Story is here.
Hey, Tom Brokaw is fine with Fox News (apparently anyway; he never criticizes it, saving his barbs for his own network instead) so you should be, too. After all, if news colossus Brokaw sees them as being on the up and up then they must be, right?
I call Rupert Murdoch's outfit News Corpse for what it has done to electronic journalism.
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Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Rolling Stone: McCain The "Make-Believe Maverick"
Story is here.
Everyone is rightfully focused on McCain's behavior, but what is getting lost amid the backwash of nepotism and narcissism is how easy it is to co-opt the media. While some may not want to see politics covered in the hagiographic way that sports commonly is, you still have too many reporters who are overwhelmed by the power and import of what occurs in Washington to the point that they become emotionally invested in the fates of those they cover/use as sources and the tendency, just as human beings, is to not scrutinize them as intently as a good reporter should.
There is also a kind of reflective narcissism going on, as reporters write for a living and thus are always looking for an angle for a possible book. They hope the people they cover will be significant just so they can say they regularly covered that pol (Chris Matthews, for example, who is a notorious name dropper) during some significant juncture in history. In other words, the prominence of a pol also reflects, for a reporter, on their own importance in the media pecking order. That makes reporters, as in sports, part of the star maker machinery behind the wannabe popular pol, to twist a Joni Mitchell lyric.
Any pol who realizes this psychological dynamic can easily own those who cover them, especially if the pol is from a political dynasty (Kennedys, Bushes, etc).
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Everyone is rightfully focused on McCain's behavior, but what is getting lost amid the backwash of nepotism and narcissism is how easy it is to co-opt the media. While some may not want to see politics covered in the hagiographic way that sports commonly is, you still have too many reporters who are overwhelmed by the power and import of what occurs in Washington to the point that they become emotionally invested in the fates of those they cover/use as sources and the tendency, just as human beings, is to not scrutinize them as intently as a good reporter should.
There is also a kind of reflective narcissism going on, as reporters write for a living and thus are always looking for an angle for a possible book. They hope the people they cover will be significant just so they can say they regularly covered that pol (Chris Matthews, for example, who is a notorious name dropper) during some significant juncture in history. In other words, the prominence of a pol also reflects, for a reporter, on their own importance in the media pecking order. That makes reporters, as in sports, part of the star maker machinery behind the wannabe popular pol, to twist a Joni Mitchell lyric.
Any pol who realizes this psychological dynamic can easily own those who cover them, especially if the pol is from a political dynasty (Kennedys, Bushes, etc).
Approved
Friday, October 3, 2008
Bloggers Lead Media to Report McCain/Palin's Campaign "Lies"
Story is here.
"The MSM knows their failure to call this spade a spade enabled GW Bush to bootstrap two lying campaigns into a profoundly dishonest administration that has disgraced and weakened our great nation. They don't want to be patsies all over again."
Missed it by THAT much.
The fact is that the media, in its complacent elitist and royalist way, was more than willing to be McCain's stenographer much as it did for Boy George because McCain was kissing its behind. If you play ball with MSM reporters and feed them a few morsels of inside baseball now and again they are putty in your hands.
However, bloggers started slicing and dicing the conventional wisdom and tendency to sleepwalk through recent campaigns by media figures and, with young people increasingly turning off the tv and ignoring newspapers, the big four networks and the three big 24 hour news networks were on the hot rails to cultural oblivion unless the media gave consumers a reason to believe in it again.
They are still falling down badly on the job, but at least they are improving. However, as long as a Brokaw, a Hume, a Couric and a Charlie Gibson is around, their value is going to be questionable. These aren't media crusaders, they are softball hurling enablers.
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"The MSM knows their failure to call this spade a spade enabled GW Bush to bootstrap two lying campaigns into a profoundly dishonest administration that has disgraced and weakened our great nation. They don't want to be patsies all over again."
Missed it by THAT much.
The fact is that the media, in its complacent elitist and royalist way, was more than willing to be McCain's stenographer much as it did for Boy George because McCain was kissing its behind. If you play ball with MSM reporters and feed them a few morsels of inside baseball now and again they are putty in your hands.
However, bloggers started slicing and dicing the conventional wisdom and tendency to sleepwalk through recent campaigns by media figures and, with young people increasingly turning off the tv and ignoring newspapers, the big four networks and the three big 24 hour news networks were on the hot rails to cultural oblivion unless the media gave consumers a reason to believe in it again.
They are still falling down badly on the job, but at least they are improving. However, as long as a Brokaw, a Hume, a Couric and a Charlie Gibson is around, their value is going to be questionable. These aren't media crusaders, they are softball hurling enablers.
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Why Heidi Klum Should Moderate the Debate
Story is here.
It's a reflection of our dumbed down bourgeois American culture when someone is analogizing a lowbrow reality show with the gravity of choosing someone who will have his/her hand on the nuclear button with a straight face.
People make fun of people who vote for politicians based on whether you could have a beer with them, but stuff like this article is just as inane, if not more so.
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It's a reflection of our dumbed down bourgeois American culture when someone is analogizing a lowbrow reality show with the gravity of choosing someone who will have his/her hand on the nuclear button with a straight face.
People make fun of people who vote for politicians based on whether you could have a beer with them, but stuff like this article is just as inane, if not more so.
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VP Debate: McCain's Big Gamble Comes Up Snake Eyes
Story is here.
This was a reply to another poster's comment, which read in part:
"It is the elected representatives who come here from all over, and the preening appointees who arrive fresh from the campaign, plus their buddies in K Street lobby shops and other special interest groups, who breed "corruption" and even a little "greed (and it is only a little greed, compared with Wall Street)."
My response:
You forgot a media corps that becomes part of the DC socio-political scene, becoming so chummy with the folks they cover that a Dick Cheney can play them like Itzhak Perlman plays the violin. The get so caught up in the backwash of power like groupies following Def Leppard that they can't but help to protect their friends (and sources) in Congress and in the White House to the detriment of providing a clear view of what is happening in the centers of power to the public. They don't speak truth to power, they become stenographers for the "truths" that pols want dispensed to the electorate.
So the political coverage by the media, especially the electronic end of that, is a big dog and pony show. So a Tom Brokaw can be totally sucked in by the untrue McCain hype (see the Rolling Stone article on McCain, which is horrifying) and yet his brethren still hold him in high regard. He is little more than a Potemkin journalist and so are too many of his colleagues.
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This was a reply to another poster's comment, which read in part:
"It is the elected representatives who come here from all over, and the preening appointees who arrive fresh from the campaign, plus their buddies in K Street lobby shops and other special interest groups, who breed "corruption" and even a little "greed (and it is only a little greed, compared with Wall Street)."
My response:
You forgot a media corps that becomes part of the DC socio-political scene, becoming so chummy with the folks they cover that a Dick Cheney can play them like Itzhak Perlman plays the violin. The get so caught up in the backwash of power like groupies following Def Leppard that they can't but help to protect their friends (and sources) in Congress and in the White House to the detriment of providing a clear view of what is happening in the centers of power to the public. They don't speak truth to power, they become stenographers for the "truths" that pols want dispensed to the electorate.
So the political coverage by the media, especially the electronic end of that, is a big dog and pony show. So a Tom Brokaw can be totally sucked in by the untrue McCain hype (see the Rolling Stone article on McCain, which is horrifying) and yet his brethren still hold him in high regard. He is little more than a Potemkin journalist and so are too many of his colleagues.
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Friday, September 26, 2008
The Whistleblower Who Tried to Prevent the Iraq War
Story is here.
And the U.S. MSM was AWOL while this was going on. Yet another in a Giza pyramid's worth of profiles in cowardice by NBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, et al.
And I said it in the run up to the war and I will repeat it again, NBC is that most infamous of conglomerations, the military industrial media complex.
GE boss Jack Welch should probably be put on trial for war crimes since it was his ultimate call what happened at NBC, which GE owns. During the occupation of Japan following WWII, Matsutaro Shoriki, the head of the Yomiuri Shimbun, was purged from being able to run his company for several years for his responsibility in helping to stoke war fever in Japan. So were many other Japanese media figures of the time.
At the very least, GE should be forced to sell NBC then for their war responsibility. Won't happen, of course, but morally, that should be the least they should suffer.
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And the U.S. MSM was AWOL while this was going on. Yet another in a Giza pyramid's worth of profiles in cowardice by NBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, et al.
And I said it in the run up to the war and I will repeat it again, NBC is that most infamous of conglomerations, the military industrial media complex.
GE boss Jack Welch should probably be put on trial for war crimes since it was his ultimate call what happened at NBC, which GE owns. During the occupation of Japan following WWII, Matsutaro Shoriki, the head of the Yomiuri Shimbun, was purged from being able to run his company for several years for his responsibility in helping to stoke war fever in Japan. So were many other Japanese media figures of the time.
At the very least, GE should be forced to sell NBC then for their war responsibility. Won't happen, of course, but morally, that should be the least they should suffer.
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Monday, September 1, 2008
Press: Back Off Bristol Palin!
Story is here.
This is why so many people hate the media. Talk about a myopic echo of conventional wisdom!
Palin has used her Down's Syndrome baby as part of her public bonafides to play to the sympathies of evangelical Christians. She is against sex education and for abstinence only, which obviously didn't even take in her own household after it had long been refuted as an effective method of staving off teenage pregnancy.
The you have Palin's near Homeric description of how she gave birth to her infant son, which was met with cries of incredulity by medical professionals everywhere, including my pediatric nurse mom. Even her doctor has now changed her tune on this when she began seeing words such as "malpractice" and "negligence" being applied to her handling of her patient.
I think many in the media are just uncomfortable with getting into people's personal lives (except when it could mean big ratings) and that's fine. Personally, I don't really care if Bristol is pregnant or not. If Palin had been straight with the country, it would have been a three minute chuckle and then move on. But no, Palin concocted that cockamamie story of Trig's birth.
Let's be real. Being in the media isn;t just mere stenography. Sometimes you have to deal with unseemly issues. If you can't bring yourself to that, then maybe you need another line of work.
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This is why so many people hate the media. Talk about a myopic echo of conventional wisdom!
Palin has used her Down's Syndrome baby as part of her public bonafides to play to the sympathies of evangelical Christians. She is against sex education and for abstinence only, which obviously didn't even take in her own household after it had long been refuted as an effective method of staving off teenage pregnancy.
The you have Palin's near Homeric description of how she gave birth to her infant son, which was met with cries of incredulity by medical professionals everywhere, including my pediatric nurse mom. Even her doctor has now changed her tune on this when she began seeing words such as "malpractice" and "negligence" being applied to her handling of her patient.
I think many in the media are just uncomfortable with getting into people's personal lives (except when it could mean big ratings) and that's fine. Personally, I don't really care if Bristol is pregnant or not. If Palin had been straight with the country, it would have been a three minute chuckle and then move on. But no, Palin concocted that cockamamie story of Trig's birth.
Let's be real. Being in the media isn;t just mere stenography. Sometimes you have to deal with unseemly issues. If you can't bring yourself to that, then maybe you need another line of work.
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Palin's Daughter Pregnant,Campaign Announces
Story is here.
This is still fishy and even if the wingnuts are going to say that this announcement by Palin debunks the false pregnancy story, bloggers have at the very least forced the holy rolling conservative VP nominee to admit that her daughter got knocked up.
The hypocrisy is so thick you need a chainsaw to cut through it. Palin used Trig as a prop to demonstrate her Christian Right bonafides while telling a story about how he came into the world that just about any medical professional, including my pediatric nurse mom, finds unbelievable. Palin's doctor is now backing off her earlier statements about approving that plane trip from Dallas to Alaska when words such as "malpractice" and "negligence" began to be aimed her way.
And had it been,say, Chelsea Clinton that got pregnant while still a teen, Limbaugh and that whole gaggle of reactionary zealots would have used it as emblematic of what they would call leftwimg depravity, and Dobson would be hurling epithets such as "fornicator" at Chelsea rather than the compassionate cant he burbled for Bristol.
Bristol has been put into a no win position by her mother's political ambitions. I hope the best for her, since she is a completely innnocent party here, but I don't think this story ends here. This is a stall tactic and if McCain is elected, there is going to be a fact changing announcement by the White House Press Secretary while Palin goes on holiday. You heard it here first.
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This is still fishy and even if the wingnuts are going to say that this announcement by Palin debunks the false pregnancy story, bloggers have at the very least forced the holy rolling conservative VP nominee to admit that her daughter got knocked up.
The hypocrisy is so thick you need a chainsaw to cut through it. Palin used Trig as a prop to demonstrate her Christian Right bonafides while telling a story about how he came into the world that just about any medical professional, including my pediatric nurse mom, finds unbelievable. Palin's doctor is now backing off her earlier statements about approving that plane trip from Dallas to Alaska when words such as "malpractice" and "negligence" began to be aimed her way.
And had it been,say, Chelsea Clinton that got pregnant while still a teen, Limbaugh and that whole gaggle of reactionary zealots would have used it as emblematic of what they would call leftwimg depravity, and Dobson would be hurling epithets such as "fornicator" at Chelsea rather than the compassionate cant he burbled for Bristol.
Bristol has been put into a no win position by her mother's political ambitions. I hope the best for her, since she is a completely innnocent party here, but I don't think this story ends here. This is a stall tactic and if McCain is elected, there is going to be a fact changing announcement by the White House Press Secretary while Palin goes on holiday. You heard it here first.
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Saturday, August 30, 2008
2 Top Alaska Newspapers Question Palin's Fitness
Story is here.
If they're questioning her fitness now, wait until they take another look at that phony story about the birth of her last child.
I was talking to my mom, a retired nurse who had worked in a pediatric hospital for about 30 years. I told her the story about Palin's baby that the new VP nominee had given to the media. My mom scoffed at it, angrily noting that at the very least Palin ran the risk of a sepsis infection by not immediately going to hospital when her water broke before she gave that energy speech in Texas. Palin supposedly gave the speech, got back on the plane to Alaska and then had it the next morning. To add to this, the kid not only had Down's Syndrome, but was a month premature. Yet, Palin did not do the medically prudent thing.
And here's why: because her 16 year old daughter had that kid back in Alaska and Palin is trying to cover it up. Plain had pulled the 16 year old out of school five months prior for "mono." How convenient. At the very least, she risked the life of a premature baby with her behavior if you want to believe her story, making her too irresponsible to be believed about anything.
And even though the special needs child should have been put in an ICU and may have been), Palin only takes two days off. This definitely bears re-examination.
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If they're questioning her fitness now, wait until they take another look at that phony story about the birth of her last child.
I was talking to my mom, a retired nurse who had worked in a pediatric hospital for about 30 years. I told her the story about Palin's baby that the new VP nominee had given to the media. My mom scoffed at it, angrily noting that at the very least Palin ran the risk of a sepsis infection by not immediately going to hospital when her water broke before she gave that energy speech in Texas. Palin supposedly gave the speech, got back on the plane to Alaska and then had it the next morning. To add to this, the kid not only had Down's Syndrome, but was a month premature. Yet, Palin did not do the medically prudent thing.
And here's why: because her 16 year old daughter had that kid back in Alaska and Palin is trying to cover it up. Plain had pulled the 16 year old out of school five months prior for "mono." How convenient. At the very least, she risked the life of a premature baby with her behavior if you want to believe her story, making her too irresponsible to be believed about anything.
And even though the special needs child should have been put in an ICU and may have been), Palin only takes two days off. This definitely bears re-examination.
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Thursday, August 28, 2008
Katie Couric In Her Comfort Zone At Democratic Convention
Story is here.
Why all the slobbering over Katie Couric, HuffPo? Who cares what she's doing? She's just another vapid media talking head.
Or is this a cronyism thing because she has a friendship with Arianna?
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Note: another one of the posters called Couric a "bimbo" and that got through. But questioning of why HuffPo has appointed itself as the hagiography corps for Couric is beyond me. There has to be some kind of relationship between her and Arianna for this to occur. Arianna decries the media repeating GOP talking points and conventional wisdom, but yet, lionizes one of the worst offensders for that. Oh wait, Katie is a woman. Okay, now I understand. Put your gender ahead of your country.
Why all the slobbering over Katie Couric, HuffPo? Who cares what she's doing? She's just another vapid media talking head.
Or is this a cronyism thing because she has a friendship with Arianna?
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Note: another one of the posters called Couric a "bimbo" and that got through. But questioning of why HuffPo has appointed itself as the hagiography corps for Couric is beyond me. There has to be some kind of relationship between her and Arianna for this to occur. Arianna decries the media repeating GOP talking points and conventional wisdom, but yet, lionizes one of the worst offensders for that. Oh wait, Katie is a woman. Okay, now I understand. Put your gender ahead of your country.
Brokaw and Koppel On DNC: "Kabuki Dance... Colossal Waste Of Time And Money" (VIDEO)
Story is here.
"Waste of time and money"?
That's what I would call the airtime given to Brokaw. He has had the Seinfeld career: it was all about nothing. He has contributed about as much to journalism as my dogs.
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"Waste of time and money"?
That's what I would call the airtime given to Brokaw. He has had the Seinfeld career: it was all about nothing. He has contributed about as much to journalism as my dogs.
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Keith Olbermann Caught Saying About Mike Murphy: "Let's Wrap Him Up" (VIDEO)
Story is here.
Murphy is an idiot. He only gave Bush a C for how he ran the country during the last eight years, which means that Murphy was grading on the legacy admit dumbass curve. Had a Democrat done as badly as Bush did, Murphy would be giving him an F and arguing for his prosecution for treason.
Again, there is nothing to be gained by using former campaign managers as commentators because they will always censor themselves for the next job down the road or they don't want to throw their former clients under the bus lest he be accused of being disloyal to his customers. I felt the same about James Carville, too.
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Note: Apparently, the moderator is a friend or sympathizer with Murphy. Or something. Either that or they don't like the shot I took at Deliverance Boy Carville.
Murphy is an idiot. He only gave Bush a C for how he ran the country during the last eight years, which means that Murphy was grading on the legacy admit dumbass curve. Had a Democrat done as badly as Bush did, Murphy would be giving him an F and arguing for his prosecution for treason.
Again, there is nothing to be gained by using former campaign managers as commentators because they will always censor themselves for the next job down the road or they don't want to throw their former clients under the bus lest he be accused of being disloyal to his customers. I felt the same about James Carville, too.
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Note: Apparently, the moderator is a friend or sympathizer with Murphy. Or something. Either that or they don't like the shot I took at Deliverance Boy Carville.
MSNBC Implosion
Story is here.
I think this is hilarious. From a station that stopped just short of putting Ashley Banfield in a cheerleader uniform in the opening days of the Iraq War to now the rightwingers and leftwingers warring with each other on MSNBC as it makes a transition from a minor league echo chamber for the Bush line to one that is finally willing to tell the public the truth.
And asking MSNBC's management to openly declare its sympathies? That's also really funny since Faux Nooz won't do that itself in its role as a loudspeaker for corporate fascism and its enablers on the right.
And can anybody hear the name "Wolf Blitzer" and not start laughing? You half expect him to do his shows dressed up in a German Field Marshall's uniform. In fact, that will be my new nickname for Blitzer, Field Marshall Wolf.
But getting back to MSNBC, the parent company is run by Republicans. To see them now deeply conflicted over not just the dissension going on between intellectually dishonest "I have a hard on for Hillary," Chris Matthews, Buttfaced rightwing hack Joe Scarborough and and MSNBC savior Keith Olbermann is just too delicious for words. Matthews and Scarborough wants to draw Rachel Maddow into this maelstrom of mutual loathing, but she just isn't interested and I can't blame her..
At least MSNBC is no longer boring, which it was when it had hosts such as Chuck Grodin, Tucker Carlson and Phil Donahue.
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Note: Huh? Was it the Field Marshall Wolf line? Me calling Arianna icon Phil Donahue boring (which he was)? Or Arianna showbiz friend Chuck Grodin equally tedious? I'm totally at a loss here. Any suggestions?
I think this is hilarious. From a station that stopped just short of putting Ashley Banfield in a cheerleader uniform in the opening days of the Iraq War to now the rightwingers and leftwingers warring with each other on MSNBC as it makes a transition from a minor league echo chamber for the Bush line to one that is finally willing to tell the public the truth.
And asking MSNBC's management to openly declare its sympathies? That's also really funny since Faux Nooz won't do that itself in its role as a loudspeaker for corporate fascism and its enablers on the right.
And can anybody hear the name "Wolf Blitzer" and not start laughing? You half expect him to do his shows dressed up in a German Field Marshall's uniform. In fact, that will be my new nickname for Blitzer, Field Marshall Wolf.
But getting back to MSNBC, the parent company is run by Republicans. To see them now deeply conflicted over not just the dissension going on between intellectually dishonest "I have a hard on for Hillary," Chris Matthews, Buttfaced rightwing hack Joe Scarborough and and MSNBC savior Keith Olbermann is just too delicious for words. Matthews and Scarborough wants to draw Rachel Maddow into this maelstrom of mutual loathing, but she just isn't interested and I can't blame her..
At least MSNBC is no longer boring, which it was when it had hosts such as Chuck Grodin, Tucker Carlson and Phil Donahue.
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Note: Huh? Was it the Field Marshall Wolf line? Me calling Arianna icon Phil Donahue boring (which he was)? Or Arianna showbiz friend Chuck Grodin equally tedious? I'm totally at a loss here. Any suggestions?
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
MSNBC Drama Pervades Convention Coverage: Olbermann vs. Matthews For Round 3
Story is here.
Mike Murphy is about as centrist as Bob Novak. Characterizing Murphy as a moderate says more about whoever wrote the article and his/her political leanings than anything else.
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Mike Murphy is about as centrist as Bob Novak. Characterizing Murphy as a moderate says more about whoever wrote the article and his/her political leanings than anything else.
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Tuesday, August 26, 2008
One Millenial Speaks Out: Why I'm Enrolling in Culinary School
Story is here.
So is it really necessary to repeat the shorthand verbiage of some emptyheaded media bloviator to describe different generations?
Look, I think it's great that you are going to go to culinary school if that makes you happy. Everybody should have something they are totally into that makes their seem more interesting or fun.
However, to take any of the descriptions offered by the news carnies about your generation to heart is rather pointless. It is a bit like taking astrology seriously. Very broad generalizations that seem to fit but yet there is still always enough reality based dissonance to capsize the boatload of mumbo jumbo.
So I would offer this to all the writers at HuffPo: stop with the repetition of advertising slogans, business buzzwords, New Age meanderings and Entertainment Tonight-style fawning blather and show some actual thinking on your own. Put some spine in your brain (now THAT is an ungainly metaphor). Resist the nonsense.
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So is it really necessary to repeat the shorthand verbiage of some emptyheaded media bloviator to describe different generations?
Look, I think it's great that you are going to go to culinary school if that makes you happy. Everybody should have something they are totally into that makes their seem more interesting or fun.
However, to take any of the descriptions offered by the news carnies about your generation to heart is rather pointless. It is a bit like taking astrology seriously. Very broad generalizations that seem to fit but yet there is still always enough reality based dissonance to capsize the boatload of mumbo jumbo.
So I would offer this to all the writers at HuffPo: stop with the repetition of advertising slogans, business buzzwords, New Age meanderings and Entertainment Tonight-style fawning blather and show some actual thinking on your own. Put some spine in your brain (now THAT is an ungainly metaphor). Resist the nonsense.
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Monday, August 25, 2008
Tom Brokaw: Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann Have "Gone Too Far"
Story is here.
When Brokaw comes out and excoriates the daily dog and pony shows of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limabaugh, not to mention MSNBC's cheerleader role for the Bush Administration in the opening days of the Iraq War, then I might listen to him. Otherwise, you are just a relic from a bygone era Tommy boy. Shut up and piss off down the road.
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When Brokaw comes out and excoriates the daily dog and pony shows of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limabaugh, not to mention MSNBC's cheerleader role for the Bush Administration in the opening days of the Iraq War, then I might listen to him. Otherwise, you are just a relic from a bygone era Tommy boy. Shut up and piss off down the road.
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Every Country Gets the Media it Wants
The story is here.
The media is not giving the public what it wants in political discourse. It is instead echoing memes devised by political spokesmen. The media is not a profile in courage. It is, though, a profile in stenography, geared to recapitulating the cant of elites it favors (and since all the heads of the major networks are Republicans, it tends to skew in that party's direction).
The public doesn't consciously want a big heaping helping of fear and racism. Yet, that is what we have had thrown at us Jackson Pollack stylee during this election cycle. The idea by campaign handlers is that utilizing a Bernaysian propaganda mishmash oriented toward playing to atavistic impulses within people affords their side an advantage and the media has been all too glad to be the amplifier for that.
Furthermore, like it or not, most people still get their political information from the big four networks. Bloggers are largely reactive entities and their readership is relatively tiny. The big media creates context and the blogosphere attempts to reshape it, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Most folks use their computers to play games, exchange emails and view or listen to entertainment anyway. So when it comes to the greater U.S. public, the participation in politically oriented discussion on the web is extremely limited
As for the public getting the media it wants, I wonder what the folks in North Korea think about that. This is, at best, a deluded notion to begin with.
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The media is not giving the public what it wants in political discourse. It is instead echoing memes devised by political spokesmen. The media is not a profile in courage. It is, though, a profile in stenography, geared to recapitulating the cant of elites it favors (and since all the heads of the major networks are Republicans, it tends to skew in that party's direction).
The public doesn't consciously want a big heaping helping of fear and racism. Yet, that is what we have had thrown at us Jackson Pollack stylee during this election cycle. The idea by campaign handlers is that utilizing a Bernaysian propaganda mishmash oriented toward playing to atavistic impulses within people affords their side an advantage and the media has been all too glad to be the amplifier for that.
Furthermore, like it or not, most people still get their political information from the big four networks. Bloggers are largely reactive entities and their readership is relatively tiny. The big media creates context and the blogosphere attempts to reshape it, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Most folks use their computers to play games, exchange emails and view or listen to entertainment anyway. So when it comes to the greater U.S. public, the participation in politically oriented discussion on the web is extremely limited
As for the public getting the media it wants, I wonder what the folks in North Korea think about that. This is, at best, a deluded notion to begin with.
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Fox News Ad Ignites Chicago Cable War
Story is here.
Like Faux Nooz gives a tinker's cuss about Chicago, a Democrat stronghold.
And does any reasonable human being get upset about CNN not having a bureau dedicated to Chicago anyway? Especially when they can just rip and read news from there off the net anyway from one of the several newspapers there.
Really, what a yawn.
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Like Faux Nooz gives a tinker's cuss about Chicago, a Democrat stronghold.
And does any reasonable human being get upset about CNN not having a bureau dedicated to Chicago anyway? Especially when they can just rip and read news from there off the net anyway from one of the several newspapers there.
Really, what a yawn.
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Fox News Ad Targets CNN's Heavily Democratic Audience
Story is here.
"Since Fox News introduction into the marketplace, all of the news organizations have become infotainers. Instead of just delivering the news,"
I would argue that process actually began with the introduction of the Eyewitness News concept in the early 1970's, was exacerbated by the success of Entertainment Tonight and then Fox just refined that with a right wing political sheen.
Anchors and reporters are no longer just that. Now they have to be song and dance men or comedians.
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"Since Fox News introduction into the marketplace, all of the news organizations have become infotainers. Instead of just delivering the news,"
I would argue that process actually began with the introduction of the Eyewitness News concept in the early 1970's, was exacerbated by the success of Entertainment Tonight and then Fox just refined that with a right wing political sheen.
Anchors and reporters are no longer just that. Now they have to be song and dance men or comedians.
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Fox News Ad Targets CNN's Heavily Democratic Audience
Story is here.
"viewership does not have anything to do with the type of reporting happening"
Too true. Faux Nooz is still a neo-fascist operation no matter who watches it and CNN, with the exception of Jack Cafferty, has been trying to emulate it and has become Faux Nooz Lite.
It's hard for me to believe that any Democrat would watch the Murdoch GOP echo machine, but oh well. It could be that some people like watching train wrecks.
Approved
"viewership does not have anything to do with the type of reporting happening"
Too true. Faux Nooz is still a neo-fascist operation no matter who watches it and CNN, with the exception of Jack Cafferty, has been trying to emulate it and has become Faux Nooz Lite.
It's hard for me to believe that any Democrat would watch the Murdoch GOP echo machine, but oh well. It could be that some people like watching train wrecks.
Approved
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