My Top 5 Twittering Journalists

I’m a news junkie.

There. I said it.

And technology is my persistent enabler.

Because of Twitter, folks on the other side of the world can learn instantaneously of a plane crash, a protest, or a passing. Thomas Friedman will need to revise The World is Flat—again.

While the efforts of citizen-journalists are laudable, I still depend on credentialed members of the press. Luckily for us, a pantheon of journalists opened Twitter accounts, posting 140-character news alerts and links to substantive articles and blog posts.

Here are my top five twittering journalists:

5.) @chrislhayes: Chris Hayes, Washington, D.C. Editor of The Nation.
Why you should follow him: Young, hip geek. His tweets convey genuine emotions towards political haps. It’s cute.


4.) @nytimeskristof: Nicholas Kristof, New York Times Columnist (and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner) and family man
Why you should follow him: The life of a famous, world-trekking journalist is tough. It’s endearing to see him discuss both. He is constantly tweeting from all over the world. His life is awesome—yours, not so much. So live vicariously through him.


3.) @anncurry: Ann Curry, Correspondent and Anchor, Today Show, Dateline NBC
Why you should follow her: As one of the more reputable tv news correspondents, she has to be constantly up-to-date. She does a great job at delivering breaking news just milliseconds after news breaks. Just a week before Iranians went to the polls in mid-June, she tweeted stunning pictures and provocative observations. Before she goes to bed every night, she tweets profound and inspiring quotes.


2.) @DavidShuster: David Shuster, MSNBC anchor
Why you should follow him: His tweets are honest and more often than not, bitingly sarcastic. It’s so obvious when he’s frustrated or disappointed re: political haps.


1.) @jdickerson: John Dickerson, Chief Political Correspondent for Slate magazine
Why you should follow him: Because I’m personally a huge fan of his work. He tweets about current events, his own analysis, his family/home life, and sometimes a combination of all those things.


Other notable Tweeters:
@newmediajim – I think he’s on the camera side of news events, press briefings, etc. Tweets when/where he’ll be shooting. Refers to family members as newmediakid and newmediawife. And it feels like you're getting an inside scoop when he says he setting up at the White House.
@maddow – Just because Rachel Maddow is so disarming.
@anamariecox – She founded Wonkette. Enough said.

You can get a day’s worth of news just by looking at the Trending Topics. It seems so natural for journalists to utilize Twitter. Twitter allows journalists to write about what matters to them, rather than what network bosses deem "newsworthy," (i.e. Paris Hilton leaving the jail, Mountain lions running amuck along on a freeway, celebrity surgical enhancements, etc.) and will attract viewer and generate mountains of moolah from advertising.

New media, user-generated social networking sites, and politics--we've come a long way. During the America's colonial period, isolating social unrest was too easy because you can only ride so fast on a horse. News, as the colonists had it, was often days, weeks, or months old. And now, Twitter is starting to make online news look slow.

Authoritarian states are intimidated by the site, fearing it spreads social unrest. Recent events in Iran, Honduras, and China prove this. Thus, the adage: The tweet is mightier than the sword.

Golden Gate Park

I ventured into Golden Gate Park on Independence Eve. Lovely roses, waterfalls, and streams...sigh.

Walking down the aisle. ("Sweet Thing" by Chaka Khan is playing in the background..)

Golden oldies

Comfort music.

Currently gracing my desktop wallpaper is

Lt. Dan Choi.

He graduated from West Point in 2003 in Environmental Engineering and Arabic. (He was one of just eight Arabic graduates in his year.) From 2006 to 2007, he served in Iraq (an Arabic-speaking country!) as an infantry platoon leader. In June '08, he transferred to the New York National Guard.

Despite his impressive resume, (I hope to add "Fluent in Arabic" to my skills section someday,) he was recently kicked out of the army because he said he was gay.

I know, my jaw just fell from face when I first heard this on the Rachel Maddow show. Doesn't that just make you cringe in shock and dismay?!

Say you're on the 11th floor of a burning building. Do you ask, "Hey, Mr. Fire Fighter, can I just ask, are you gay?" And if he says, "Why yes, I am," do you then ask for a different fire fighter to save your burning a$%? Will you refuse help from a skilled professional because he or she is gay?

Lt. Choi’s discharge highlights/bolds/italicize the inherently counterproductive nature of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It's simply appalling that it still exists.

Please join me in petitioning our government to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. (I already gave the President my two cents about it and I’m still waiting to hear back. I understand, he’s a busy guy.)

You can tell your representative, one of our senators, or the President himself.

(The picture of Lt. Choi is from the No H8 Campaign, a non-profit that is protesting Prop. 8 with photography.)

Repeat Assault

My soundtrack for this past week almost entirely consisted of Kings of Leon. And it's still playing. Great band, great music. Lead singer, Caleb Followill, has intoxicating, (and sometimes inviting,) vocals.





(And yes, that was me rocking out to this song at the Jamba Juice parking lot the other day.)

And one more Palin piece for today...

And that insidious winking! Or for some gentleman, t'was the wink felt 'round the world.

Can you say, HEEBIE JEEBIES?!

Remember Rich Lowry from the National Review?

A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It's one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O'Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.

I think I just vomited a little.

Anytime now, Gov Palin will say "Zap! Gotcha there!"

I know many of you are lamenting Sarah's Palin resignation as Alaska's governor for the past 942-ish days (she spent a few months maverickin' and barracudin' on the campaign trail).

But if you're like me, I'm stunned she decided to step down. She has but a year or so until the end of her first term. But noooo, she doesn't want to put Alaska or herself with having "lame duck status." No, she says, that would be inefficient. She promised efficiency to her constituents, so she's cutting her her term short so she could stay true to her word. Huhhhh?

Is she joshing?

Read the full text of Sarah Palin's (confusing/rambling/maverickilicious) resignation speech here.

Let us hope she fades into obscurity along the likes of Monica Lewinsky or the Backstreet Boys.

(Only because I want to be able to listen to Hall and Oates again!)

Who is Ezra Nawi?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be simply defined by religious, racial or historical terms. It is dangerous for a non-Israeli or a non-Palestinian to take sides because the situation is extremely layered in complexities.

Moreover, it is impossible to view in the situation in terms of black and white or moral and immoral. The Palestinian side is divided, the most famous of which is between Hamas and Fatah.

What you don't often see in the cable news channels is the divisions among Israelis. The media has failed to present the folks who do not readily subscribe to the prevailing notion of an Israeli Jew.

One account is Ezra Nawi. In an article in The Nation, he reveals the "culture of deceit that has taken over all official discourse relating to the Occupied Palestinian Territories," in Israel. His account is deeply moving and a provocative reminder of the ongoing strife that is continually difficult to deal with.

Despite petitions on Nawi's behalf, he will be sentenced in July after the courts found him guilty of "assaulting two police officers in 2007 while struggling against the demolition of a Palestinian house in Um El Hir, located in the southern part of the West Bank."

Even more tragic is that he was found guilty by the same bodies that promote and enable grave injustice against humanity. He elucidates:

Was I the one who beat young Palestinian children?

Did I hit the elderly?

Did I poison the Palestinian residents' sheep?

Did I demolish homes and destroy tractors?

Did I block roads and restrict movement?

Was I the one who prevented people from connecting their homes to running water and electricity?

Did I forbid Palestinians from building homes?

Over the past eight years, I have seen with my own two eyes hundreds of abuses such as these and exposed them to the public--therefore I am considered a provocateur. I can only say that I am proud to be a provoker.

Because I am a provoker, the police together with their allies have threatened me, beaten me and arrested me on numerous occasions. And when I continued to "provoke" them, they did not hesitate to out me as a gay man; indeed, they spread rumors among the Palestinians with whom I work that I have AIDS.

One of the reasons I have been singled out has to do with who I am. It is difficult to explain, but as a Mizrahi Jew (descended from Jewish communities in the Arab and Muslim world), a gay man and a plumber, I do not belong to the elite of Israeli society and do not fit the stereotype of the Israeli peacenik--namely, an intellectual Jew of Ashkenazi decent. Actually, the police officers who constantly arrest me and I are part of the same social strata. I was programmed like them, have a similar accent, know their jargon and our historical background is comparable. And yet, in their eyes I am on and for the other side, the Palestinian side.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has proven itself to be so enduring, that it even outlives plagues and wars. Even in the spirit of hope, Pres. Obama does not seem to be a promising agent of change in this foreign policy area.

"They only happen because this whole country is just full of people, who when these things happen, they just say these things happen,"

"and that's why they happen!" (It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World)


I don't feel bad for Gov. Sanford and Sen. Ensign. But I do sympathize with their families (especially the kids!) and their friends.

And it must suck to be in the Republican Party right now.

Via The Stakeholder, polls conducted this month show approval ratings for the Republican Party between 29-36%:
And I doubt these recent events will bode well for the GOP, since good ol' fashioned family values is seem to constitute a significant reason for the Obamas' popularity.

I'm not surprised at all by Ensign's and Sanford's recent admissions, since I've come to believe that those God-fearin' types (or those that align themselves with,) that fiercely propagate family values of "Pro-America," commit the most insane abominations in the political and social spheres.

Upon learning about Sanford's extracurricular activity in Argentina, I was quickly reminded of comments Angie Harmon gave in an interview with Foxnews.com:

I think one of the greatest things about the Republican Party is the understanding, we don't point fingers and we have class...

Classy means:
-cheating on your wife
-cheating on your wife with a staffer
-cheating on your wife with a staffer who's husband is also one of your staffers
-giving your mistress/staffer a raise
-"disappearing" to meet with your Argentinian mistress

Seems like the GOP is very empathetic since the question of resignations have yet to be discussed.

---
After reading John Dickerson, I want to clarify some things. Cheating on your spouse is not a GOP thing. Obviously. It's endemic among people in power. But I think it proves that social/religious values should not be integrated in politics.

Don't tout family/Christian values and use it to defend your position on abortion & same-sex marriage. The Bible has a special place in your home or church, but not in Congress.

Even good people make huge mistakes. But if politicians want the public to trust them based on merit alone, then don't stuff religious values into policy-making.

We won't mess with your personal lives, if you don't mess with ours.

Repeat Assault

My ears embraced the sounds of The Deadly Syndrome live on two occasions, and as a result, they are my favorite indie band. And the melody of this song is hammered into my head:

Major wagging of the finger

The dorms at UCLA already look like the Bellagio as it is--now they're saying they are: "Army of workers rush to turn dorms into conference digs for summer."

But I do miss the dorm food (trust me, the meals are exquisite).

"This is not about the United States or the West, this is about the people of Iran, and the future that they-and only they-will choose."

Obama held a press conference today and his first topic of discussion (and the bulk of the questions afterward) focused on Iran. John Nichols of The Nation blogged about the fine line Obama must walk:

More bluntly than at any point yet, Obama decried the violence.

"The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments of the last few days," he declared. "I strongly condemn these unjust actions."

Even that may not have been so bold a statement as Obama's Republican critics have been calling for -- and that some European leaders have issued. But the president's other statements on the crisis offered a reminder of the tightrope the president is walking with regard to Iran.

Because of the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and because the Bush-Cheney administration so frequently poked at Iran -- rhetorically and practically -- the United States is seen as a manipulative player in the region.

We don't know what will happen in Iran, but Obama is treading the waters cautiously and with the cunning we have come to expect.