Media Navel Gaze: February 11, 2013

The Week Unpeeled

Winter blizzard Nemo stormed through the Northeast, with States of Emergencies declared along the Coast, bringing transportation and commerce to near standstills over the weekend and leaving New York City pretty much unscathed. The Dow ended higher on Friday, with trading dampened a bit by the storm, closing at 13,992, after trading above the 14,000 mark.

Elsewhere:

• Attention this week will turn to President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday, where he is expected to focus on such domestic issues as immigration and gun control;
• The Dell go-private move hit a snag late last week with a large shareholder saying it would vote against the buyout;
• China and much of Asia ushered in the Year of the Snake (goodbye, Tiger);
• The US Justice Department is seeking $5 billion from Standard & Poor’s in penalties for “egregious” wrongdoings in its mortgage bond ratings;
• Hedge-fund manager David Einhorn is suing Apple in effect to get the company to return cash to shareholders;
• The check will not be in the mail on weekends, with the US Postal Service announcing no more deliveries on Saturday starting in August;
• Researchers have identified a skeleton from beneath a parking lot in England as Richard III, the controversial king made even more “immortal” by Shakespeare;
• Interesting note in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that Brazil is the “social media capital of the universe,” with users spending 9.7 hours on social network sites each month, compared with worldwide average of 5.5 hours; and
• A good read over the weekend by Peggy Noonan in The Journal in her column called “So God Made a Fawner,” criticizing Steve Kroft on “60 Minutes” with his too-soft interview with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, saying journos like him (especially on that show) “are supposed to approach political figures with no fear or favor. Their job is to grill. What are they afraid of?”  Or as she said, the “get” was not really worth it.