Quote Of The Day - Here and Now Edition

April 14th, 2011

SFWeekly blogger Matt Smith opens his piece on this past weekend's intense debate between the NY Times' Bill Keller and Wikileaks' Julian Assange at U.C. Berkeley by humorously summing up each man's basic assessment of the other.

"​Julian Assange is a paranoid, misguided, smelly bag lady -- not an open government hero. And New York Times executive editor Bill Keller? Well, he is a cynical dissembler interested more in covering his own ass than telling the truth."

Smith's coverage is very entertaining indeed and definitely recommended.

The Totalitarian Impulse Toward Wikileaks

Dec 23rd, 2010

Over at Rolling Stone, Tim Dickinson makes the case that Bill Keller, executive editor of the NY Times, would have done exactly as Julian Assange did at Wikileaks had it been the Times which had received the massive number of leaked cables from our government. 

He then asks us to try and picture our political class calling for the same level of malevolent legal action or even violence against Keller:

"The behavior is outrageous on its face and totalitarian in its impulse. Indeed, we should all be alarmed at the Orwellian coloring of the Obama administration’s official response to the publishing of the cables:

“President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal.”

Secrecy is openness. What the fuck?!"