Marty Kaplan holds the Norman Lear Chair at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. His Jewish Journal columns have won First Place in the Southern California Journalism Awards six times in the past six years. Reach him at martyk@jewishjournal.com
When it comes to politics, today’s college freshmen resemble their baby boomer parents of 40 years ago in all ways except two. One way makes perfect sense; the other is a puzzle.
Have you noticed that when people complain about bias in the media, it\’s always bias against their own point of view and never bias in favor of their side?
Where were all the people of Gaza rising up in outrage when Hamas used them as human shields?
I don\’t know about you, but I\’ve had it up to here with once-in-a-lifetime events.
The average broadband offering in Japan is 10 times faster than the average service available to U.S. consumers — at half the cost. People in countries like Finland, France, Korea, Sweden and Italy also pay less to get more.
The prospect of Zell\’s dumping Tribune assets at fire-sale prices has renewed speculation about the Los Angeles Times being returned to local ownership.
When the obituary for American journalism is eventually written, a milestone in the journey to its death rattle will surely be the column that The New York Times\’ ombudsman, Clark Hoyt.
Maybe the only way you can put down roots in California is with the thought that every place has its own risks, its tornadoes and hurricanes and lightning, that driving on the freeway is even more dangerous than living on a fault line.
As I drove across Los Angeles on election night, I saw clusters of teens and kids in their 20s celebrating on random street corners, high-fiving drivers at red lights. They may not have marched on the Pentagon to end the war in Iraq, but they have given the nation a new president who has pledged to do just that. For the first time since the springtime of the baby boomers, they have become not just consumers to be marketed to, but a political force to be reckoned with.
So John McCain — while claiming that not he\’s not impugning Barack Obama\’s patriotism — impugns Barack Obama\’s patriotism, but we\’re supposed to understand that it doesn\’t really matter, because that\’s just what people do in campaigns.
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