It occurred to me tonight, in a blinding flash of depression, how adept I've become at reading between the media lines lately. For example, in
this story, we have the following quote:
The debate over whether Hashemi should have been admitted to Yale in the first place played out on editorial pages and Web logs and in letters to the editor of the Yale Alumni Magazine.
One small group of alumni urged people to mail press-on nails to Yale officials, a reference to the Taliban's threat to pull out the fingernails of women who wore nail polish.
one small group...one small group...
Now, the actual issue of Hashemi isn't really relevant to this diary: what I'm more concerned about is way that I've become practiced at picking up little pieces of metadata, like this
One small group of alumni urged people to mail press-on nails to Yale officials, a reference to the Taliban's threat to pull out the fingernails of women who wore nail polish....
"This was a major victory," said Clint Taylor, a 1996 Yale graduate whose Web log originated the nail campaign. "I think Yale made the right decision. It's a shame they had to do it under so much pressure."
[...shades of little purple fingers waving in the air....but I digress...]
And started putting it together to goggle like this, in order to find information like
Clint Taylor on Country for Conservatives
and this(hmm...I wonder what Townhall.com is hiding?
I miss the days when I could just trust the news, and actually start thinking about the issues: but this self-motivated secondary and tertiary research has gotten to be a regular habit. I've gotten to a point now that I actually start to recognize various AP reporter's names and styles: and I mean the obscrure ones.
Is anyone else noticing this about themselves?