Media Matters Not – Page 16

Behavior modification: your tax dollars at work

18. October 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Media Matters Not

Skulking about the web, I happened onto a Human Events article entitled, “PBS Peddles New Online Leftist Indoctrination to Children.” I was intrigued, though not surprised. So I read the article, which describes a new environmentalist indoctrination tool aimed directly at kids. Courtesy of PBSKids.org, it’s called “Eekoworld.” Let me let Mac Johnson, the author of the HE article, describe it:

The invasion of my home by the joint forces of EekoWorld began about 14 seconds into my shower one morning. The bathroom door opened. I heard a series of tiny footsteps walk across the floor and there was a knock on the opaque shower door, about three feet off the ground.

“What?” I asked. “Um, Dad, you need to get out of the shower now. You’re taking too long,” replied the boy. “Why –do you have something at school today that we need to be early for?” I said. The very serious reply came back “Um, No. But you are using too much water, and that could kill all the fish.”

Read the rest of the story. I did, and decided to visit the site myself and meet the narrator, a flying monkey-shark-snake thing that will screech at your kids to recycle their garbage, ride their bike to ball practice (instead of having Mom drive them), and not build that second shopping mall. His voice is incredibly grating and his tone is preachy. It might actually be OK, since I can’t imagine a kid lasting more than about two minutes listening to this abomination.

Let me give you a taste of Cheeko (that’s the monkey-thing’s name). Of course, you’ll have to just imagine the screeching. Here’s a bit from Future Field Trip:

Let’s see what the beach might look like in twenty years if people don’t take care of the environment. Do you see all the trash? No one wants to swim in the water. There are not many fish either (Cheeko’s face gets angry). A lost of the birds have moved away too, and there are a lot of insects like ticks and mosquitos that can bite you and cause disease. Look at the seashore. It eroded after a big boat harbor was built nearby. The deep harbor keeps the sand from moving in the waves, so water covers more of the beach (angry face again). That means that animals and people have a lot less beach to enjoy (sad face).

Except for those ticks and mosquitos. I’ll bet they’re enjoying the beach.

Look, I’m a big believer in protecting our environment. But this site presents things in black and white (and I thought just us hyperChristian fundamentalist whackos did that). Harbor: bad. Driving to soccer practice: bad. Reusable plastic container: good. Taking long showers: bad. Air drying your newly laundered clothes on a rack: good (this is instead of using the dryer, which of course, is bad).

And kids (like Mac’s son) don’t get the complexities of the decisions that need to be made. They just take it at face value.

Of course, it’s ultimately up to us parents to monitor what our kids see on the Web, but one would have hoped (oh, well) that at least PBSkids would be safe. No more.

Debasing the Currency: Part 2

08. October 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Media Matters Not

It’s not that the news media were ever that shining, impartial, unbiased city on a hill, in days of yore— in the 19th century, American newspapers were as partisan as they come, and open enough about it to put their political affiliation on the masthead. And the usual run of partisan political abuse was venomous enough to make the various Something-gate ruckuses of the late 20th century look like the local Lutheran church general membership meeting in comparison. Early in the decades of this last century, the term “yellow journalism”— inflammatory, partisan, selective with facts— was practically a synonym for the Hearst chain. It goes without saying that Hearst’s newspapers were widely read, enormously popular, and innovative; sort of the Ted Turner and CNN news of the day. (Although Ted Turner has not yet to build an enormous fairy-tale castle filled with art and architectural salvage on top of a mountain in California. Yet, anyway.)

The newspaper magnates of that day, and their reporters were not without bias, or a taste for the sensational, either; mark the Lindberg kidnapping and resulting trial, or the New York Times’ Walter Duranty’s predilection for trimming his reportorial sails to suit the winds of Soviet Stalinism. But if there could ever be said to have been a golden age of print and broadcast journalism in America, though, it would have had to have been the thirty years between WWII and Watergate, and it’s presiding saint was Edward R. Murrow, present or in the memory of those who worked with him, or followed after. He set the standard, and a high one at that; fearless, principled, observant, and willing to go beyond the merely superficial, telling his listeners not just what they wanted to know, but what they ought to know, in order to make sense of it all. He was not the first to do this, but is the individual that we think of first when we try to think of someone who exemplifies the gold standard of news. Whether trivial or of import, readers and listeners operated from the assumption of credibility during that era.

Reporters might be mistaken, might not have the whole story right away, sources might be lying through their teeth, but we assumed that reporters were setting their personal biases aside (whatever those biases might be) and telling us what they saw before their own eyes. What we saw on TV, or read in the better sort of non-tabloid newspaper, or serious magazine, our assumption was that it was accurate, as the reporter saw it. A long, sad slow series of events began shredding this assumption, beginning long before the blogosphere, long before 9/11, degrading the value of the news currency. The gold coinage of the Murrow era was slowly replaced with pot metal, and the worst of it was, the media did it to themselves, for what seemed to be the best, but short-term reasons at the time.

People have always wanted to know about crime, bad weather, celebrity travails and disasters near and far; this does not change from age to age or country to country. It sells newspapers and advertising, after all, and it’s easy to write about. As early as 1988 Peter Boyer ( in “Who Killed CBS”) was chiding CBS news for consciously emphasizing the visual, the superficial, the emotional image of news events, for having fallen from the high standards set by America’s “Tiffany” network, from being serious news to merely entertainment. Boyer singled out for especial disapproval Van Gordon Sauter and Dan Rather. Other commenters, some of them to this blog, have dated the rot to have been in the wake of Watergate, when budding young journalism students were fired with the lure of being investigative reporters like Woodward and Bernstein (who got a movie, with Robert Redford, and Dustin Hoffman playing them!) and not incidentally, brought down a president. A decade after Boyer, James Fallows (“Breaking the News”) put the blame on a reportorial establishment that framed itself as well-paid elite, magisterial and above the fray. Fallows hoped for the rise of public journalism, of reporters being truly involved as citizens; what he hoped for came to pass, and I can’t help wondering how he feels these days, of ordinary citizens and bloggers empowered to report and editorialize. Citizens’ journalism with a vengeance, as it were and about time.

The list of media dishonor goes on, and on: the Peter Arnett “Tailwind” disaster, CNN’s much-vaunted Baghdad bureau pulling their reportorial punches in return for continued access, the fraud of Jenin and Mohammed-el-Dura, (and the dependence upon Palestinian stringers for reportage in the West Bank and Gaza generally), the whole Rather/TANG memos thing, the Katrina/New Orleans disaster, and the willingness of various media to repeat without any sort of reservation or quick-double-checking any number of sensational stories…. Well, any comprehensive list would be about three pages longer, and tax my ability to provide links after two glasses of Chablis.

Slightly buzzed, or completely sober, my conclusion is pretty much the same. The major media is debased coinage. I can’t take it as a given any more, that what I see, or read, or hear from them is true. My assumption is, that they have their own agenda, I will have to do a bit of fact-checking, and wait for a while before I can come to any sort of conclusion about what I have had put in front of me— make allowances, tease out the implications, come to my own conclusions from the jig-saw assembly provided to me.

It all kind of reminds me, in a minor way, of what people in the former Soviet Union had to do— and that is a sad comment on what the major media has become. Eager young journalism majors used to burble that they wanted to be reporters so they could make a difference. So they have… but not a good difference.

Debasing the Currency: Pt 1

05. October 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Media Matters Not

A long time ago, when currency in the West of the world was in the form of coins and monetary policy was an infant science, the most-valued coins in the marketplaces were those minted of precious or semi-precious metals, each coin valued approximately to the content of the metal and based on that relationship of content to the official value stamped upon it—or so is my understanding of the grim science of economics, given that I was an English major, and given to interpret these things from a literary worldview.

Changes, variations and plain old criminal fiddles upset this tidy understanding almost immediately by the creatively larcenous. Thieves shaved minute scrapings of precious metal of gold and silver coins— did you know that the milled edge was an innovation designed to defeat this criminal stratagem? And of course, out-right counterfeiters did their ingenious worst. It got to the point where clever merchants had to be as careful of coins as modern retail establishments are with large-denomination notes, since there was always the chance of the bad penny turning up, and being a distinct loss to a commercial establishment. In those early days, coinage crossed borders freely, mostly because the currency distributed by a well run, prosperous, and fiscally sound state, city or kingdom could be assured of being worth its assigned value. (Bonus trivia note: certain coins later assumed to be equal to a dollar were cut into eight pieces, to make change in the American colonies; this is the origination of the slang “bits”, as in the use of “two bits” for a quarter, or 25 cents. And the word “dollar” itself is drawn from the German “thaler” coin… )

OK, enough trivia, back to the point: I do have one, honestly. The general use of currency implies an act of trust. We trust that the coin or bill is worth what it is supposed to be, as true now as it was two hundred, four hundred, or two or four millennia ago, and in the brutal financial meritocracy prevalent in the hurly-burly of interesting historical times, some coinage was always counted as more valuable than others. There were always established states, or kingdoms whose rulers fell to the temptation of short-lived gains earned by fiddling with the coinage… who took the short way out of economic problems by shorting the quantity of good metal in their coins, for what they viewed as the best of short-term reasons.

But short-term expedients have long term consequences, and the major media lords who control imperfectly, that appears in print, on the radio, and most importantly, on TV, may yet discover this at first hand. They have taken a good, solid coinage, a trusted, solid precious-metal coinage— at least, that which existed at the mid-point of this last century— and for immediate, short term gain, chosen to substitute dross for value.

(To be Continued)

Terry and the Pirate Movie

01. October 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Media Matters Not, Military, That's Entertainment!

OK, Ok, I probably will go to see Serenity, and maybe The Corpse Bride, in the near future, should I have a couple of free days between temp assignments. (Yes, still job-hunting, still tempingâ€” this month at a corporate behemoth so huge that it hasâ€” I kid you notâ€” a Starbucks concession at each end of the building. It’s even more boring than the overnight TV boardshift, and the daily commute is a killer; I hate it already, thanks for asking – but it is a paycheck)

With Hollywood on this graphic novel/nostalgia/action flick/remake kick, I continue to be ever more amazed that the great adventure comic strip, Terry and the Pirates hasn’t gone all big-screen on us in the last couple of years. Sure, sure, there was a brief movie-serial version, as well as a radio show, at the very height of it’s popularity during WWII, but I’ve always believed that Terry had the potential to knock the socks off Indiana Jones as far as cliff-hanging, non-stop adventure in exotic places, featuring a studly two-fisted hero, and gorgeous, strong-minded women of occasionally ambivalent moral principles. Throw in the bright teen-aged kid sidekickâ€” the Terry of name, and add lashings of lost gold mines, Chinese warlords and freedom fighters, mercenaries of every nationality, colonial officialdom whiling away the afternoon on the verandah with a gin sling and the ceiling fan whirring overhead, pilots and sailors, thieves and bratty kidnapped children, freelance relief workers, glamorous globe-trotting debutants, and the distant rumble of Japanese expansionism across the Far East – oh, what Stephen Spielberg could make of this, if he hadn’t gone all high-toned and meaningful on us, to lofty to meddle with good-humored intrigue, glamour and adventure.

That was always Milton Caniffs’ thing; that and a drop-dead wonderful artistic sensibility. I remember that Steve Canyon, his follow-on strip to Terry & The Pirates was still being carried by the LA Times when I was in grade school. The sheer visual style of that strip, meticulously detailed, complex, almost cinematic, was artistically the most eye-catching thing in the color supplements on Sunday, even though I couldn’t force myself to be interested in the characters and plots. It wasn’t a kid’s comic, I sensedâ€” it was something for grownupsâ€” and by the time I would have taken an interest in it, Steve Canyon was gone from the papers. The hero was a military pilot, and like the original GI Joe doll, and like much else military and of the cold-war era, fell out of general favor during the Vietnam War.

I can’t say I discovered Caniff’s most famous cartoon predecessor to Steve Canyon when doing historical research in the CSUN newspaper archives, since I already knew of it: Mom had been a fan, like just about every kid in the late Thirties, and there were excerpts in various books about the comics, or media that I had run across, one way or the other, but when I started my history project, I had a chance to read the whole run of Terry, over a decade’s worth of daily newspapers, starting in 1935. It was cartoonish and kind of sketchy, early on, but in about 1938 or so, Caniff hit an artistic stride and it just got better and better. The Dragon Lady, the beautiful Eurasian gang-leader turned freedom fighterâ€” was she an ally? Sometimes she was, and there was this love-hate thing she had going on with the ostensible hero, soldier of fortune Pat Ryan. And then there was the mysterious torch singer, Burma, a blond bombshell and fugitive from the law â€” for what was never made quite clear, but her signature tune was the St. Louis Blues. Then there was the lovely Normandie, hounded by bossy relatives into marrying someone other than Pat, and the dashing Raven Sherman, fearless doer of good deeds in the dark world of war-torn China. Raven earned a small footnote in the history of the comics for being a major character and dying in the line of duty, thrown off the back of a truck during a hairbreadth escape. (The daily panel of this is entirely wordless.) Fans turned east for a moment of silence and mourned, and Caniff got black-edged notes on the anniversary for years afterwards.

The death of a fictional character occurred a bare two months before an event in real time that shook up the real, and the created worldâ€” the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Curiously enough, Terry had fans in Japan during the 1930ies, and in deference to American neutrality, Japanese forces were referred to only as “the invaders” up until that point, even though Caniff’s natural sympathies were with the long-suffering Chinese nationals. After Pearl Harbor, all neutralities were off. The character of Pat Ryan shifted off-screen; Mom always said that Caniff had written him into Singapore in early 1942, and the real-life fall of the city put Pat into a corner, while Terryâ€” the kid who had grown up over the last six years of the seriesâ€” joined the Army Air Corps and took center stage as far as adventure and romance was concerned. Caniff had always done a lot of research for the strip, and with a military angle, he acquired even more. Like a proto-blogger, he took tips, suggestions and corrections, and carefully read what news coverage of the Far East generally was available. One account has it that he was questioned once by the FBI, because a story-line he had concocted for the Terry stripâ€” suggested by a mention in an obscure newspaper storyâ€” came altogether too close to an actual classified wartime operation.

The difficulty of doing a proper Terry movie isâ€” aside from the intellectual rights to it allâ€” is the one that would send the PC set screaming in the opposite direction. That is, the fact that some of the major Chinese characters, besides the Dragon Lady herself, would just not past muster today, not without changing them beyond recognition or eliminating them entirely. Big Stoop, the mute and fearless giant might be able to pass muster, but the comic relief, fractured- English-speaking cook and houseboy Connie – oh, dear, how to turn that 1930ies pigs’ ear stereotype into a proper 21st century politically correct silk purse? That would be a challenge to whoever would want to take it on – and seeing how Hollywood is doing with portraying our enemies in this war, I would assume it is one they are not up to accepting.

Pityâ€” Terry and the Pirates would make a very nice movie. I’d pay money and go to it in the theater, which is more than I can say for most of the drek out there, these days.

Why We Fight: New Version

28. September 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, GWOT, History, Media Matters Not, War

To: Karen Hughes
From: Sgt. Mom
Re: The Modern Version of “Why We Fight”

1. It is a pity that explaining ourselves to the outside world in this current war has to be left to the government, but there you go. You fight the war with what you have, not what you wish you had. Hollywood this time is too incestuously self-involved, too out of touch with everything outside it’s tight little bicoastal enclaves of wealth, ease, and depravity to bother much with the rubes of flyover country – and too afraid, al la Rushdie and van Gogh, to risk a fatwa, a knife in a public street, a car bomb in Morton’s, or a representative from CAIR parked in their outer office. Pity about that— and a pretty sorry showing on the part of those who usually preen themselves on their audacity in “speaking truth to power.” It all depends on the power addressed, I guess.

2. I also gather that Charlotte Beers’ “softly, softly” series of advertisements featuring American Muslims singing the joys of life in the good old US of A went over like the proverbial lead balloon in the Muslim world. Well, if they were anything like the spots that used to air on AFRTS which expanded upon the joys of living in the country we served— well, we were left pretty much rolling our eyes and heading for the latrine, so I can’t see that Ms. Beers whould have been surprised. It’s a tough audience, which requires a tough sell. At this point, it may be necessary to take off the tidy white Madison Avenue gloves, and punch from the gut. Hard.

3. Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” series, from the Second World War might prove to be an instructive guide, editing together our enemies’ propaganda and newsreel film— turning their own words, deeds— and by implication their own hypocrisies against them, giving an audience an unvarnished look at the intentions and actions of our enemies. Skip the pretty pictures of nice American Moslems in their suburban 2-car garage lives; go straight to the point, and turn the video images of the Islamic Jihad, of Al Jazeera, and the Al-Quada websites right back at the Moslem world in every gory, stomach-churning detail.

4. Show the head-choppings, the murders and the executions, with blade and stone and shot to the head— of Moslems and Westerners alike. Show the jihadis blowing up busloads of schoolchildren and murdering election workers. Show them shouting “Allah Akbar!” as they saw the heads off live people, replay their every murder, boast and claim of responsibility- and give the credit for the source of the video. Show the video of Osama chuckling to his guests as he describes how the Towers collapsed. Include the ferocious, hate-filled rants of those bearded, spittle-beflecked Imams – those in the mosques of the West and the East, too; all those who don’t think anyone but their own congregations are listening.

5. Show too, the aftermath of their work— again, giving credit to the TV media of the Moslem world; show the blood, the body parts strewn all over, the wrecked lives of innocents. Show it all, and choke with blood and shame, anyone who still will try and claim that this version of Islam is a religion of peace. Show every instance of Islamic terrorism’s lies, hypocrisy, and bloodshed – especially the blood shed amongst Moslems by their coreligionists…

6. And finally, show us and the Islamic world as a footnote, the remains of dead jihadis, bits and pieces of their gruesome dead bodies, all mixed in with bits of metal from suicide bombs, dead in the dirt like so much garbage, or shot down like a dog by an American sniper. . . Show how clear and inglorious is the modern jihad, shoveled into an unmarked, un-mourned grave. Throw it all back in their faces— credited, and exhaustively footnoted— every ugly boast, word and deed.

7. Considering that most of the nastier stuff has been common video currency in the radical Islamic world, this might accomplish nothing more than a sort of “greatest jihad hits” highlights video – but it might also grab the attention of that so greatly hoped-for moderate Moslem demographic; those that might be greatly horrified about what has been perpetrated in their name and to their alleged benefit. And of course, the mainstream media-consuming American audience might also be enlightened.

8. At least, think about this public affairs outreach option. It’s not like there’s anything worse that hasn’t been done already.

Sincerely
Sgt Mom

Oh-No! Another Cute, Missing Coed.

25. September 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not

Developing…

I don’t need to know any more – only that, once this breaks, nothing else will matter to the MSM for at least the next couple of weeks.

Ok, so not a coed, but attractive and pregnant too. This seems like just the sort of thing they consider manna from heaven.

Appalling Labor Exploitation – By Joshua Micah Marshall

20. September 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not

On today’s Best of the Web Today, James Taranto quotes this from Talking Points Memo:

TPM is looking for a new web intern who’ll be responsible for various aspects of on-going site design, site maintenance, assistance administering the TPM community site, TPMCafe, and work on our various projects like . . . our new tracking of which members of Congress are supporting President Bush’s Gulf Coast Wage Cut [suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act]. . . .

This is an unpaid internship.

And he comments:

When your money is at stake, Marshall is willing to let unions dictate wages. When it comes to his own money, he not only refuses to pay prevailing wages, he won’t even pay the minimum wage–or indeed any wage at all! Just who is trying to bamboozle whom here?

Memo: To the Media, Re Katrina

19. September 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Home Front, Media Matters Not, Rant

To: Major Media—TV Division
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Katrina Koverage

I honestly wonder why I even bother with NPR any more, the odor of sour sanctimony emanating from such as Diane Rehm and Daniel Schorr is enough to make me gag, most days, but I can avoid the one, and yell through my radio at the other that he is a senile old idiot stuck in his Watergate glory days. Oh, yeah, now I remember: the alternatives are worse. Morning Edition and All Things Considered and the rest of the news programs do make an attempt to cover the news in depth, to examine the genuinely quirky and offbeat, to have sound-bites that are actually longer than 20 seconds, and on occasion to use words that contain three syllables. Also they gave a miss to covering the saga of the runaway bride, the missing student in Aruba, the trial of whatsisfern who murdered his pregnant wife, and other such sensational fare— for which I am profoundly grateful. (They found one, didn’t find the other, and convicted the third, just in case there is anyone else who cares.) Besides, it’s not good to live in an echo chamber, as far as news is concerned: I figure since I listen to NPR, I can give a miss to DU and the Kos Kiddies. (And I still think that would be a great name for a garage band.)

It actually wasn’t a guest interviewee on one of the news programs that set off this week’s Sgt. Mom rant, it was a guest on “Whadda Ya Know”, a sort of comic quiz and variety program, which is Prairie Home Companion’s poorer cousin. This week, the show was broadcast from Cleveland Ohio, and the first interviewed guest was one Connie Schultz, a Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I’d never heard of her, but then I’d never heard of James Lileks, either, before I took up blogging. She came off rather charming at first, with a good radio presence, and nice voice… but then she started talking about news coverage of Katrina, gloated over the horrible plight of those told to take refuge in the New Orleans Superdome and the Convention Center, noted even that the Fox news reporters came unglued over the horrible conditions there, and dumped responsibility for it all onto FEMA. She wound up with a note of pious self-satisfaction by noting that the news media had got their soul back, with the Katrina coverage. Never a mention of course, of the drowned school busses, the evacuation plan that was never followed, or the stunning contrast between the actions of local authorities in New Orleans, and those in Mississippi and Alabama. Of course not— it’s all Bush’s fault.

I hope that beautiful thought gives her some satisfaction— she apparently specializes in writing about the downtrodden and disenfranchised— but, no, I don’t think the news media has got their soul back. Maybe some of the print journalists have, with stories that go back and look at some of the existing issues and events that weren’t rushed in front of the cameras (like this, or this, or this *)but the majority of TV “journalists” have their souls right where they always were… that is, whoring after the bloody, the immediate dramatic image, the simplistic, the sheer drama of a large number of people descending straight into the lord of the flies mode, right in front of the camera. “Look at what Bush made us do!!!!!”, but never a word about the logistical challenges of getting effective help into a large area, when the infrastructure is wrecked, never a word about the absolutely stunning failure of the local and state government to even begin to live up to their commitments to local citizens, never even a bit of healthy skepticism about some of the more audacious claims of riot, rape and murder… Well, really, as commanding officers doing condolence letters were supposed to have written about personnel who managed to get themselves killed in unusually stupid ways, “They behaved in the manner which we had come to expect of them”.

There is a story, about a gossip who regretted spreading a story, and went to the local rabbi, who told her a parable about opening a feather pillow into the wind… and then trying to collect all the scattered feathers. Our TV news-people scatter the feathers, unthinkingly into the wind, and then try to justify their inability to collect them… and wonder why no one respects them any more. Perhaps Ms. Schultz will figure that out, but don’t ask me to hold my breath while she does.

Sincerely,
Sgt Mom

(* Sorry, can’t work out a link for this one that circumvents their registry. It’s the story that Instapundit linked late last week about Louisiana FEMA personnel being under investigation for misusing funds)

Trouble In Paradise For Krugman

16. September 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not

This from NYTimes Public Editor Byron Calame:

Columnist Correction Policy Isn’t Being Applied to Krugman

An Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times who makes an error “is expected to promptly correct it in the column.” That’s the established policy of Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page. Her written policy encourages “a uniform approach, with the correction made at the bottom of the piece.”

Two weeks have passed since my previous post spelled out the errors made by columnist Paul Krugman in writing about news media recounts of the 2000 Florida vote for president. Mr. Krugman still hasn’t been required to comply with the policy by publishing a formal correction. Ms. Collins hasn’t offered any explanation.

[…]

A bottom-line question: Does a corrections policy not enforced damage The Times’s credibility more than having no policy at all?

A better question is whether the NYTimes has any credibility in the first place, particularly when it comes to Krugman.

Hat Tip: InstaPundit

Casting The Jaundice Eye

01. September 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not

Just now, all MSM reports have us believing the New Orleans is a worse place than Sadr City ever was – looting, rape, and murder on a broad scale. But I wonder: just how much of this is media hype?

HERKYBIRDMAN TO THE RESCUE!

01. September 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Home Front, Media Matters Not

Come Sunday, after lunch with our friend APROUDVETERAN, I will be leaving home and comfort for the devastated Gulf Coast. Every prayer you, my friends, can utter will be appreciated, as I do my best to provide communications from the area.

I have been a ham radio operator since I was 12, and besides flying, it is one of my favorite hobbies. (My call sign is W1FKY) I am now getting my radio equipment ready, and loading survival supplies, food, and water, into my van for the trip. This is not my first time. It started in 1961, with Hurricane Carla, while I was at Lackland AFB, TX. I rode out that storm at the base MARS station, passing messages, and ever after I was hooked. I did the same in 1962 at Keesler AFB, and in 1979, while living in New Orleans, went to Mississippi and Alabama to provide communications for Sheriff’s offices and emergency operations centers.

In 1989, when Hurricane Hugo hit the Carolinas, I took Nurse Jenny with me and we spent nearly a month camped out in a washed-out fire station, not only operating radios, but giving Emergency Medical Services in the small town of McClellanville, SC. That was one for the record books!

I expect to spend 2 weeks in the area, and will blog as much as possible, but I may not be able to get an internet connection until I get back out of the area. OK, guys, here we go!

Katrina

29. August 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not

Help me out here.

Am I the ONLY one who felt disappointed that New Orleans missed being destroyed yet again?

Don’t get me wrong. I love New Orleans. One of my best drunks ever was on Bourbon Street and there’s no better place to have a hangover breakfast. They understand the need for a serious Bloody Mary in that town.

But I was promised large scale destruction of a major city by mother nature and as messed up as I know it sounds, I feel completely ripped off.

I will now go hang my head in shame.

Can I blame MTV if I never watch it?

———–

Update: 30 Aug 05. Midafternoon. The above was commentary more on the media coverage of the event than it was of my true feelings on the matter…just in case anyone missed that. I realize that not everyone “gets” me sometimes.

All I can say today is pray if you got Him and think good thoughts in that direction if ya don’t. Those folks need all the help they can get.

News From the Front by the Folks At the Front

26. August 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not

Because not all of your news should be independent or fair and balanced (COUGH-Foxnews gives handjobs-COUGH), I offer for your reading pleasure a link to the most current USCENTCOM Newsletter.

That’s right, the news that the officials over there want us to read, the way they want us to read it. You may call it propoganda, I call it a too little too late attempt to counter the left-wing movement to destroy the war effort, our morale, and the American way of life. Buncha pinkos pissing me off lately, but I’ll save that rant for another time.

You’re welcome…no…really…don’t applaud…it was nothing…seriously…I’m just in a good mood…weekend coming up and all.

Warning: CENTCOM’s pages seem to take forever to load but there are a LOT of good pictures that we haven’t been seeing on the news…I know…go figure.

No,. No – Please No

19. August 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not

I don’t usually watch FNS’ Hannity & Colmes. But I came home today, to turn-on my TV and hear, “I’m Rich Lowery, sitting in for Sean Hannity. And Alan and I are sitting here with our thumbs up our asses, waiting for some news on the Natalee Holloway case.”

Alan: “That’s right, Rich. And, while we wait, we have some experts here, who have not just their thumbs, but their whole fists up their asses. First, from Harvard’s School of Comparitive Cultures we have…”

ARGGGGH!

Buy That Captain a Beer!

17. August 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not

From Newsbusters:

After getting two responses to the effect that morale was good, Lauer had this to say: “Don’t get me wrong, I think you’re probably telling the truth, but there might be a lot of people at home wondering how that could be possible with the conditions you’re facing and with the insurgent attacks you’re facing. ”

If Lauer was the advocate for the anti-war case, he then made the cardinal mistake that no advocate should make: asking a question to which you don’t know the answer.

Asked Lauer: “What would you say to those people who are doubtful that morale could be that high?”

Captain Sherman Powell nailed Lauer, the MSM and the anti-war crowd with this beauty: “Well sir, I’d tell you, if I got my news from the newspapers also I’d be pretty depressed as well!”

Somebody, anybody, buy that Captain a beer, and put it on my tab.

Via Blackfive.

Movie Review: “The Great Raid”

16. August 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Media Matters Not, Military, That's Entertainment!

The Great Raid is a solidly old-fashioned kind of war movie, of the workmanlike sort made during or in the two decades immediately after World War II. Whether you like it or not depends very largely on whether you see this old-fashioned quality as a good thing or a bad thing.

Three linked stories are competently woven together, all taking place over 5 days in January, 1945, as the Japanese occupation of the Philippines comes to a final bloody end. The threads of the story come together at the POW camp at Cabanatuan, where the last five hundred or so ragged survivors of the Bataan Death March, and the siege of Corrigidor wait for death or liberation. Cabanatuan was the central holding camp for POWs in the Philippines, and by this time the fitter and healthier prisoners had been moved to other camps or to Japan for forced labor. Those left are sick, crippled, starving, many barely able to stand, mentally gone somewhere far beyond despair. They are afraid they have been forgotten by the outside world, but they have not been. In Manila, a Catholic nurse named Margaret Utinsky runs a small underground circle which smuggles desperately needed drugs into the Cabanatuan camp. Margaret, although the widow of an American Army officer, holds a passport from a neutral country and manages to stay at liberty and ahead of the Japanese secret police – for a while. The man she loves is in Cabanatuan, desperately ill with malaria. As the Japanese control over the Philippines begins to waver, he and the other prisoners are in danger of being murdered outright.

A massacre of American POWs at another camp sets the third story in motion; a hit and run raid on the Cabanatuan camp to free the POWs there, and spirit them to safety. The liberators will have to walk the last thirty miles, avoid any encounters with the Japanese forces, and pull it off with no rehearsals. The job falls to 120 picked men from the 6th Ranger Battalion, and their bombastic and colorful commander, Col. Henry Mucci. In turn, Col. Mucci assigns one of his company commanders, Capt. Robert Prince to come up with a plan to hit the camp, and to come up with it in 24 hours. Refining the plan, getting information about the camp, doing reconnaissance on the spot, coming up with a means of transporting the sick and unfit to safety, distracting the Japanese guards— it’s all done on the fly, over the next four days, working in concert with two separate Filipino guerilla organizations.

The elements of the actual raid is the most interesting and seemingly the most carefully recreated, a scheme of meticulously organized chaos— counting down to the last minutes as the Rangers carefully take up positions in the dark, just outside camp, and the Filipino guerillas prepare to block access on the road to either side. The moment when they open up is quite jolting, as it follows on fifteen or so minutes of quiet whispers, and the scuffling sounds of men crawling through the weeds. I think I would have rather seen more of the planning of it, rather than the doomed romance, which seems rather jammed in as an afterthought, and a contrivance. I did think it a little odd— since one of the keys to operating a successful underground organization is to be physically ordinary and persistently unnoticeable— that they could cast a dishwater blond actress who stands a head and a half taller than everyone else, as an underground operative in an Oriental country.

Otherwise, the attention given to the Philippine underground, and the guerillas out in the country was very appropriate, and much overdue in movies of this sort. The cast is a solid ensemble, turning in respectable performances; the lack of star power being somewhat of an advantage here. (Only three of the leads: Benjamin Bratt, Connie Nielson and Joseph Fiennes are anyone that I have ever heard of, or noticed in a movie before.) The director and producers also hired Dale Dye as their military advisor, and would appear to have paid attention to him, although I am sure that William or any other enthusiastic experts will find small flaws and discrepancies in uniforms, weapons and vehicles. There was also a quiet, unobtrusive nod paid to religious beliefs, which I rather appreciated— another old-fashioned note. And the brutality of the Japanese forces in their treatment of POWs and Filipinos was not softened, or played down in the interests of political correctness; I doubt The Great Raid will play well in Japan, but it will go over splendidly in the Philippines. And if you see it, stay for the closing credits: it opens with what looks like contemporary black and white newsreel footage of the fall of Bataan, the Death March— and closes with the arrival of the transport ship carrying the survivors to a cheering crowd in San Francisco.

Memo:Lamestream Media

08. August 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, GWOT, Media Matters Not, Military, Rant, War

To: Damian Cave, @ The New York Times
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Some Cheese with that Whine

1. So you are baffled, baffled, I say by the lack of coverage in the major media, to the stories of heroism in Irag and Afghanistan, and wonder disingenuously as to why the names of SFC Paul Smith, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and Sgt. Rafael Peralta are not right up there in the consciousness of the nation as heroes, heroes on par with Audie Murphy and Alvin York. (My comparison, not yours. Audie Murphy and Alvin York were… oh, never mind. Use a search engine, or read some history books.) Such is your supple intellect and grasp of the obvious that you manage fix the blame anywhere but with your own media culture. “…The military, the White House and the culture at large have not publicized their actions with the zeal that was lavished on the heroes of World War I and World War II.”

2. Myself, I grasp the fact that the cluebirds are over your position, but at a very great height. I will do what I can, to bring certain realities within your reach. First, I suggest that you walk out of your office, leave the building, and stand on the sidewalk outside, and look back. (I assume of course, that you are a full-time employee of the paper of record. If you are a free-lancer, skip this paragraph.) Somewhere on the building you have just departed should be the inscription or legend, “New York Times.” Yes, Mr. Cave, you work for a newspaper, a fairly major national newspaper, as it turns out. I would suggest, if you wish an answer to your question as to why there is no attention paid to the heroes of this war, you first ask them of your co-workers at the Times.

3. And it’s not as if the stories have not been told: you know that mouse-clicky thing, to the side of the keyboard in front of the oddly-television appearing monitor on your desk? The stories are there, Mr. Cave, on the milblogs such as this, on Mudville Gazette (among hundreds of others), on various DOD websites, and at military press briefings. It’s called investigative reporting— remember when they covered that at j-school? Other newspapers can manage it, mostly papers in markets located close to military bases. Military bases… you know, those federal reserves, out in the sticks, full of noisy tanks and airplanes and things, and people with very short haircuts and a tendency to all wear the same sort of clothes? All these places have a little office on it someplace, called the Public Affairs office. They’d love to hear from you some time, tell you all about heroes and anything else about their personnel that you’d like to hear. Give them a jingle, they’re in the book.

4. And you expect to be spoon-fed by the White House, or the military, or whomever, about the heroes of this war? You want it tied up in a nice pink bow, or something, after three years of pretty much ignoring anything but the ever-floggable dead horse of Abu Ghraib/Guantanamo. Well, there is no contenting some people. Just do your job, instead of blaming everyone else. Pick up the phone, click on the mouse. I swear, when you go to the men’s room, do you have to have someone else hold your…. Oh, never mind, that’s a question to which I really don’t want an answer.

5. Just do your job. And stop whining.

Sincerely
Sgt Mom

(Correction pointed out by Byna… I should not do rants when I am cooking dinner at the same time, from an unfamiliar recipe!)

Update: Full-frontal evisceration of Mr. Cave is here, and a gallery of heroes here.

R.I.P. Peter Jennings

08. August 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not, Memoir

That’s all. I was going to rant about how the right-wingers and left-wingers couldn’t simply pay their respects without causing a fuss or qualifying their respects, but then I realised I’d be causing a fuss.

I thought his 9/11 coverage was simply amazing.

Mom, They Tricked Joe.

03. August 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not

I have just tuned into, for about the third time in the past two months, MSNBC’s Scarborough Country. And the lead story is “Mom: they tricked Natalee.”

Joe: you were pulling up the dregs as it was, being a me too of Bill O’Reilly. Now you are emulating Greta Van Susteran. How can you even walk down the street with your head up?

What’s Not To Hate?

01. August 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: GWOT, Media Matters Not

Mark Yost of the St. Paul Pioneer Press tells us, “why most Americans, particularly soldiers, hate the media.”

Early Bird version: Why They Hate Us. (Direct access to .mil, registration from commercial domains required.)

St. Paul Pioneer Press version: Why They Hate Us. (Registration required.)

…Why isn’t the focus of the story the fact that 14 of 18 Iraqi provinces are stable and the four that aren’t are primarily home to the genocidal gang of thugs who terrorized that country for 30 years? And reporters wonder why they’re despised.

He has a long list of accomplishments that the press simply doesn’t report. I’ve got a niece on the ground over there as I type this and she’s working herself exhausted getting infrastructure built that was never in place before to help those folks stand on their own. Will I ever get to see her shining face on the nightly news? Nope. She’d have to get wounded or do something stupid first. God forbid we get to see her doing her job and getting things done.

Much Ado About Nothing

31. July 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not

In today’s Washing Post, is this article by Darryl Fears, Study: Few Blacks Seen on Talk Shows, sure to raise some feathers:

Only 8 percent of the guests on the major Sunday morning talk shows over the past 18 months were African Americans, with three people accounting for the majority of those appearances, according to a new study by the National Urban League.

Black guests — newsmakers, the journalists who questioned them and experts who offered commentary — appeared 176 times out of more than 2,100 opportunities, according to the study, which is scheduled for release today. But 122 of those appearances were made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, and Juan Williams, a journalist and regular panel member on “Fox News Sunday.”

“There’s very clearly a division, an exclusion,” said Stephanie J. Jones, executive director of the Urban League Institute, who initiated the study, “Sunday Morning Apartheid: a Diversity Study of the Sunday Morning Talk Shows.”

[…]

The study analyzed NBC’s “Meet the Press,” ABC’s “This Week,” CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Fox television’s “Fox News Sunday” and CNN’s “Late Edition.” It found that more than 60 percent of the programs that aired during the 18-month period had no black guests. “Meet the Press,” the talk show with the largest number of viewers, had no black guests on 86 percent of its broadcasts, the study said.

[…]

Barbara Levin, senior communications director for NBC News, said that “Meet the Press” interviews “the same newsmakers who dominate the front pages and op-ed pages of every newspaper in America, including The Washington Post.”

And who should we find on today’s Meet the Press panel, but WaPo’s own Eugene Robinson.. 🙂

Rites, Practices and Legends # 16: Golden Flow

28. July 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Iraq, Media Matters Not, Military, sarcasm

OK, so reading the scathing comments here and there about “Over There”— the drama about the war in Iraq which is supposed to be ripped from the headlines— are amusing enough; Hey, Mr. B, dude, if you are ripping stories from the headlines, let’s rip them from the right decade, ‘kay? The description of one of the main characters as a serious doper, though… An active-duty member of the military today, smoking rope on a regular basis? Yeah, shu-r-r-r-e. Right. I have two words on that for Mr. B.; two words and a Bette Davis-sized eye-roll…. And the two words are “Golden Flow.”

Yes, back in the day, there was a lot of smoking of the eeeevvil weed. There were legends from my early service days, about how to baffle the drug-sniffing dogs by mixing cayenne pepper into the floor wax, about small marijuana plants growing among the shrubs underneath the barracks windows, from so many people throwing their stash out the window shortly in advance of a shakedown search. I personally saw the stash kept by one of my tech school classmates under the passenger seat of his POV— so as not to implicate his roommates in the event that someone got off their ass and searched the dorm rooms. One of my own roommates indulged on occasion, although the two of us who did not asked her very nicely to keep her stash out of the room, and us in ignorance of her pot-consuming. Even in the late 1970ies, being busted for possession was grounds for being thrown out. And yes, I know what the stuff smells like, and I had friends who indulged, although Blondie was completely horrified to find out this, she being the product of a Catholic education, DARE and every other sanctioned youth drug-abuse-prevention program, and six years worth of AFRTS substance-abuse spots.

Which brings me to my next point, which is that DOD began landing like a ton of bricks on the consumption of pot and other illegal substances, especially at overseas locations. A part-timer at FEN-Misawa was busted by the Japanese cops with a shopping bag-full of the local stuff, and implicated so many other people when he began to sing like a demented canary that the unit he was assigned to had to shut down operations for a couple of days while everyone in it trooped obediently in to the local gendarmerie to be interrogated. He also fingered half of the FEN staff as well. I wasn’t one of them, fortunately— as MSgt. Rob elegantly elucidated, I was so notoriously clean-cut I probably gift-wrapped my garbage. The stuff grew wild in Japan, and the temptation was too much for some. It was to the point where the base Security Police offered a certain courtesy service: if you had just bought an automobile, they would have the sniffer dogs go over it, just to establish that any traces of dope they found in it could be held against the previous owner.

I am not sure exactly when they began to do regular random urinalysis tests on military personnel, and am too lazy to thresh through the mountains of data to pin down the date, but it must have been by the early 80ies, because I clearly remember being escorted to the hospital at Hellenikon AB, and asked to fill a small plastic cup; the nurse who proctored did so from the other side of a restroom stall door. That courtesy had gone by the board by the mid-80ies, when I was tasked with proctoring piss-tests ordered on members of the unit at EBS-Zaragoza, as the senior female assigned. I had to eyeball the stream of urine as it left the body and filled up the cup. How degrading and personally embarrassing this was for me, and for every female junior troop who worked for me can be imagined. One poor airman had bashful kidneys; we would be guaranteed to spend at least three or four hours waiting in the hospital waiting room, with her swilling soft drinks, and me telling her silly jokes and inwardly fuming, thinking of all the things I had left at work that I should be doing, except that the Air Force thought this was a much more important use of my time. A male Senior Airman at EBS was busted cold by one of these random tests— he was demoted back to E-1 and out of the Air Force in about six months, and the fact that he had been a sterling citizen, and otherwise an ornament to the unit had no effect at all on the mills of justice. He was out. From his account, he had only smoked it once, inveigled by his girlfriend, a fair Spanish maid and in bed after a rewarding evening…. No, it was plain and clear to the most clueless that polluting the temple of your body whilst in service to Uncle Sam with illegal substances was not only ill-advised… but a short-cut to all kinds of unpleasant outcomes, beginning with a bust in grade, dismissal from service, et cetera, et cetera. And the piss-tests were supposed to be legally iron-clad, and very, very sensitive. Hell, I have even been careful about what I baked and took in to work: nothing with poppy seeds. (I really didn’t want to count on the government lab being able to tell the difference between opiate derivatives… and lemon-poppy-seed tea bread.)

The subsequent investigation of anyone busted by a random urinalysis would take in a whole range of other parties; not just their friends, but their unit, known associates, everyone they had ever talked to, or even thought about talking to. This is something that everyone in the military culture post 1980 knows: a doper will be caught, sooner rather than later. When they are caught, they will bring grief down on every known associate, which has the result of dopers being about as popular as child molesters. The military of the late 1990ies was most emphatically not the military of thirty years before; in a lot of ways it was much more puritanical. I cannot, for example, imagine any of the practical jokes the broadcasters played on each other at FEN-Misawa in 1978, being even considered at AFKN-Seoul in 1994.

I do not think the Army has changed their corporate culture all that much in ten years. Sometime in 1994, AFKN pulled an exercise recall of all their staff, at 4 AM, ordering everyone to report for duty at once… and as soon as we signed in, the Readiness NCO handed us a lidded plastic cup and directed us to the lavatory.
“Oh, you sneaky, conniving bastard!” I told him, as I took the cup. They tested every one of us, in one fell swoop. No, I cannot see a doper lasting for more than a couple of months in the military as practiced today. I may have been out for eight years, but the kind of corporate culture instilled for two service generations… sorry, Mr. B. It doesn’t pass the smell test.

It also doesn’t look like anyone in Hollywood reads milblogs. Pity about that. Lots of good stories there, too. I am doing the best I can— you can lead whores to culture, but you just can’t make ‘em think.

Of Chablis Socialism, Tailgunner Joe and a Hunger Strike

20. July 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, History, Iran, Media Matters Not

The poor moth-eaten ghost of Joe McCarthy has gotten as much mileage in the op-eds of the wise in the last couple of years as zombie movies have in the multiplex these days. When in doubt, drag it out, shake it around and yell “Oooogah-booogah! Red-baiting! Black-list! It’s a new McCarthyism! Save the women and children! Oooooga-boogah!” It has always struck me as amusing, how the significance of McCarthy’s anti-communist campaign, the HUAC hearings and the whole Hollywood blacklist thing loomed over the chic intellectual set. In retrospect, it’s almost as if a child’s balloon magically expanded over time to the size of the Hindenburg. Popular memoirists and movies describe the whole period, as if Joe McCarthy was blotting out the sun, casting dark shadows over the land of the free, while everyone cowered behind the doors of their houses, afraid to speak above a whisper for fear of the dark, jackbooted minions of the (cue scary music here!) HUAC would break down the door and drag them away to an unspecified but horrible fate in some barbed-wire gulag.

Oddly enough, my parents who were in college at the time don’t remember anything of that kind. In fact, they remember Joe McCarthy being pungently described as a headline grabbing blow-hard politician and all-around scumbag who never managed to come within a country mile of a Russian spy, or keeping his stories straight. They remember him being denounced in no uncertain terms— everyone they knew had McCarthy’s number down to the third decimal place, recognized him for just another self-serving, glory-hunting pol, attaching himself like a remora to the issue of the moment. And, as we now know through the Venona transcripts, there was something, underneath all the popular hysteria; there had indeed been an assortment of Communists, fellow travelers and paid Stalinist stooges wandering at will over the home of the free and the land of the brave for decades.

Some of them were politically naïve and hopelessly gullible, the kind of people these days who respond to Nigerian spam, who believed (against every indication to the contrary) that Russia under Lenin and Stalin was the last, best hope for mankind, the shining light of the future, the brave new world. Others were genuinely anti-fascist, who had the misfortune to become politically aware during the hungry Thirties; revolted by the excesses of Italian and German fascism, they took refuge in the arms of what seemed like it’s political polar opposite, only to be brutally disillusioned by the brutal realpolitik of the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, and whiplashed once again by Stalin’s volte-face in 1941. Still others were indeed dedicated but conflicted Communists, cheering on the brave new Marxist world from the comfort and security of Brentwood or the Upper East Side, and seeking absolution and permission to lie about it in court.

McCarthy generated a great deal of headline noise, but not much useful light on the subject, aside from afflicting the comfortable Chablis socialist set. My parents’ contention that he was a paper tiger, expanded by bombast and hubris to a towering but fragile edifice is supported with the speed and thoroughness of his deflation and collapse… a collapse initiated by a single pin-prick of a question asked by a soft-spoken and gentlemanly lawyer, in front of a television camera. He was seen for what he really was, and in a remarkably short time, the cruel jest was that it wasn’t “McCarthyism” it should be “McCarthywasim”. But it surely must inflate the egos of those who ran afoul of him and the “red scare”, to paint McCarthy bigger, crueler and more dangerous in hindsight, to burnish their own heroism in opposition. The other thing that strikes me, besides the fragility of the McCarthy red-baiting machine, is the willful cluelessness of so many of the alleged “reds”, so in love with their fantasy of the perfect Marxist new world, they managed to entirely overlook the varied horrors of Stalin’s rule… the famines, the purges, the show trials, the gulags and all. Either that, or what is most reprehensible, they worked overtime to justify and excuse them, so in love with the fantasy were they.

In love with a seductive, rose-tinted glasses fantasy; not the first to do so, and lamentably, not the last to fall for the heroic vision of the brave freedom fighter, even to see oneself as one. But the subtle danger of fantasy is that it turns our eyes from the real, messy, grubby and corrupted as it might be in comparison; the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. Our heroes and great ones ought to be—as the military cliché goes— ten feet tall and bulletproof, served up to us on the front page of the major media outlets, with a book and movie deal to follow after. And yet, in Iran there is a man, a writer and reporter, who is on a hunger strike— near death, it would seem— in defense of the freedom to think and communicate what he sees as the truth. Here is a person who values freedom of thought, freedom of communication, freedom of the press, so highly, he would give his life for it… and yet all the traditional defenders of the free press seem to look in the other direction.

We heard enough about the alleged targeting of journalists in Iraq by the American military; I have heard nothing about Akbar Ganji on NPR, nothing in my local paper. I wouldn’t know anything at all about Mr. Gangi if it weren’t for e-mail and the internet. A quick google search this Wednesday afternoon goes to three pages before listing a story about him in the major Western media sources. I can only assume that one set of stories favors the fantasy, the other doesn’t. But this is reality, not the lovely fantasy— and this reality matters. I have a computer, a blog, a collection of readers, and a facility with the written word— and the freedom to put my words out there, without fear or favor. Michael Moore, the staff of the Wall Street Journal— a million or two others, great and small also have that freedom, although most of us do not have the income to show for it. Like oxygen, we wouldn’t notice it, until it was not there— as the oxygen of a free press is not there for Akbar Gangi. We have heard a great deal in the last couple of years about freedom of the press. Let’s hear how much it matters for Akbar Gangi and the people of Iran… and everyone else who values freedom of the press and heroes in the real world.

Although, candidly, a hunger strike (and a strict program of excercise) would do Michael Moore no end of good.

(Links courtesy of Ron Wright and Instapundit)

Single In The City – Atlanta

14. July 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not

I am currently watching, in the background, WE’s Single in the City – Atlanta. This is like the third or forth episode of this series I’ve watched, in bits and pieces. At least one was from the Hamptons, and another from LA. But, no matter – all the same.

Man. How can people suffer through these “day in the life” reality shows? I mean, I watch Bravo’s Blow Dry. But there you have a protagonist pursuing particular goals. This shit is like a PBS Nature episode from two decades ago, where they put a miniature camera down in a nest of marmots., and wait breathlessly for the male marmot to get frisky, and the female marmot to be receptive.

Gawd, what do people see in this?

Movie Melancholia

12. July 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Media Matters Not, That's Entertainment!

There may be intelligent life in the universe, but if they landed at the multiplex this week, chances are they saw what was playing, barfed and departed in disgust. They, like me, can probably wait until the current collection comes out on DVD… and goes on special, marked down 50%. Even at that, the movie makers may go on waiting for my entertainment dollar. Looking at the cinematic joys on the schedule now and in the near future makes for depressing reading. Movie versions of comic books. Remakes of old and not so old movies. Movie versions of old television shows. Bloated special effects extravaganzas, by auteurs whose own self-importance is nearly as bloated as their production. Historical melodramas, whose actual fidelity to history is merely coincidental, of the sort that my mother used to describe as an “Urp-ic”…. Frankly, it’s all enough to make me barf as well. The last movie I went to see in a theater was “Phantom of the Opera” and only because Blondie dragged me, kicking and screaming; the one before that was “Return of the King”. Since then, it’s been all downhill, or at least, me looking at the movie reviews and schedules and thinking, “Bleah…I have better things to do… like wash my hair…brush the cats… haul mulch to the back yard… experiment with do- it-yourself-root-canal surgery.”

I shouldn’t have to tell you how sad and pathetic this is for our once-vaunted American movie industry, which still bestrides the world like a colossus, but is doing somewhat less well in American markets. Nearly fifteen years ago, my daughter and I rotated home from a decade spent in Europe, and counted one of the blessings of coming back to our home country, (along with having a telephone AND a washing machine in our house!) that of being able to go see a movie… the very day that it opened! To go and see a movie, ten hours after I read the review of it in the newspaper, instead of waiting six months until it appeared on the AAFES circuit for a couple of showings! Bliss was it to be alive in those days, to hit the multiplex in Layton for a weekend matinee, with a ten-dollar bill and a couple of supermarket candy bars tucked into my purse. (What, you think I am made of money, I want to pay the markup at the theater? Do I look like an idiot??!!) We loved going to the movies, I even had subscriptions to Premiere, and to Entertainment Weekly.

And then it just began to seem like all the fun of it, all the joy and anticipation just drained away, as if the plug on a lovely pristine pond full of goldfish and bordered by rushes and banks grown with violets all drained away, and there was nothing left but a baking mud flat, a couple of carp skeletons and a desiccated fringe of dead shrubbery. Going to a movie began to seem like a grim chore, a duty, something you had to do. There is a word for something you have to do, it’s called work. (Line stolen from someone else, not my own) Nothing much I read about movies lately, nothing much about the current crop induces me to spend two hours and the first run ticket price…it’s all too damn much like a grim duty and obligation.

I don’t want to see explosions and buildings collapsing— I’ve sort of been off that kind of thing since 9/11— I want to see sparkling conversation, not brief and easily translated sarcastic remarks filling in the short interim between explosions and buildings collapsing. I want to see stories about people, interesting, or admirable people, or at least people I wouldn’t mind knowing. (Sgt. Mom’s criteria for characters: “If you wouldn’t want to spend fifteen minutes with them stuck in an elevator, in real life… why the hell do you want to spend two hours and change stuck with them in a movie theater!???”) I don’t much care for graphic violence (emotional or the other kind) , torture, or spurting arteries, and no, I don’t much care for it in slow-mo or artistically choreographed, either. And I don’t care for car chases as a substitute for intelligent (or coherent plotting), and if that makes me the Little Mary Sunshine… well, I have been withholding my movie-jones dollar for a couple of years now, and it looks like a lot of other people are as well.

Is there a quiet, unfocused and non-centralized boycott in effect? Over a decade ago, Michael Medved outlined some of the discontents attendant on the contemporary movie industry—disrespect to religious values, to conventional families, to communities in fly-over-country, willful disregard, in other words, of every conventional standard in values and tastes. He detected a slump in movie attendance then, a slump that bears a resemblance to an avalanche in recent months.

All I can say is… thanks for catalogues of VHS and DVD movies and television shows— if it weren’t for the old stuff available to watch at home, I’d not have anything to watch at all.
(Discuss amongst yourselves)

All BS, All The Time

10. July 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General, Media Matters Not

I just came home, expecting to see the repeat of Fox News Sunday on FNC. I had forsaked it earlier, in favor of NBC’s Meet The Press, which , as its cable rebroadcast is at 7pm PDT, as I remember, is much harder to catch.

Anyway, I tune in to DirecTV channel 360, and what do I find, but all Dennis, all the time. And this might be ok, if there was something really extraordinary going on. But I just sat through about 10-15 minutes of them flipping from one field reporter to another, saying “oh, it’s really windy and wet here in Tampa/Pensacola/Montgomery.” Give me a fucking break!

Look, I sat through a hurricane at the tender age of 17, while I was at Keesler. And, while I was shivering in my rack, on the third floor of the dorms, some good ol’ boy, who was being temporarily billeted in my room, said to the other Airmen he was playing cards with: “I tells ya’: I sure ‘yam glad I’is here within’ this hurr-e-cane, than out in Cali-forn-ya, within’ some earthquake.”

And then it occurred to me: unless what I feel is over about 6.0, an earthquake isn’t even something to get out of bed over. At that point I put it all in perspective, and relaxed. I just wish our news organizations could do the same.

Update: As frequently happens, it seems Glenn Reynolds and I are thinking along the same lines:

Public Broadcasting Irrelevance, Part II

08. July 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Media Matters Not

From the advertisement for this week’s edition of PBS’s NOW (formerly with Bill Moyers):

A new wave of bombings across London this week has some asking new questions about those detained in the war on terror.

Three questions:

1. Who exactly is asking new questions?
2. What is “new” about the questions?
3. What business does the government have funding media aimed at the American public?

[Hat tip: The Corner]

The Daily Brief