Today we're reviewing some points I raised earlier in the blog and their progress since I wrote about them.

1. Terry Schiavo: speaking of cheap political exploitation, the parents sold their mailing list to some GOP direct marketers, in case you were wondering where their principles are.

2. For close to two years, I've been warning people of the dangers of generating ill will abroad. International goodwill, I was remarking to a friend one day, is very difficult to build but terribly easy to squander. The Bush White House response to the problems generated by their clumsy foreign policy is to rehire Karen Walker to run a United States Government PR department to "sell America" abroad. How utterly… corporate.

3. I mentioned the impulse of cable news toward unseemly inclusiveness in the context of "intelligent design" and the new creationists hijacking liberal tolerance (which, by the way, I appreciate, as a serious student of politics).

TV has a McLuhanesque problem when it comes to promoting "fair" coverage, which is that arguments must be abbreviated into tiny segments so as not to lose the viewer's attention. It's partly the constraints of the media which make it possible for TV to try and sell "fairness" as giving any two opposing viewpoints equal time. Consider how the point-counterpoint format gives the appearance of being fair ("equal time"), while obscuring the important larger statements being made in the <b>choice</b> of viewpoints.

At any rate, I heard that C-SPAN was set to include a Holocaust denier to "balance out" an actual scholar–Deborah Lipstat, who refused to appear in light of this decision. The holders of any viewpoint deserve their free speech and their day in court, both of which have already been afforded to the revisionist historians in question. People should read John Stuart Mill's defense of free speech–in a nutshell, free speech is a preeminently good idea because allows truth not only to be aired, but challenged. But repeating and amplifying a proven lie is not the kind of choice a responsible network would make. Giving liars a soapbox and a megaphone is hardly as worthy an exercise of free speech as defending them from government prosecution for speaking.

6. Egyptian political reforms? Empty threats as long as Mubarak's main opposition candidate remains in jail.

7. "The Iraq war isn't over by a longshot" –Dec. 15th, 2003

8. "Reports on life in Iraq now do sound terrible; violent crime, riots, looting, no water, no electricity, massive unemployment, foreign companies coming in to take oil profits, etc." –Jul. 18th, 2003