a few tweets, he can have any number of them in real danger of being primaried next November. They all know he’s petty and vindictive enough to do it. And none of them are in a hurry to find out who their constituents would pick in a popularity contest between them and Trump – they’re afraid they already know the answer. “The risks” of Trump picking a fight with them are much overstated.
All this move was was Trump blowing with the wind. That’s not nothing – there are plenty of Republicans who in his shoes would’ve said fuck the voters, full steam ahead, and counted on them to forget all about this by reelection time, which they probably would have. But neither does it make Trump some kind of lone underdog heroically taking on the Republican juggernaut.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Sometimes I fucking hate this country. This is one of those times. I love the name of the post, though.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Merrick Garland and Judd Gregg say “Hey!” The Beltway has done shook its Etch-A-Sketch. Nothing that happened before last November ever happened.
With this kind of proud ignorance of recent history, the boy should be hosting Meet The Press in time for 2020.
Mnemosyne
I’m sorry, the same people who inspired the term “Clinton Derangement Syndrome” are now claiming that we hate Trump for the same totally fucking irrational reasons they hate the Clintons?
rikyrah
Truer words have never been written.
I’ll say this again..
HE OFFENDS US AS A HUMAN BEING.
AS a HUMAN, he disgusts us.
There is NOTHING admirable or worthy of RESPECT.
He’s disgusting.
Period.
And, the people he’s surrounded himself with are DISGUSTING too.
We can tell.
He is an affront to me as an American. I say that without hesitation.
So, PHUCK ANYONE who continues to step to me about showing ‘ respect for the Office’, because his PRESENCE is offensive to ‘respect for the Office’.
And, there are NO POLICIES with which I am remotely willing to ‘COMPROMISE’ with him on.
NOTHING.
There is NO policy position whatsoever where there is common ground, because my policy positions are FOR the common American. Not rich sociopaths and oligarchs.
Spanky
Awesome post, Betty. Just one little quibble:
I’ve got the ghost of George Wallace right here, complaining mightily that Cheeto Benito’s sexism and xenophobia has left him (George), well, in the dust. George is still proud to be more loudly racist than Trump, so PEOTUS still has some work to do to top that.
But not much work.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
I’m finishing up my 2nd month of no media, including twitter, as a mental (and physical) health benefit. I check here on BJ to confirm that I’m not missing anything.
Chris
Yep. I figured that this would be one of their main tacks in normalizing him – pretending that the only reason people are repelled by him is because of his charmingly unsophisticated personality.
(What makes this ironic is that that is in fact half the reason the Village hated the Clintons – they were country hicks who brought their white trash mannerisms to Mount Olympus, and it wasn’t their place to do so).
Mnemosyne
B-J writers, reassure me — I just found out there’s another romance novel with my same basic premise (American inherits a title). There don’t seem to be many other story similarities since they’re even from different states. Still, it kind of freaked me out.
germy
@Mnemosyne: http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2016/12/all-romance-ebooks-sudden-closing-many.html
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I sincerely hope this kid’s drivel becomes the internet piñata du jour, and this kid’s mom’s Facebook scrapbook of his work makes her cry.
Mnemosyne
@germy:
Meh. Small publishers go out of business all the time. Now, if you’d told me that Avon or Kensington was getting out of romance, I’d be worried.
cmorenc
It’s important to keep in mind that the rabid core of Trump voters were not even remotely close to enough for him to win the election – instead, the depth of support from a substantial portion of those who voted for him was much thinner, and will be much less resistant to experiencing a wake-the-fuck-up epiphanies within the first few weeks or months of the Trump Administration. Indeed, if only 5% of those who voted for Trump had flipped, Clinton would have easily won the election, albeit not by the landslide proportions she should have with a more rational, attentive, accurately informed electorate.
That’s why, in expressing well-deserved condemnation toward the unreachable core of Trump supporters, to not gratuitously insult and alienate those who are capable of coming around – it doesn’t take reaching but a very modest minority among Trump voters to profoundly alter the political dynamics moving forward to 2018 and especially 2020. Remember: lots of them were gullibly misled by the MSM into thinking they had to choose between the two most awful choices ever in a Presidential election, and they were at least half-right in believing that.
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
PHUCK OUTTA HERE.
That is the bullshyt that they’re trying to pull.
And, when we give them a laundry list of everything that he’s done that add up to us believing that he is an inadequate, spiteful, despicable man.
You know..actual PROOF of his OWN ACTIONS throughout YEARS….
They are trying to brush past it.
No, Dear.
We come with receipts, and we are going to pull ALL OF THEM.
I stand with the MAJORITY OF 2016 AMERICAN VOTERS WHO DID NOT VOTE FOR THIS PERSON.
#NOTMYPRESIDENT
Elizabelle
Betty (and Anne Laurie):
Appreciate tremendously your not illustrating this blog with photos of the Awful President-Elect. Am not usually one for “trigger warnings”, but I truly cannot stand the sight of him. Maybe in time …
FWIW, I think all of us would love to see the sweet face of goofy Walter, just about any day of the week. Or any pet. Or bird. Or animal.
Even cheetahs.
Thank you.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: You’re fine. Accidentally/intentionally duplicating a premise is of course a staple in procedural fiction, and occurs quite often in genre fiction as well. Even sci-fi, where a lot of the works lazily rest on having an original premise.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: I am sure there is more than one romance novel based on that premise. England is after all our mummy. What about the time period.
delk
I’ve been waiting about two months for a gastroenterologist appointment. Just got a call from the receptionist: my Friday appointment has been moved to January 20th.
I guess that’s a good as place as any to spend inauguration day.
Elizabelle
In other reptile news: WaPost website now:
Not properly caged. Ya think?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elizabelle: For me it’s the sound of his voice, and the almost superhuman smugness of Kellyanne Conway
RepubAnon
Sounds as though Trump’s dominance message ( “Praise and flatter me enough, and maybe I’ll grant you an interview”) got through loud and clear. We can expect the D.C. Press corps to follow Trump’s script – after all, one doesn’t get to attend the annual dinner if one doesn’t have “access”, and merely reports on Trump’s Tweets.
SFBayAreaGal
So what has been the responses (letter to the columnist) about this.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
I actually got into an argument with someone from RWA who insisted it was unrealistic (!) even though it actually happened to a Virginia landowner who was a friend of George Washington’s.
@schrodingers_cat:
The other author’s book takes place about 10-15 years after my time period, so I’m probably okay. It was just kind of a shock to open up someone else’s book and go, “Oh, shit!”
Woodrowfan
OT: is there going to be a BJ fundraiser for Walter’s cancer treatments? (my apologies for those that did not see the news down the page)
slag
LOLed. Because it’s true.
O. Felix Culpa
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Make that subhuman and I’m on board with you.
Turgidson
I mean…I just…I can’t even…What the…
The forever liberally biased lamestream media, everyone!
Chris
@Elizabelle:
Well, it’s gonna be hard for me to keep making fun of Florida for this.
ETA: for those of us in the DMV area. The other parts of the country can go right on laughing.
trollhattan
@delk:
Wellll, if said visit involves a photographic expedition we’ll all be “taking one for the team” together. As a metaphor for chimpo’s swearing in it cannot be topped.
Villago Delenda Est
@O. Felix Culpa: Nazi bitch needs to be put down like Elsa Koch.
Chris
@Turgidson:
It’s almost hard to me to blame them. As long as the public remains convinced, no matter how blatant this kind of shit may be, that the media is really liberally biased, then heck, why shouldn’t they keep at it.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
Also, too, I was Googling for the story about Prince William having some Indian ancestry on his mother’s side and came across this book about mixed British/Indian relationships, White Mughals. I may need to check it out for a future novel.
artem1s
but he’s white! how could he possibly be dangerous?
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Since when is an anafuckingconda a legal pet? I’ve seen them, they’re yuuuuuuuge!
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: Unrealistic things happen all the time ;)
gratuitous
Mr. Hohmann? If you have an objection to something that Trump undeniably did or said for principled reasons having to do with political philosophy or (let’s just say) the Constitution, that is by definition not “irrational” even if it appears “visceral” to you.
Nincompoop.
Kay
I do have a visceral reaction to Trump. I think he’s a bad person, based solely on my observations of his behavior.
You’re allowed to do that. I don’t care how many times they say it’s disallowed. I absolutely judge his character by his actions. Guilty as charged and proud of it.
How does the columnist differentiate between people? Height? Bank account? Gender? What are we supposed to go on if we can’t go on a person’s actions? BTW, saying horrible things to or about people is an “action”- yes it is.
His behavior hasn’t improved one iota since the election and this same group of people assured us all it would, so they’re already wrong. Again.
The Moar You Know
@Woodrowfan: I believe that debit has already stated that’s not an option. And FWIW having watched my sister-in-law’s dog die from exactly the same thing (arthritis complicated by bone cancer) I have seen firsthand that the treatment is both pretty useless and painful. Let him go out happy. The alternative is awful and has minimal chance of doing anything save giving the poor guy months of misery.
trollhattan
@Chris:
Perhaps you missed the recent Florida tale of Scarface, the pittbull, who put three family members in the hospital after mom tried dressing him in a sweater? Or a man named Elvis shooting at cows with an AR15 from his car? Florida ain’t giving up that easily.
germy
Brachiator
@germy:
@Mnemosyne:
Maybe this would be worthy of its own thread. I have an ongoing interest in publishing, new media and how readers adapt to new publishing avenues, so this caught my attention. Is this company really just a small publisher? The Guardian thinks this digital publisher’s collapse is noteworthy for a number of reasons.
Many hoped that digital books would become a natural extension of traditional publishing. Now, that future looks much more cloudy.
ETA: White Mughals is a great read.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
The best rule I’ve seen when applying it to fiction is that you can have a coincidence at the beginning of the book or as something that makes the protagonist’s life harder, but you can’t use one to solve a story problem.
Unless you’re writing “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum” and part of the joke is that they’re saved by a deus ex machina.
ruckus
@Elizabelle:
Agreed. We don’t need to see that fucking ugly ass. I agree with the general premesis that the shitgibbon is not my president.
A nice side note. Shitgibbon is a word in my spell check. How cool is that?
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: I couldn’t care less. The Crown rule after 1857 and the Company Raj before that was deeply exploitative. I neither find that period nor figures who went “native” like Lawrence of Arabia, in the Indian context, romantic. Fuck them.
trollhattan
@germy: The kernel of believably makes that piece work.
Turgidson
@Chris:
I’ve read or heard interviews with a couple right-wing lunatic radio hosts who were drummed out of the group because they went Never Trump and stuck with it. Charlie Sykes and some other guy. They both acknowledge a fair amount of guilt and responsibility for their participation in constructing the now-seemingly-impenetrable right-wing bubble. Which is gratifying to read, even if it’s something that liberals have been talking about for many years now. But one bullshit myth both those chuckleheads cling to is that they were doing important and honorable work early on because they were pushing back against the obviously liberally biased media. And one of the not-Sykes guy’s biggest issues with Trump, naturally, is that he’s actually a big government liberal.
I mean, I’m glad there’s a handful of right wing assholes who are finally engaging a little, tiny bit of reflection about how we got here, even if the only reason they’re doing it is that the rabid, braindead dolt army they helped raise and rile up into an angry frenzy by telling them lies that feed their biases finally turned against them. And I’m inclined to welcome every anti-Trump voice we can into a popular front of resistance. But I’m going to remember that these guys are still shit-for-brains assholes in the end. And so are you, Glenn fucking Beck.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Seems to be WaPo’s cute little alliterative term for “Village house organ.”
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I’ve always been in the camp saying that e-books are a good supplement to paper books and a useful way to make out of print and rare books available to the public, but I never thought they would manage to completely replace paper books. Not only do people still tend to prefer paper, there are some books (like instruction books, history books with maps/pictures, workbooks, etc) that just don’t work as well when transferred to e-book form.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I saw his photo. He looks like the hapless offspring of Dan Quayle and Luke Russert.
Joyce H
@Mnemosyne:
Oh, honey. There’s a lot more than ONE romance novel based on the American inherits a title theme. Don’t worry about it. It’s a trope. If people could copyright plot devices, think of all the poor governesses who could never marry the lord of the manor again. Stalwart heroes could never again deflect that comet on a collision course with earth. Intrepid archaeological adventurers could never again find proof of ancient advanced civilizations and/or alien life in Antarctica.
It’s what you do with the plot device. Guy tries to impress a girl. Is that Cyrano De Bergerac? Or Taxi Driver?
Heck, MY current work in progress has twins changing places!
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, it happens all the time in comedies of errors. And stories where the plot is incidental, as is often the case with a comedy of manners or certain types of short story. Asimov did it a lot too, his stories were mostly about the ideas in them. I think Douglas Adams’ stuff consisted almost entirely of coincidences, common in absurdism.
I have a coincidence midway through that gets all the characters together, but it’s not really solving a problem per se. It’s also in some respects the beginning of the actual plot. In a tear-down-rebuild I could see starting there but I also don’t imagine the story would make a whole lot of sense.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s an interesting transitional period that’s not all that different from the similar period in American colonial history where white settlers kept running off to join native groups because they preferred that society to Puritan society.
I was reading about English public schools (like Eton) in the time period I’m writing about and they made a passing reference to them not being as bad as they later became, and the later (Victorian) harshness being meant to harden the boys into sociopathic young men who wouldn’t mind abusing the “natives” to keep the Empire together. It was pretty creepy. I’ve never been a fan of the Victorians, and that only added to it.
dance around in your bones
Sweet Betty Cracker on a cross, what a way with words you have! I praise the day JC brought you to strew your pearls before us swine. I saw it, and It Was Good. It IS Good. Thus sayeth the bones.
rikyrah
“My goal is to make Obama a ONE-TERM PRESIDENT”
Or…that he was part of the group that met – THE NIGHT OF PRESIDENT OBAMA’S INAUGURATION- JANUARY 20, 2009 – and CHOSE, during the biggest economic crisis to hit this country since the Great Depression..
That they would commit ECONOMIC TREASON against this country, instead of working with the new President to try and pull this country from despair.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
I suppose Joe Wilson was “simply expressing understandable concerns for the country’s direction.” Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Mnemosyne
@Joyce H:
I love “twins who change places” stories. It always makes me laugh.
The main thing was that I had gotten a Kindle sample of the book and didn’t know that it was part of a series, so it was the surprise more than anything else.
J R in WV
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I need to join everyone else who has admired the headline for this post. A perfect adjustment of the original Latin logical fallacy into the needs of modern American politics.
Thanks for the thought you put into this Blog, Betty! And for the funny and interesting pictures!
Major Major Major Major
@rikyrah: Obviously what they mean is, Schumer should have waited until the night of the inauguration.
Weaselone
The problem is that there isn’t really any consistently good MSM source anymore. There are some consistently good reporters and journalists who may in the case of a few media sources outnumber or at least nearly equal the number of employed hacks, but regardless of what you subscribe to, you’re going to be paying the salaries of a good number of obviously partisan trolls and MBF imbeciles.
Cacti
@SiubhanDuinne:
Reminds me of the joke “who reads newspapers?”:
The Wall Street Journal is read by people who actually run the country
The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country
The Washington Post is read by people who think they ought to run the country
The USA Today is read by people who don’t understand the Washington Post
The Boston Globe is read by people whose grandparents used to run the country
The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, but whatever
The Chicago Tribune is read by people from the Midwest, which the other groups don’t think is part of the country
The Miami Herald is read by people who used to run other countries
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
If you go look at the article in question, over on the right you will see a story:
Keep telling me that the WaPo is better than the NYT. All you guys that bought subscriptions to this cat box liner based on Fahrenholt’s reporting got ripped off.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Jawaharlal Nehru was a product of British schooling too. Harrow and then Cambridge.
Also, Nehru, Jinnah, Gandhi and Savarkar all got their law degrees in England.
ETA: The whole colonial experience from the Victorian era to WWI was a huge mind fuck, where Indians of all stripes (political and/or religious) started looking at themselves through British eyes and adopting Victorian POV while assessing themselves and their history.
El Caganer
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m pretty sure a PowerPost is a golden shower powerwash.
stinger
@Mnemosyne: It’s what you do with the premise that matters, that sets your story apart from another’s. There really aren’t all that many storylines to begin with. I forget who said that there are only three: the hero takes a journey, a stranger comes to town, and boy meets girl.
schrodingers_cat
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: I ar getting it for free, because of Amazon Prime.
FlipYrWhig
@rikyrah: Aren’t there also dozens of recent quotations by Republicans saying that their definition of bipartisanship is Democrats doing as they command?
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@schrodingers_cat: Not much value add if you ask me, even for free !
Brachiator
@Chris:
Of course, the Village has to normalize Trump. They have to live with him. Also, normalizing him is a stupid attempt to assert their relevance. “Our judgement matters, dammit!” even though neither Trump, nor the majority of average Americans gives two shits about these establishment boneheads.
schrodingers_cat
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: I look at the headlines once in two days, only because I need to be informed as to what’s happening in the world.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@schrodingers_cat: If you are local to DC the Sports Bog is half way decent, as is the baseball writing.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Brachiator: I’d say Trump is already normal. The institutions of this country normalized him. He’s normal, he’ll be POTUS in just over two weeks. You can’t un-nomralize this, it has happened.
schrodingers_cat
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: I used to subscribe to WashPost when I live in the MD suburbs of DC. Their going out blog and Joel Achenbach’s column were my favorites.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
And meanwhile, the whole Victorian period in England was a massive reaction against the (relatively) more free Georgian and Regency periods. It was like all of the Victorians had dissolute hippie parents that they had to rebel against by becoming as uptight as possible.
pluky
“Baboon Dominance Display”! I have my band name.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne:Mumbai has a lot of Victorian era architecture. Its very distinctive.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Reader preferences may be shifting. I see more ebook readers than physical book readers on the Gold Line. A lot of these folks may have libraries of paper books at home, but when they travel, they want the convenience of digital books.
There is also a generation of tech savvy people who hate reading books and magazines, period. But these folk are not interested in digital books either. Oddly enough, a good chunk of these folks read digital comic books.
Digital genre publishers hoped that their readers would want to store complete series of novels on their devices. It looks as though these dreams may have been premature.
Apple had ibook tools that could be used to create stunning ebooks, in color, and with illustrations or even video. There simply was not sufficient demand for the technology. But some of the rapidly evolving (and relatively cheap) tools used for smartphone cameras can be easily adapted for the next generation of ebook publishing. There just needs to be sufficient demand and a market for this kind of thing.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I have both books and ebooks, and I not infrequently have both versions of the same book, especially if Amazon had a Kindle Match deal on the ebook version.
Ebooks are easier for traveling and casual reading, but if I’m trying to, say, look up a reference, doing a search on the ebook is usually not as fast and easy as flipping through the paper copy. Knitting patterns have charts that don’t always translate well to e-form, especially since you need to follow them line by line. Etc.
PST
@Mnemosyne:
They’re getting better. The Kindle readers in black and white (even the most recent and advanced) are problematic for anything but words. However, I’m seeing excellent editions of history books these days that make maps and color illustrations very rewarding on a tablet. In some ways, the ability to zoom surpasses what is possible on paper. Footnotes are more easily referenced, and search comes in handy. Of course, bad conversions are terrible and don’t take any advantage of what e-books do best. I even see some that are based on careless scanning with no proofreading. You see “m” instead of “rn” for example. But careful e-editions can be great for history. I offer up as an example Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon: A Life.
Brachiator
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
I’m not so sure about that. Washington insiders and most political reporters have no clue about how Trump might govern, or even if he is capable of behaving competently or rationally. But they are “normalizing” him by insisting that he is, or will learn to become, just like every major president who preceded him. They are “normalizing” him by assuming, without evidence, that he will listen to and work with the Republican Congressional leadership, or, more cynically, that he will quickly become so bored with the details of governing, that he will simply hand over the reins of power to his VP and the Congressional leadership.
In the end, the Village always assumes that it will be business as usual, and that Trump will settle down and accommodate himself to the way that Washington has always worked. The Village must always be vindicated.
Mnemosyne
@PST:
Right, but ebooks can’t solve the problem of, I know where that reference was, it’s about two-thirds of the way in …
My husband was having a similar problem using ebooks for his graduate degree. Sometimes searching keywords doesn’t turn up what you’re trying to find.
geg6
@Mnemosyne:
I hate them. Can’t stand reading a book on a device. And that’s not just because I adore good old fashioned books (the smell, the feel, and how soft they are on the eyes). I get a headache whenever I read on a screen for too long, regardless of how the page on the screen is formatted or what the font is. It’s just horribly uncomfortable for me. I read a LOT and I now have two readers that I won’t use. Totally wasted money.
Gravenstone
@germy: I have a friend who is among those getting screwed in this. Her assessment is likely embezzlement on the part of ownership. But that’s likely a charge never to be proven. I will say though, when the story of the closure and pre-emptory terms of “take 10% or die” were revealed, I thought it seemed quite .. Trumpian in its brazenness.
PST
@Mnemosyne:
I know what you mean, but that’s actually getting better with the most recent iteration of the iPad software (and presumably that for other tablets). There are now a couple of what you might call “flip through” modes that let you scan a bunch of pages quickly in the approximate part of the book where you think you saw what you are looking for. Not all books are set up for this feature, but presumably that’s the direction things will take.
To a certain degree, however, I’m making a virtue out of necessity. If your shelves are full, you can’t bear to part with your favorites, your appetite for more is undiminished, and you travel all the time, e-books are the only answer.
Mnemosyne
@Gravenstone:
Your friend needs to make sure that anything she agrees to gives the rights to all of her books back to her immediately, or no deal. If she gets the rights back, she can put them up on Amazon or B&N herself.
Jeffro
Thinking of adding this to my email sig…thanks Betty!
Mnemosyne
@PST:
I still strongly prefer paper books for research and reference when possible, but I do love that I can now read, say, the journals of American Benjamin Silliman’s travels in Great Britain right on my iPad. For an amateur historian/novelist like myself, I don’t think that primary sources have ever been so accessible.
So I’m a hybrid, myself.
@geg6:
My bad carpal tunnels did me in, specifically with Nixonland. I just can’t hold books that large anymore.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne:
This is true, but non-eBooks don’t allow full-text search. Everything has tradeoffs.
geg6
@Mnemosyne:
Your bad carpal tunnel and my headaches from electronic screens. Even reading has become injury prone!
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Six of one, half a dozen of the other. I’m famous for remembering where something I need is in the book without remembering exactly what that information is, or at least enough for a keyword search.
Which reminds me, I need to ask G to exercise his new research skills to find a reference for me in Wikipedia, because my searches aren’t working. It will be good for him to get some more reference interview practice. ?
Jim
Brilliant writing. Even better analysis.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Brachiator:
It’s Trump, the cheesy salesman, verses a massive 200 year old insitution. Who do you think is going to win?
And I am noticing something else about Trump – ethics and probity are mandatory for the little people, like his kids having to fly coach while he flies a private jet. I suspect this won’t sit well with the rest of the government if Trump lectures them about appearances while wiping his backside on the Constitution and his cabinet is the biggist scandel since the Tea Pot.
burnspbesq
Hohmann really is awful. I almost tossed my egg and cheese tacos when I saw that on this morning.
Is he auditioning for National Quisling Radio?
burnspbesq
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
This was never about ethics as you or I understand the term. It’s about Trump wanting exclusivity on the trough of corruption.
Mnemosyne
@geg6:
Let me tell you about the paper cut I got back in aught-six …
Joyce H
@Mnemosyne:
What’s funny is that I AM a twin, and my sister and I never once tried a trading places stunt. I just didn’t think it was possible and I recall as a kid getting offended when someone mistook me for my sister or vice versa. I thought we were each so Unique and Different that mixing us up shouldn’t be possible. As I got older, I realized how dang unobservant people are – they’d go up to Jane and start talking to her thinking she was me when we had drastically different hair lengths and colors.
Joyce H
Weighing in on the ebooks versus paper topic, these days I’m almost all ebooks and do most of my reading on my phone. (I’ve got both the Kindle and Nook apps – they’re free!) When I was a kid, I was that geek who always had her nose in a book, and now I look just like everyone else – we’re all staring at our phones.
I’m going back and rereading a series I dropped out of a while ago – I have the first books in HARDBACK, and man, when you’re out of the habit, reading hardbacks isn’t for sissies! If I decide to continue on with the series, the new purchases will be ebook.
But it’s interesting to note how many people are still eschewing ebooks. My books are only available in ebook version, but Amazon now has a ‘create paperback’ function which I intend to figure out soon and issue my books in a paper edition. Sounds like there’s an entire market out there that I have yet to tap!
J R in WV
I have to confess that I love paper books, and my last project before having shoulder replacement surgeries was a huge bookcase in a newly available space in our basement.
But when we travel, I still need to read for an hour or so at bedtime, and that is only possible on the road with ebooks, or a large crate of books you can’t carry around on a tour, or as checked baggage on a flight. So I bought lots of ebooks before our last trip.
That tablet died, although I may be able to transfer data from it to the newer tablet. I love to read too much to give it up for 2 weeks! Plus when you travel, you can download books about the area you will be visiting! Wonderful !
Am I the only person sad to see the Eagle Cam at night, with a freaking lamp shining on an eagle who should be sound asleep? Wrong and evil! Either turn the lights/camera off or get a night-vision camera!! But let the Eagle get a good nights sleep!
David Swenson
Dear Betty,
I love it when you talk dirty.
Best,
Dave
O. Felix Culpa
@J R in WV: Actually, the eagles are ok. I was concerned about the night lighting too, but saw the following on the eagle cam website:
Denali
@dance around your bones,
Good to hear from you!
@Betty Cracker,
Preach it!
J R in WV
@O. Felix Culpa:
Thanks~! Don’t know how I missed that, I read the details about the birds pretty closely.
We now have quite a few nesting eagles here in WV, in the Bluestone and New River gorges especially, there’s lots of fish in those rivers!
Mrs J and I were with friends in Colorado a couple of years ago, driving into the mountains along US 50 alongside the Arkansas river, and she saw an eagle take a big fish, probably a trout, right out of the water she was looking at! Lots of wild nature on trips out west!
LongHairedWeirdo
Well said. My visceral reaction is not to TRUMP. It’s to hateful, ignorant bigotry combined with ruthless incompetence, criminal behavior, a lack of ethics that is really quite amazing, and YES I am remembering the rest of the Republican party, thank you….
NOBODY expects The Donald Presidency… it’s main weapon is stealth bigotry… stealth bigotry and fear mongering… its TWO main weapons are stealth bigotry and fear mongering… and ignorance. It’s THREE main weapons are bigotry, fear mongering, ignorance, and a fanatical devotion to incompetence…
AMONGST its weapons are such diverse elements as bigotry, fear, ignorance, and a fanatical devotion to incompetence….