‘digital pamphleteer’

A 2008 film on Steve Benen

Steve Benen: And that’s a wrap ….  this is my very last post here at the Washington Monthly. I’ll start my new gig at MSNBC on Monday, Jan. 30…..

I am thrilled to be passing the torch to one of my very favorite writers …. Ed Kilgore will get started here tomorrow….

…. I wasn’t prepared to leave this job unless something truly special came along, and fortunately for me, something did. The chance to work for Rachel Maddow and MSNBC is a dream gig that I couldn’t be more excited about.

….  I lack the words to tell you how much I appreciate the support and encouragement.

And with that, I’m off. Be nice to the new guy – no hazing, please – and I hope to see you all on Monday morning.

Full post here

You can send your best wishes to Steve Benen at Twitter or in the comments at the link above

now hiring

These and more jobs here

‘digital pamphleteer’

I posted this video a few months back, so in case any of you who missed it would like to see it … here it is again.

As you might possibly have guessed (!) from the number of times I post his stuff here, there are few political writers I admire more than Steve Benen (Washington Monthly). What I love most about him is that, unlike most self-described ‘progressives’, when he disagrees with President Obama on an issue there’s no hysteria or personal abuse, he just calmly, rationally and factually argues his point – and there are few people more persuasive than him.

This is a short film from 2008 about his work as a blogger, entitled ‘Digital Pamphleteer’. It includes footage of Mario Cuomo’s wonderful ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ speech.

Read Steve Benen here every day

jfk … history online

AP: Caroline Kennedy unveiled the nation’s first online presidential archive Thursday, a $10 million project to digitize the most important papers, photographs and recordings of President John F. Kennedy’s days in office.

Users can sort through the drafts of Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you,” speech and see how he tinkered with the words of that most famous line from his inauguration. Or they can listen to his personal phone calls and read his letters.

….After four years of work, the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston has made that a reality. Archivists digitized over 200,000 pages, 1,200 recordings and 300 museum artifacts, as well as reels of film and hundreds of photographs….

….For students across the country, the online archive will mean access to primary documents for school research. They could examine Kennedy’s correspondence with Martin Luther King Jr. from the time they first met to the time King was jailed in Birmingham, Ala.

Drafts of Kennedy’s speeches show how he was writing and editing along with speechwriter Theodore Sorensen, giving people a sense of the president’s power as a writer…

…January 20 is the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s inauguration….

John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum here

snapper-in-chief

“The pictures better be good”

President Barack Obama points at photographers during the reading of the citation for Steven Sasson, for the invention of the digital camera, during presentation for the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at a ceremony November 17 in the East Room of the White House

Text of remarks