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Mediated Images of the South: The Portrayal of Dixie in Popular Culture, edited by Alison F. Slade, Dedria Givens-Carroll and Amber J. Narro, is an anthology that explores the impact of the image of the Southerner within mass communication and popular culture. The contributors offer a contemporary analysis of the Southerner in the media. In most cases, previous literature situates these media images in the past, most notably through historic analyses of the Southerner during the Civil Rights movement. Mediated Images of the South breaks out of the box of the 1960s and 1970s by including the most recent and contemporary cultural examples of the Southerner. This book represents a long overdue analysis of those images, from both the past and the present. In addition, the discussions are not limited to one genre of media, but provide the reader with an opportunity to see how far-reaching the myth of the Southerner and the Southern image is in American society. While there is a long list of successful southern politicians, historical figures, businessmen and women, actors and actresses, sports figures and other national and world leaders, Slade, Givens-Carroll, and Narro find that there is still work to be done to present southerners as capable and educated.

In 1996, the New Orleans Police Department implemented the COMSTAT management and accountability style of policing. Within three years of that implementation, murder was cut by over fifty percent and violent crime fell by nearly the same amount; overall crime was cut by over one-third compared to just three years ago. This dissertation seeks to explore the reasons crime declined so rapidly in New Orleans post-COMSTAT implementation, compared to crime in the rest of the country. Drawing on political and criminological theories of policing as well as sociological theories, variables unique to each set of theories were identified and tested alone and against competing explanations. Utilizing higher-ordered time series methodology, two analyses were conducted. The first utilized interrupted time-series analysis to identify the nature of COMSTAT’s impact on New Orleans’ crime trends, measured as changes in the current quarter compared to the same quarter of the preceding year. The results show that while COMSTAT had a significant impact on the crime trends, the effects were short-lived. The second analysis utilized traditional time series methodology to examine the impacts of the individual variables on the overall crime trends. The results show that while policing variables and sociological variables have little effect on the overall crime trends both individually and when tested together, the findings indicate policing variables play a larger role than sociological variables when included together. As another independent test of the effects of crime, public opinion data obtained via the University of New Orleans’ Survey Research Center from 1986–2004 show that the public was very positive towards the NOPD’s efforts in dramatically reducing crime and fear of crime in New Orleans during this period. The overall results for policy makers then indicates that reductions in crime resonate positively with city residents and future policy decisions should be made with that goal in mind. Keywords: New Orleans Police Department, COMSTAT, City of New Orleans, policing, strategies, community-oriented policing, problem-solving policing, public policy process, public opinion.

  [...] if I ever need anything done, I'm going to ask for a Republican to do it, and I mean anything.

[...] President Obama continues to read from Karl Marx's latest manifesto (circa 1848) and is systematically destroying the wealth of Main Street America. Since Democrats are by nature blameless (they're also lots of other things but I don't have a lot of space here), all of America's problems must be someone else's fault:

  First his birthday and now the top spot in the rankings - at least he's still got the seat of our government named after him, although I'm not so sure he'd recognize the government he worked so hard to form and lead. By the media's measuring stick, my name ought to be mentioned in the same breath as Tiger Woods because we're both from California, we both golf, and we both like blondes (not that I don't like other hair colors, I'm just sayin'.)

  [...] people who wish to murder innocent Americans are so far below us that it would be impossible for us to reach their \"level\" regardless of what we did, and third, really?