A Little Of The Old In And Out



(image via abcnews)

In: Tribalism. "Protectionism," predicted Pat Buchanan on last week's McLaughlin Group, "is on the rise, in China, India and the good old USA." And he could have said the same of Protectionism's cousin -- Tribalism. It is this "Us-versus-Them philosophy of life where security is based in the tribe (usually one's race and religion) that rises in times of national economic hardship and national disarray. Senator Barack Obama, the first African-American nominee of a major party, is stirring tribal responses in places like "Pennsyltucky," as today's NYTimes article highlights:

"To roam the rural reaches of western Pennsylvania, through largely white working-class counties, is to understand the breadth of the challenge facing the two presidential candidates. But this economically ravaged region, once so solidly Democratic, poses a particular hurdle for Senator Obama.

"From the desolation of Aliquippa — where the Jones & Laughlin steel mill loomed at the foot of the main boulevard — to the fading beauty of Beaver Falls to the neatly tended homes of retired steel workers in Hopewell, one hears much hesitating talk about Mr. Obama, some simply quizzical or skeptically political, and some not-so-subtly racial.

"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York ran 40 percentage points ahead of Mr. Obama here during the Democratic primary. With its neighborhoods of white working-class laborers and retirees and fraying party loyalties, it has become a most uncertain political terrain and an inviting target for Mr. McCain — and one that could tip the electoral balance in Pennsylvania, a place packed with electoral votes."

(image via investorspot)

Out: Time Delaying The Olympics. Time delay?! What was NBC thinking? What they gained in control-freakiness, the paleosaur suits at NBC Universal lost in interactivity and thus Olympic dominance (and why pay a billion dollars not to have Olympic dominance?). As WIRED writes, "Yahoo Sports, which has its own dedicated Olympics website, has announced that, for the first three days of the Olympic Games, its Olympics site generated over 8 million unique users, 1.3 million more than NBC's site received, according to comScore Media Metrix, a company that measures internet use." From paidcontent:

"We spend a lot of time separating the wheat from the chaff around here so you don’t have to and the latest broadband release from NBC requires just that. The network is mixing Nielsen stats for the week ending 8/10 and Hitwise stats through 8/18 with overall stats for the first 12 days of the Beijing Games, the former as part of a traffic table tennis match with Yahoo.

".. The release is also NBC’s deferred response to Yahoo’s boast about beating the U.S. home of the Olympics in the early days of the 2008 Beijing games. The network refused our repeated requests to comment on Yahoo’s comScore-based comparison showing that the portal’s Olympics site outweighed the network’s by 1.3 million uniques during the the week ending Aug. 10; that included the first three days of the Olympics.

".. NBC should be outdrawing Yahoo and everyone else in the U.S. when it comes to the online Olympics. Its web and WAP sites have received millions worth of promotions and the real shocker would be if it turned out to be the broadband equivalent of the Dream Team. But it left a door open with the decision to time-delay broadband video of major events. Without that, Yahoo probably wouldn’t have had a ping-pong ball to hit."