1. Impeachment Update: In the opening day of Trump's trial, it seemed to me that his lawyers essentially conceded that he is either guilty of inciting the Capitol riot or so delusional that he should be declared incompetent to stand trial at all. They argued that since the voters threw him out of office (which he steadfastly denies) he cannot be impeached and removed now, because he's already gone. Yet as the prosecution clearly established, he exhorted his followers to storm the Capitol to "take back the government." In fact, day one confirmed he has no viable defense. Yet his jury of peers appears ready to acquit him, leaving this crime unpunished in the Constitutionally mandated process. That would suggest there will be criminal proceedings in at least one venue or another, since this is such a heinous crime it cannot go unpunished if our system of law is to remain viable.
2. One of the more dangerous trends inside media companies in recent years is to emphasize "engagement" as a business strategy. That word is code for generating success via social media, although many media companies mask its meaning by defining it as a metric for measuring which stories resonate better than others.
As anyone active in social media knows -- or should know -- the stories that resonate are the emotion-based stories, not necessarily the most significant stories.
Implicit in these companies' calculations is a bias toward *positive* audience responses, as opposed to negative ones, which might cause cancellations, denunciations, and other "kill the messenger" actions. So what these companies are really saying is that the algorithm-driven distribution available through Facebook, Google and Twitter is now their main goal.
One problem here is the greatest contributions journalists can make are investigative stories and those stories cause more trouble than praise. They draw angry reactions, threats of lawsuits and worse. All of that is another form of "engagement," but not the kind media company executives are looking for...They want the heart emoticon.
3. The World Health Organization team is done in Wuhan and has concluded that the novel coronavirus probably originated from an animal, not human error from the bioengineering research lab there. While I doubt this is the final word on the subject, we are apparently going to have to wait for a journalist/historian like Edward Hooper ("The River") to uncover the truth of the origin of this scourge. Hooper did that for the origin of HIV/AIDS.
4. Reuters reports that a U.S. military exercise occurred in the South China Sea as part of the ongoing tension between China and the U.S. over Taiwan's status as an independent country. China, of course, claims Taiwan as part of its nation. At the end of World War II, when huge numbers of Chinese fleeing Communism on the mainland relocated to Taiwan, they overwhelmed a native population that survives to this day with its own language and cultural traditions. Representatives of the native Taiwanese were active at Stanford when I was a visiting professor there (2002-'05), which is when I first learned of this matter.
But the real reason this news item today caught my eye is that once upon a time, believe it or not, I witnessed a secret U.S. military exercise in the South China Sea! I was not there as a journalist, merely an escapist seeking the most remote tropical paradise island I could locate in the area. I was on vacation. Locals had advised me to go to the place, and it did not disappoint except for one thing. The sudden appearance of those giant American ships on the horizon did sort of kill the buzz of the whole "remote island" fantasy I had going on...
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The heds:
* Senate votes 56-44 to proceed with impeachment trial. (CNN)
* The coronavirus most likely first appeared in humans after jumping from an animal, a team of international and Chinese scientists looking for the origins of COVID-19 said Tuesday, dismissing as unlikely an alternate theory that the virus leaked from a Chinese lab. A closely watched visit by World Health Organization experts to Wuhan — the Chinese city where the first coronavirus cases were discovered — did not dramatically change the current understanding of the early days of the pandemic, said Peter Ben Embarek, the leader of the WHO mission. (AP)
* Crisis Spurs Congress Toward Big Measures to Lift Families From Poverty -- Lawmakers, including at least one Republican, are focused on providing monthly payments to help families with children make ends meet. (NYT)
Beat on, cheat on, mistreat you
Simplify you, classify you
Deny, defy, mystify you
Is baby, be friends with you
Baby, be friends with you
Frighten you or uptighten you
Drag you down or drain you down
Chain you down or bring you down
Is baby, be friends with you
Baby, be friends with you
Dock or rock or lock you up
Analyze you, categorize you
Finalize or advertise you
Is baby, be friends with you
Baby, be friends with you
Race or chase or track or trace you
Or disgrace you or displace you
Or define you or confine you
Is baby, be friends with you
Baby, be friends with you
Now I don't want to meet your kin
Make you spin or do you in
Or select you or dissect you
Or inspect you or reject you
Is baby, be friends with you
Baby, be friends with you
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