1 Boring Old Man

feuil·le·ton (fy-tô) n. 1. a. The part of a European newspaper devoted to light fiction, reviews, and articles of general entertainment. b. An article appearing in such a section. 2. a. A novel published in installments. b. A light, popular work of fiction. 3. A short literary essay or sketch. [French, from feuillet, sheet of paper, little leaf, diminutive of feuille, leaf, from Old French foille, from Latin folium; see bhel- in Indo-European roots.] [from The Free Dictionary]

From the definition, a fueilleton sounds a whole lot like a modern "blog" essay to me. Why bring it up, you ask? How about this. Marcy Wheeler, known to us as emptywheel on The Next Hurrah, has a Ph.D. from Ann Arbor in Comparative Literature. Her dissertation was entitled:

Street Level Intersections of Modernity in the Czech, Argentine, and French Feuilleton ^[1].

It was apparently about the place and importance of these short, light, newspaper essays in the early globalization of the mid-nineteenth century. So, Marcy has now made a solid place for herself as a blogger writing short, light-hearted [but deadly serious] pieces on the Internet as part of the global net-roots movement. She’s live-blogging the Libby Trial in Washington as we speak [though right this minute, the Firedoglake.com server is not responding! Update: It’s back!].

How’s that for putting one’s education into action?

Meet (and Greet) the Press

For the record, I’d like to catalog he number of, um, questionable, conversations with journalists that Scooter Libby had. By that, I mean just conversations where he spoke to journalists at a rather convenient time… Now, before anyone presumes to claim this is unique to Scooter, let me admit that Rove and Armitage have done the same. Rove and Armitage are as bad as Libby. But that doesn’t make Libby any worse. So let’s look at how the three main journalists who could put Libby into jail had remarkably timed conversations with the chap.

• Novak
• Russert
• Judy

…

So let me review.

• Libby talked with Robert Novak, according to his own testimony, in July 2003, after it had been confirmed that Novak had outed a CIA operative.
• Libby spoke with Russert during the time it became clear that Fitzgerald would subpoena journalists–and possibly in the weeks between the time he first appeared before the JG (in which it became clear he was in deep shit) and his second appearance.
• Libby spoke with Judy Judy Judy (according to her) in August 2003, before the investigation, but after the time it became clear this was heading for an investigation.

Gosh. This guy has good timing. I’m sure it’s just good luck.