This about sums up the state of the national media

Glen Lyons of Salon describes the state of the national media:

The average citizen hardly knows what to believe anymore. Due to the parlous state of professional journalism; the Internet; cable TV "news" networks and talk radio shouters; and the ceaseless din of the right-wing noise machine, the public is daily confronted with make-believe news, doctored quotes, fake history and phony data.

In my opinion, Lyons has it about right. Most people I know don't want to spend immense amounts of time picking through the "news" to figure out what they should actually believe. Out of fatigue and frustration, they tend to lock on to one or two sources of information, despite the fact that most media sources are not motivated to be trusted as sources of information. Rather, based on what they are actually reporting, and how they are reporting it, they are primarily motivated to make money. Hence, Tiger's affairs get much more coverage than critical national issues and contentious sound-bites are offered to us instead of careful analysis of issues. [more . . . ]

Continue ReadingThis about sums up the state of the national media

Constance Got Her Prom…Sort Of

This will be brief. In a follow-up to the Itawamba Mississippi flap over the school prom, the school decided to hold the prom after all and told Constance McMillen should could bring her date. But there were only seven kids in attendance, plus a couple of school officials. They had granted Constance a prom all for herself. The rest of the students went to a prom sponsored by the parents and even put up a Facebook Page called Constance Quit Yet Cryin'. Read about it here. The utter childishness and cowardice of this is beyond belief. It underscores everything I said about the true nature of proms in my previous post on this matter and adds to it.

Continue ReadingConstance Got Her Prom…Sort Of

We need a monarch.

I hate to sound like a Tea-Party nutbag, but I really love the United States' Constitution. As I've mentioned before, I'm a free-speech fanatic. I love the Constitution's sharp focus on individual liberties, its emphasis on the rights of the accused, and that grade-school-civics favorite, the checks and balances of power. I despair when these ideals meet real-life sacrifices, especially glaring ones like, oh, the utter lack of Congressional declarations of war since WWII. I also don't like to sully the document's purity with excessive amendments, interpretations and adaptations. No Defense of Marriage Amendment, please, but while you're at it, no marriage at all (it violates the establishment clause, you see). But don't call me a Scalia-esque strict constructionist. If I could, I would copy-edit the otherwise brilliant Constitution and correct a centuries-old omission with no qualms: I would give the United States a monarch. It probably seems unamerican, undemocratic and all-around anti-freedom-y to propose that we foist an unquestioned figure to the crown of government. It probably sounds old-fashioned, all uppity and needlessly symbolic and European. I know it does. It's exactly my point.

Continue ReadingWe need a monarch.

The so-called interview

I'm having a difficult time believing that FOX calls this an interview. The elephant in the room is that FOX and much of its audience want to believe that everything would be OK without any sort of health care reform. That assumption seemed to be driving the questioning. In the past few months, though, I've been meeting more and more people who are going without health insurance, which can lead to tragic foreclosures and bankruptcies. This situation is not tenable. With regard to this frustrating interview, I do find some fault with President Barack Obama too. He's claims both that we know what's in the bill and that we'll someday see what's in the bill. And he speaks as though there is going to be a meaningful comment period. I'll be watching to see how many hours tick by after passage of this bill, before the bill is rammed home at the White House. We'll see how much input the citizens will have. And from what we suspect, the Obama bill will apparently be a huge gift to corporations that are gaming the health care system. But you wouldn't know any of this based on the questions by this hack interviewer. We desperately need to reform the health care system, though I think that most of that work, and much of the sacrifices will need to be incurred by individual Americans. The national debate thus frustrates me because it is, I think, fundamentally dishonest. We, the People need to take far better care of their bodies and quit expecting our (incredibly talented) health care professionals to bail us out of problems we create with our terrible eating habits and sedentary lifestyles. And we might need to better understand that more high-tech medicine does not necessarily lead to better for real-life health and mortality rates. Americans are dreaming to think that they can pay less and get the same or more of the same type of healthcare that they are currently consuming. Something's gotta give. Maybe a lot of things gotta give. Mostly, we need meaningful exchanges of information in order to improve health care delivery. We need civilized debate and straight talk. This "interview" was pathetic--I do put most of the blame on the shallow-minded sputtering "interviewer," who came equipped mostly with barking points, rather than any interest in developing useful ideas. This session should be shown in journalism schools a an example of how not to conduct an interview. I'd never seen Bret Baier until this interview. I'd bet that he never again gets a chance to conduct any high profile interview. I really have to wonder about his objective going in, other than a dozen barking points.

Continue ReadingThe so-called interview

The Onion presents the formula for bullshit stories

A few weeks ago, I posted on a terrific video on a tried-and-true formula, "A Standard News Report," used by television "news" stations to package non-stories in order to present them to the public as "news." Now, The Onion has presented its own version of packaging used by television "news" stations for presenting non-stories as "news" stories. Quite funny, yet serious and well-concocted. The Onion's video looks like a news story about non-news stories, yet it presents a topic that is certainly newsworthy. Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere Speaking of The Onion, check out a new written Onion story on bigotry. Here's an excerpt:

A coalition of the nation's most fervent bigots convened in Washington Monday to address growing concerns that the production of hateful new racial slurs has failed to keep pace with the rise in mixed-race births.

Continue ReadingThe Onion presents the formula for bullshit stories