An American Lion is on Posterous

Peek Pronto

I like the idea of having an E-mail only device. I know that runs counter to the common perception that we will all have one "tablet" device that will be our phone, our Internet portal, our business portal, our reader, our everything. That's fine for you, but if I'm running a business, I don't necessarily want to have to foot that bill. There's a device out called the Peek Pronto that does one thing--it gives you E-mail.

I'm sure there's a flaw in my thinking here, but I can't really figure out where it is:

Smart phones are getting cheaper and cheaper, with some BlackBerry models available for as little as $30. The monthly bill is another story -- it can be $60 or more for many devices with voice, email and Internet options.

That's a lot to swallow for a recession-strapped consumer. Enter Peek, a start-up that caters to the user who needs email to stay in touch but doesn't want to spend an arm and a leg on devices or data plans.

Peek offers its customers unlimited email and text messaging from its devices for as low as $15 a month, or $20 with no contract.

I decided to test the company's main offering, the Pronto, a handheld mobile email device that costs just $50 when ordered online from Amazon. The company also just launched the Twitter Peek, at $20, which is the first wireless device on the market geared specifically toward Twitter.

Aesthetically, the Pronto is, quite frankly, adorable. It's about the size of a BlackBerry and comes in red, turquoise or gray. When you turn it on, a graphic featuring the letter "P," with an envelope attached to it, greets you. The Pronto guides you through the process of entering your email address and password so that you're set up to begin writing and receiving messages and importing contacts from your address book.

With this device you could cut business costs.

Say you have a business where you have dozens of people who you don't necessarily need to give BlackBerry services or traditional company cell phones but you have no real choice because they need some form of communication with your main office or with a supervisor. What do you do? You give them this device. You give your lower level managers and supervisors the traditional data package, but the drones get these devices.

Several hundred BlackBerrys or twenty BlackBerrys and 180 of these devices. Yes, I think I'll take those numbers any day.

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Baltimore County Police Helicopter Foxtrot (by cooder70 on Flickr)

One of the earliest commenters on my site was someone professing to know the woman whose fiance proposed marriage to her by staging a dangerous, ill-advised, and costly stunt to propose to her. The young man, a relative of mildly powerful Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, and a politician in his own right, took twenty days to finally reimburse the city of Baltimore for the cost of using the officers and their helicopter, pictured above, to stage a fake drug raid in Baltimore Harbor.

Now, finally, over three and a half months since the August 7 incident, a Baltimore police sergeant is being charged:

Baltimore City police say a sergeant who authorized the use of the department's marine unit as part of a Maryland lawmaker's marriage proposal has been charged with misconduct.

On Aug. 7, police boarded a boat Delegate Jon Cardin and his fiancee were on with friends in the Inner Harbor and pretended to search for contraband until Cardin popped the question. A police helicopter flew overhead.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Friday that an internal investigation into the event found that the sergeant, who was not identified, "improperly exercised his discretion" in the incident. He said the matter must go to a police trial board.

Cardin reimbursed police $300 for the incident, gave $1,000 to the department's mounted unit and has repeatedly apologized.

Ah, the privileges of youth and love. Power and money can get you out of anything in a filthy state like Maryland. Nothing will happen, except for the same slap on the wrist that young Cardin received. Thirteen hundred dollars is what to a wealthy political family? How about community service, probation, a night in the pokey, and a ten thousand dollar fine for wasting the efforts of so many law enforcement personnel? You can get into more trouble by calling 911 to ask for a cheeseburger than you can for scaring the living crap out of your fiance with angry drug cops.

I have repeatedly told the children that, since Father is no longer living in Northern Virginia at Seizure World, we're leaving. I don't care what it takes--we're leaving Maryland and we're not coming back. It's like living in a toilet, only with more screaming idiots, corruption, bad stores, stumbling drunks and less blue water.

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This memo about the job performance of Major Nidal Hasan is a kick in the pants:

The memo obtained by National Public Radio said that Hasan, then a captain, was "counseled for inappropriately discussing religious topics" with patients and went through a remediation program for inappropriate documentation of his handling of a homicidal patient during an emergency room encounter.

The document said Hasan's remediation on that problem was successful but added that he was placed on administrative probation at the end of the year for not taking and passing the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination. He later corrected that problem as well, the memo said.

The memo also noted a poor attendance record and lower-than-expected scores on the Psychiatry Resident-In-Training Examination, a yearly exam that Hasan failed to take during one of his residency years.

In his final year of residency, the memo said, Hasan saw 30 patients in 38 weeks and was required to use elective class time to make up the lost clinic time. And, it said, he missed a night of emergency room on-call duty and did not respond to Moran's pages the next day.

"These issues demonstrate a lack of professionalism and work ethics," the memo said. "He is able to self-correct with supervision. However, at this point he should not need so much supervision."

The memo concluded, however, that Hasan's record was not enough to indicate "he is not competent to graduate" or that further academic probation would be helpful.

I believe it was me who said that whoever signed off on this man's promotion should have ALL of their evaluations looked at again for similar examples of gross incompetence. Major Hasan should never have been promoted; he should never have been allowed to remain in the United States Army. He should have been chaptered for having an inability to adapt to Army life. And he should have been arrested when he didn't report to work or respond to the inquiry of his supervisors. I believe they call that Absent Without Leave, and the Medical Corps had better straighten itself out and rejoin the United States Army no sooner than five minutes ago.

What a bald-faced outrage.

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Tiffany Brookes

Tiffany Brookes inadvertently models some "Marxist Pants" for us.

Tiffany Brookes

Marxist Pants are really just blue jeans that have been intentionally given that "distressed" look in order to make us accept socialism. I kid you not.

Tiffany Brookes

Tiffany Brookes just looks fabulous. She's so eager to remove those Marxist Pants, I don't think it really matters at this point.

Tiffany Brookes

Tiffany Brookes has a gallery here...

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There was a stark moment of realization that took place over a year ago when Candidate Obama was wiping the floor with Candidate McCain. Deftly using the war in Afghanistan as a way of bolstering his own lack of foreign policy experience, he spelled out what he was going to do. That's what makes this recent dithering so difficult to accept.

When you see things like this:

For nearly a week, I have been thinking about a comment my friend and fellow civil-military relations specialist Eliot Cohen made in a Washington Post story about President Obama struggling to come to terms with his role as "commander-in-chief." I am quoted in the story, too, but the part that really gripped me was this quote from Cohen:

With this decision, he's really going to own this war, and he's going to be sending young men and women to their deaths. And when that realization sets in, it's a very grim thing. He may have known it intellectually before, but what I think is happening is he's learning it viscerally."

Cohen's larger point, and the general thrust of the article, is spot-on. Throughout the painfully long and awkward Afghan Strategy Review 2.0 -- with all of the back-stabbing leaks and blame-throwing -- it is increasingly clear that the president is visibly wrestling with his commander-in-chief duties, and doing so at a gut level (vice an abstract intellectual level) for the first time.

I also think that Cohen captures accurately the president's own thinking about the gravity of the choice before him: with his decision, Obama will acknowledge that he "owns this war." I have probably said something similar myself in commentary about the strategy review process. But the more I think about it, the more I think that this insight is misleading in a fundamental way. Obama may well think that he does not yet own the Afghan war and will only own it once he finally decides this issue. But in truth he has "owned" the war for many months now, and it is a dangerous conceit for the president or his team to think otherwise.

That's where some try to walk it back and say that President Obama hasn't owned the Afghanistan war for as long as he has, in fact, owned it. This stark exchange last month with Senator John McCain highlights the dithering:

President Obama met with House and Senate leaders of both parties at the White House yesterday to discuss the future of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, and there was at least one pointed exchange.

Inside the State Dining Room, where the meeting was held, Mr. Obama's Republican opponent in last year's presidential race, Sen. John McCain, told the president that he should not move at a "leisurely pace" on a decision over whether to increase U.S. troops in the region, according to people in the room.

That comment later drew a sharp response from the president. Mr. Obama said no one felt more urgency than he did about the war, and there would not be nothing leisurely about it.

McCain has been a very public advocate to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, an approach advocated by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top military commander in the country.

For the most part, House and Senate leaders emerged from the nearly 90-minute conversation with Mr. Obama offering praise for his candor and interest in listening. But politically speaking, all sides appeared to exit where they entered, with Republicans pushing him to follow his military commanders and Democrats saying he should not be rushed.

That meeting took place on October 6 and today is November 18. Nothing has been decided, much has been leaked, and the dithering continues. This is a President who fails to understand what it is he owns and doesn't own. He doesn't own Iraq, but he does own Afghanistan. He really took ownership on the day that General David McKiernan was fired. He had de facto ownership on Inauguration Day, of course. But, terms of the way forward and in terms of in the American political arena, he owned Afghanistan after this exchange in the first debate between himself and the hapless Senator John McCain:

[Jim] LEHRER: ...And it goes to you, Senator Obama, and it’s a — it picks up on a point that’s already been made. Do you think more troops — more U.S. troops should be sent to Afghanistan, how many, and when?

OBAMA: Yes, I think we need more troops. I’ve been saying that for over a year now.

And I think that we have to do it as quickly as possible, because it’s been acknowledged by the commanders on the ground the situation is getting worse, not better.

We had the highest fatalities among U.S. troops this past year than at any time since 2002. And we are seeing a major offensive taking place — Al Qaida and Taliban crossing the border and attacking our troops in a brazen fashion. They are feeling emboldened.

And we cannot separate Afghanistan from Iraq, because what our commanders have said is we don’t have the troops right now to deal with Afghanistan.

So I would send two to three additional brigades to Afghanistan. Now, keep in mind that we have four times the number of troops in Iraq, where nobody had anything to do with 9/11 before we went in, where, in fact, there was no Al Qaida before we went in, but we have four times more troops there than we do in Afghanistan.

And that is a strategic mistake, because every intelligence agency will acknowledge that Al Qaida is the greatest threat against the United States and that Secretary of Defense Gates acknowledged the central front — that the place where we have to deal with these folks is going to be in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.

So here’s what we have to do comprehensively, though. It’s not just more troops. We have to press the Afghan government to make certain that they are actually working for their people. And I’ve said this to President Karzai.

Number two, we’ve got to deal with a growing poppy trade that has exploded over the last several years.

Number three, we’ve got to deal with Pakistan, because Al Qaida and the Taliban have safe havens in Pakistan, across the border in the northwest regions, and although, you know, under George Bush, with the support of Senator McCain, we’ve been giving them $10 billion over the last seven years, they have not done what needs to be done to get rid of those safe havens.

And until we do, Americans here at home are not going to be safe.

LEHRER:Afghanistan, Senator McCain?

MCCAIN: First of all, I won’t repeat the mistake that I regret enormously, and that is, after we were able to help the Afghan freedom fighters and drive the Russians out of Afghanistan, we basically washed our hands of the region.

And the result over time was the Taliban, Al Qaida, and a lot of the difficulties we are facing today. So we can’t ignore those lessons of history.

Now, on this issue of aiding Pakistan, if you’re going to aim a gun at somebody, George Shultz, our great secretary of state, told me once, you’d better be prepared to pull the trigger.

I’m not prepared at this time to cut off aid to Pakistan. So I’m not prepared to threaten it, as Senator Obama apparently wants to do, as he has said that he would announce military strikes into Pakistan.

We’ve got to get the support of the people of — of Pakistan. He said that he would launch military strikes into Pakistan.

Now, you don’t do that. You don’t say that out loud. If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government.

Now, the new president of Pakistan, Kardari (sic), has got his hands full. And this area on the border has not been governed since the days of Alexander the Great.

I’ve been to Waziristan. I can see how tough that terrain is. It’s ruled by a handful of tribes.

And, yes, Senator Obama calls for more troops, but what he doesn’t understand, it’s got to be a new strategy, the same strategy that he condemned in Iraq. It’s going to have to be employed in Afghanistan.

And we’re going to have to help the Pakistanis go into these areas and obtain the allegiance of the people. And it’s going to be tough. They’ve intermarried with Al Qaida and the Taliban. And it’s going to be tough. But we have to get the cooperation of the people in those areas.

And the Pakistanis are going to have to understand that that bombing in the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad was a signal from the terrorists that they don’t want that government to cooperate with us in combating the Taliban and jihadist elements.

So we’ve got a lot of work to do in Afghanistan. But I’m confident, now that General Petraeus is in the new position of command, that we will employ a strategy which not only means additional troops — and, by the way, there have been 20,000 additional troops, from 32,000 to 53,000, and there needs to be more.

So it’s not just the addition of troops that matters. It’s a strategy that will succeed. And Pakistan is a very important element in this. And I know how to work with him. And I guarantee you I would not publicly state that I’m going to attack them.

Now, how many people are willing to admit that President Obama has, essentially, become John McCain? He certainly won't stand for anyone who isn't an ass kisser.  If we had known then that a President and not a Candidate Obama would adopt the "surge" strategy endorsed by General Petraeus and Senator McCain, and let the generals pour more troops into the region, who would have supported such a thing without a clear exit strategy and a willingness to let a political settlement happen?

I don't think anyone was paying enough attention to the fact that President Obama knew over a year ago that Afghan corruption and the Pakistani safe havens were insurmountable challenges. Were people expecting him to keep Secretary Gates and General Petraeus in place? Instead of admitting then what we've known for a long time, he deftly boxed out Senator McCain and delivered a stunning knockout (even though, at the time, it wasn't one). You can tell that all McCain wanted to say was, "you're lying, and you're going to end up doing it my way anyway."

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The Planet Mars

I hate astrology.

Hate it, hate it, hate it. I hate writing about it. I hate knowing it still exists. I hate how astrologers prey on the ignorant and take their money. I hate how they impart doom and false hope with nothing to back it up.

You have to be terminally stupid and unbelievably naive to believe in astrology. Now, I understand that most people treat it as entertainment. The problem is, rock stupid morons actually believe it is a roadmap for their lives, causing incredible feats of ignorant behavior to come to light. I firmly believe that Nancy Reagan was mislead about astrology, and thought that the science of astronomy was helping her schedule things. I give the Reagans a pass--Hollywood people love to be wowed by astrologers, you know. I give show people the benefit of the doubt. They don't have access to good prep schools, you see.

I'm not surprised that rogue astrologers are getting into trouble in the far east. What's sad is that a rogue astrologer can destabilize a military dictatorship or a corrupt kleptocracy and there's precious little anyone can do about it:

With candles glowing next to his computer, Chandrasiri Bandara, the nation's most popular astrologer, looked at his birth chart and predicted that he would soon be assassinated.

Bandara, 48, fears for his life because of a string of death threats that followed his bold forecast that Sri Lanka's president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, would be booted from office or killed. Bandara was charged with being a threat to national security and jailed for nine days for his premonition this summer.

Though a judge dismissed the case, his brief arrest is being taken seriously in this South Asian nation, where astrologers are so respected that few people arrange marriages or make business decisions, and elections are rarely held, without their consultation.

Being the most popular astrologer in Sri Lanka is like being the most popular John Madden impressionist in this country (Frank Caliendo, your career called--it wants its raison d'etre back, please). I had no idea they were this insane in Sri Lanka. Have they heard of textbooks and the Internet? You have to give them credit for only imprisoning the astrologer for nine days, however. You'd think he'd get at least sixteen and a half days in prison.

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Original Photo Shoot, Runner's World Magazine

I don't know where I stand on this issue. On the one hand, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin posed for this shot, and she posed for it for Runner's World magazine. The context of the photo essay, and the accompanying interview, was to allow her to talk about why she is a runner. Now, Newsweek has appropriated one of the more eye-catching photos and has run it as their cover--changing the context slightly from a photo about physical fitness to one about politics and news.

Sarah Palin's image is everywhere as she launches a highly-anticipated book tour this week, but the former Alaska governor is unhappy with at least one media organization's depiction of her.

Palin took aim at Newsweek's eye-catching cover this week that shows the former vice presidential candidate in her running outfit - an image that was apparently lifted from a Runner's World photo shoot months ago.  Writing on her Facebook page Monday night, Palin said the depiction is flat out "sexist, and oh-so-expected."

"The choice of photo for the cover of this week's Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this 'news' magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant," Palin wrote. "The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist, and oh-so-expected by now."

"If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention – even if out of context," Palin also said.

The photo is accompanied by text that states "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Sarah? She's bad news for the GOP - and for everybody else too."

Would it be fair to take something that someone did for a magazine that covers health and fitness issues--containing a light, almost vapid question and answer about only those topics--and try to apply that context to some other more serious publication? If you'll notice, the running shoes that Palin posed with are conveniently cropped out of the Newsweek cover. [Correction: CNN arbitrarily cropped the cover. I have just seen the Newsweek cover, and her running shoes are NOT cropped out. As the kids say, my bad. ]

The running shoes are what provides much of the context for the photo that you see above. This pose is similar, but the context is still the same--this is about a runner, and her running attire is depicted along with the shoes:

I think there's a case that could be made that the context of the publication matters. Many musicians and comedians have been interviewed for Hustler magazine. Do you suppose that the context of that interview could be one thing, and then trying to run the same interview in Teen Style would make it something frightening and offensive? Would it be fair to take something someone said for one audience and then try to reprint that for another audience?

I learned two things from the Palin interview in Runner's World. One, she has run a marathon in less than four hours, which is pretty impressive. Two, John McCain's sole means of getting exercise is to go wading in a creek.

Now, do you want to know what is really sexist? What is really sexist is to now compare how Palin has been depicted to how Dede Scozzafava has been depicted.

Do you really think that Scozzafava's moderate and mainstream views were the real reason for her rejection? Why would the Republican Party run from a woman who could win a seat in Congresss? Was it because she was some sort of liberal insurgent? Or was some of it driven by her image, which is more of a career woman--more of a real woman--than the image projected by Palin, who is also a career woman, but one who began her career in television and with a beauty pageant. Who's more real to you? I know a lot of people who look more like Scozzafava than Palin, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with either one of them. Our prejudice is towards beauty, in most cases.

What Sarah Palin should take from this incident is this, and this is ultimately how I come down on this issue--you can't pose for photos and not expect the media to change the context, crop out things, and turn them into something that fits their narrative. She should never have expected that her book tour wouldn't be met with some serious pushback.

Posted at my doggone blog...

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I've had a few chances to comment over at Sic Semper Tyrannis about the Major Hasan shooting rampage at Fort Hood, and I don't have much to add here. I agree that he must be tried by the Army, and the gist of my comments are fairly simple to understand--hang the bastard. I hate to be bloodthirsty, and I certainly want him to have a fair trial and all, but the unspeakable cruelty of his betrayal has me baying at the moon. I cannot understand an ounce of sympathy for that man, I truly cannot. His actions were premeditated and treasonous and terroristic in nature.

When I saw this, I froze up:

This Veteran's Day, you can support Under the Hoodand the soldiers who walk through their doors with a cash or in-kind donation, such as books and dvds. Even a small donation will make a difference:

• $10 will buy two reams of paper for flyers and outreach
• $25 will keep the coffee pots perking for two weeks

Click here to see how else you can support Under the Hood (in-kind donations accepted too).

Our soldiers clearly need more care; the last thing they need is to be put into more harm's way. Even US military officers think so--Matthew Hoh resigned from the Foreign Service in protest of the lack of clear mission and achievable results in Afghanistan, and of course the Ft. Hood shooter was a Major who did not wish to be deployed to Afghanistan.

I have disabled the links, and I think it is quite reprehensible for Code Pink to ask for dollars while asserting that Major Hasan had a legitimate concern about being deployed. He did not. He is someone who has never done anything in the military except go to school, get paid a ridiculous amount of money, and fail miserably in terms of honoring the soldiers who came to him for help. There is no PTSD in his makeup. There is only a cowardly hatred for an institution that could have made him a successful person. What other Army would take a man such as this, give him a commission, educate him, and promote him? The Army tried to make something out of Hasan, and Hasan pissed it away like the misguided fool that he is. No matter what anyone says, the order deploying Hasan was a lawful order, and he tried to avoid it by shooting and killing fellow soldiers and a contractor. He's not worth a bullet. He should dangle from a short rope in his wheelchair when they conclude his court martial, and I say that as an opponent of the death penalty. I have seen a little right wing outrage over this, but I doubt if I'll see any media or left-wing outrage over such a blatant attempt at exploiting a shooting rampage. To equate Matthew Hoh--an honorably discharged Veteran--with Major Hasan offends anyone with a brain. I have had my own beef with Hoh, but Hoh is no Hasan, and he shouldn't even appear in the same sentence as Hasan. No decent human being should be smeared that way.

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I'm speaking, of course, about America's most celebrated insane bag of nuts blogger, one Amy Alkon, who seems to be interviewed here for her ability to be crazy and credibly so:

Amy Alkon, a syndicated advice columnist and self-described “manners psycho,” certainly thinks so. Just ask “Barry,” a loud cellphone talker she encountered recently at a Starbucks in Santa Monica, Calif.

“He just blatantly took over the whole place with his conversation, streaming his dull life into everybody’s brain,” Ms. Alkon recalled in a telephone interview.

Among the personal details Barry shared that day — errands to run, plans for the evening — was his phone number, which Ms. Alkon jotted down.

“I called him that night and said, ‘Just calling to let you know, Barry, that if you’d like your private life to remain private, you might want to be a little more considerate next time,’ “ she said.

Alkon has no ethics, and I call bullshit:

Someone who doesn’t tolerate inconsiderate public behaviour is Amy Alkon, the famous Advice Goddess columnist in the US who is also known as a blogslapper of ‘assclowns’. Recently, Amy was so annoyed by a ‘cell phone shouter’ in a LA café, she immediately posted personal details of the assclown's conversation to her weblog. The icing on the cake was the assclown receiving calls directing her to Amy’s post, using the phone number she’d haplessly broadcast to all and sundry. Fittingly, one of Amy’s mottos is -revenge is the best revenge.

Indeed, shaming websites catering for pissed-off victims of public arseholes are springing up with a vengeance. Check this Wall Street Journal article, inspired by Amy’s experience for a list of blogslapping websites. One potential site not yet created could cater for the common problem of locals and families terrorising the neighbourhood.

Notice anything?

That same incident happened in 2006, and Alkon continues to "peddle" the incident as something recent. So far, the Wall Street Journal and now the New York Times have passed off a single incident (and I'm guessing she's dressing up the same incident and peddling it around--I could be wrong) as being something Alkon has done to unsuspecting people in the name of some sort of morally superior attempt at enforcing "ethics" and here's what she did:

Eva Burgess Is Getting Glasses!
And she’s picking them up Saturday after 4pm! I know this because she was bellowing into a cell phone about it next to me in a café. Apparently, she’s not only inconsiderate, she doesn’t seeem to mind giving a lot of personal information, starting with her full name, to a total stranger.

She continued, Eva and Ken Hashimoto “have insurance there," she said…”under a flexible spending account.” “We just have to pay by the end of the year,” she said. And then she most helpfully bellowed her phone number -- [REDACTED] -- perhaps because she’s lonely and wants total strangers to call and ask how her glasses are working out for her.

Hey, Eva, can I have your bank account number and your log-in so I can transfer a few bucks to my account? I’d like to get a pair of noise-canceling headphones in case you sit next to me again.

On a positive note, the little girl with them, probably Eva’s (and maybe Ken’s) daughter, was very quiet and well-behaved.

Hey, Eva, I know it’s kinda cold in NYC, where you’re apparently from (according to the area code you helpfully dispensed), but here in sunny southern California, at the moment you were talking, it was 58 degrees. Next time, you might take your business outside –- as exciting as I found it, on a morning I would normally have relaxed to the classical music while eating my breakfast and thinking my own thoughts, to instead be a part of your eyecare needs.

Nice going, New York Times. That uncanny similarity is a little too uncanny for my tastes. If she's been running around, doing this sort of thing for years, well, all well and good. But let's not give her a pass on being the unethical-blogger-who-posts-someone's-phone-number nonsense. I don't care how offended someone is--posting their personal information crosses into Michelle Malkin territory.

Sorry, @DQuenqua over there on Twitter. You've been punked by one of the least ethical human beings alive.  Cue 2011, and a rousing story in the Washington Post about how Amy Alkon smacked down someone by publishing their phone number on her blog...

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Lindsay Lohan in Vanity Fair, 2004

I won't even try to go into how badly Lindsay Lohan is being treated these days. I did find these photos, all of which are, roughly, from 2004, and I think they speak volumes about how differently people can be presented to the public:

That's just a sampling as to how she was portrayed just a few years ago.

Here's what they do to her now--they get right up into her face and try to get the obligatory shot of her nostrils, and no one looks good this way:

She does look less healthy nowadays, and that's going to show up in the photos that are taken of her. But, what really strikes me is, no one even tries to portray her as they once did, when they could make money off of her good name. Lohan has definitely done things to ruin her reputation, but what young person hasn't? Is it really all her, or a media decision to make money off of the fact that they can show her as a disaster in the unravelling?

Now, the considered and learned opinion of some might be that her problems have maybe stemmed from the fact that, at too young of an age, she was given the sex-kitten treatment. I don't know if I would argue with that. Something about these photos is a little disturbing--she didn't turn 18 until that year, which is why I think you can trace what has happened to her to that year.

Compared to how these wolves come at her now, it really is striking to see the difference. She is flatteringly portrayed in these magazines, and they gush all over her (I'm sure there's some snark at her age in there, but no snark is evident in how they photographed her). Now? It's an evisceration in the making. It's awful. No one deserves that.

Celebrity really is a mind trip, isn't it?

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