Current News and Media Videos

I’ve come to the conclusion that most people who comment on blogs don’t know how to argue. If you want an object lesson in non-sequiturs just visit a political blog. Even more so, visit a conservative political blog.

Over at Pajamas Media, Jennifer Rubin lambastes the mainstream media for “going ga ga over Obama’s trip to Europe.” I haven’t seen any ga ga, but I have read some news accounts, which are exactly that, news accounts. They report what a particular person is doing or saying. If that’s “ga ga” then I guess the whole world is ga ga over oxygen.

But never mind that. Rubin makes a few salient points even though her own thesis concerning Obama’s trip to Europe completely misses the point. Here she is in her own words:

Watching tens of thousands of Germans listen to his worldly appeal that “this is our [who is “our” exactly?] time,” voters back home may not be impressed. And poll numbers suggest they aren’t. The blatant appeal to international world opinion (why exactly was he giving a campaign speech to tens of thousands of non-voting Europeans?) may not be the recipe for success.

First, let’s get one thing straight. Obama wasn’t giving a campaign speech to Europeans. He was posing for the cameras. He may have been speaking to Europeans, but he was giving his campaign speech to the cameras, which he was aware would be sending his message to voters back home. It was a savvy thing to do, especially when you consider that one of the most ardent criticisms against him by his opponents is a lack of foreign policy experience. His trip was meant to prove that he can appear presidential, act presidential, and carry himself presidentially in the waters of foreign policy, which in essence means diplomatically. Whether he succeeded at that goal is another discussion.

But given that Republicans have missed that point entirely, it’s no wonder that they are stuck on “Obama is a closet Muslim” and “he’s a Harvard elitist who only cares about himself.” That’s what they want to believe. The facts don’t matter.

Die-hard Republicans who refuse to see that Obama has gained clout among independents are going to ruin the election for their own man. McCain cannot win if he doesn’t recognize that Obama has the kind of appeal that he needs. He cannot run on experience when he intends to succeed a president whose lack of experience has butchered everything that America traditionally - and John McCain as a committed American - stand for. The race will go to whomever can convince the majority of voters in the majority of states to “buy into” the idea that he is a marked and distinctive change from the current administration. So far, that’s Obama. Whether he will make a good president or not is immaterial. Whether he is the right man for the job is not relevant. Whether he is experienced or inexperienced, a Muslim or a Christian, or too wrapped up in himself is not the point. That he, right now, has the upper hand in marketing his brand is.

For a good laugh, read the comments on Rubin’s blog post. You’d think these people were preparing for losing grip with reality.

If you really want to know why Barack Obama will win the election in November, you’ll have to watch this video:

You’d think he was running for president of the world.

This is simply brilliant:

The surge is part of American history, and American history has a number of components. And this American history was initiated in some sense by Captain John Smith, and when I visited with him in 1607, he had already initiated that history at Jamestown, by going in and clearing and holding in certain places. That is American history. And he told me at that time that he believed that that history, which is, quote, the surge, part of the surge, would be successful. [Ed. note: Did you catch that crucial move?] So then, of course, it was very clear that we needed additional troops in order to continue our history. And so I’m not sure, frankly, that people really understand that a surge is part of American history [Ed. note: there it is again!], which means the settlement at Jamestown, declaring independence, winning the Civil War, emancipating the slaves, the New Deal, deciding to invade Iraq, and then clearly a part of that, an important part of it, was additional troops to help ensure the safety of the sheikhs, to regain control of Ramadi, which was a very bloody fight, and then the surge continued to succeed, and that American history.

You’ll have to read the entire article. Andrew Sullivan is the only person I know that is taking the words of John McCain himself and deconstructing them to arrive at the true underlying irrational assumptions behind them. This is true political analysis, the kind you won’t find in the op-ed pages of America’s newspapers.

I noticed the headline of a recent news story on The Smoking Gun website. It lambasted my eyes with repetitive Ps. Now, as a poet, I have no problem with alliteration. I use it often. But what about news stories trying to tell the news and attract advertisers?

The story is about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie hanging out (just how much hanging out was going on was not detailed) at their home when a member of the dastardly paparazzi snapped their photo. Now, the Pitts are suing. It seems journalists can’t use high-powered equipment to capture the news from afar any more. At least, that’s the argument the Pitt attorney is making. Since his clients were on private property they deserve some privacy. Makes sense to me.

But what about that headline? Here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Pitt Peeved Over Paparazzi Pix

Nice play on words. Pitt (pet) Peeved is followed by another double-P phrase - Paparazzi Pix - to show how photographers exploit celebrities for a few cheap shots. Well, I guess that’s a good reason to be peeved. But you don’t have to bop us over the head with it, do ya?

John McCain is increasingly looking like a grumpy old man on the defensive. It seems that he can’t get any media attention because the black guy gets it all.

He can’t argue that the surge is the reason voters should choose him over Obama. That’s just one issue and most voters are sophisticated enough to think beyond one victory. And given that Obama has recently turned Iraq into a public relations positive for his campaign and that he has communicated a little more clearly that his Iraq pullout policy is based on events on the ground then it makes him look a bit more practical than McCain on the Iraq War. The only negative for Obama is that he opposed the surge, but that was last year’s news.

McCain has nothing else to draw on. His Republican predecessor is laying in the political gutter on his last breath. Fair or not, many voters will give McCain the cold shoulder based on the failures of the Bush Administration. And Obama is capitalizing on that big time.

Every TV appearance of McCain is based on “but I have military experience …”, “but I was for the surge, Obama was against it”, “but, but, but …”. And you just can’t win a political race on buts. That’s why John McCain seems increasingly like he’s just a grumpy old man trying to keep up. He has nothing but ‘buts’ to run on and not even the ash can is paying him much attention now.

Have you watched network tv lately? They have a reality show about everything. Lobster fishing, crabbing, disgusting food, hairstylists, and every other profession seems to be getting a reality show now.

Why? Would people really rather watch some crab fisherman than great sitcoms like they used to create? Sitcoms like Cheers, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Two and a Half Men, and others have audiences that loved them. Other shows like CSI, Law And Order, The Shield, and more also have loyal audiences.

So what is the real reason there are so many reality shows popping up on every tv channel? They are checp to produce. No actors to pay. No script writers. No real talented Directors needed. The networks are cutting their expenses and that is why we have reality shows. They figure that the couch potatos who like to watch tv will adapt and just watch whatever they fill the time slots with.

The reason they have to cut expenses is that the Internet is taking couch potatos away from them and turning them into office-chair or computer desk potatos.

The second way you can notice how networks are reacting to the Internet is the number of commercials they show now. Commercial breaks used to consist of 3-4 commercials in a row. Now it is more like 7 in a row, then we have to sit through 2 more about what shows that channel has coming up later.

Recently the new tv series, In Plain Sight was started. The commercials announcing the upcoming show were being shown 6 months before the first episode was even scheduled to air. In January, they were showing commercials about the great new show they will give us in June. Wow.

So TV Is reacting to the Internet stealing their customers by cutting their production budget and by selling more and more commercials for each show, and by advertising their own programs more than ever before.

There is another indicator that network tv is dying out. The number of infomercials has risen dramatically. In the wee hours of the morning and late at night and on the weekends, we used to be able to find a few shows, repeats, and other things to watch even though there were always a few infomercials. Now it’s 90% infomercials, 10% something to watch.

Now how are newspapers reacting to the Internet?

More and more people are getting their news from news websites and blogs. Many of them get their daily news in their news reader through rss feeds. Commuters are using their laptops and handhelds and cell phones to get news from the Internet. Now you don’t see nearly as many newspapers being read on trains, buses, and subways.

So their sales of advertising is down because their readership is down. What does the newspaper industry do about it?

Almost two-thirds of American newspapers publish less foreign news than they did just three years ago, nearly as many print less national news, and despite new demands on newsrooms like blogs and video, most of them have smaller news staffs, according to a new study.

Sixty-four percent of the newspapers reported cutting the space given to foreign news over three years, making that the area that has suffered at the most papers as the business contracts. Only 10 percent of the editors said they considered foreign news “very essential” to their papers.

Ahh, first let’s give readers less news. Good start. TV gives us less TV shows worth watching, so newspapers will give us less news to read. Follow the leader? At a time when more and more of the news that affects us every day is about dependence on foreign oil, the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism in other countries, how our allies are reacting to things we do, and foriegn money markets as well as foriegn currency vs the US Dollar, and other international issues, the newspapers have decided less is more.

Three-fifths of the papers reported having less space for news over all, as newspapers try to save money by shifting to smaller pages and printing fewer of them. The only area cut nearly as often as foreign news was national news, which declined at 57 percent of the papers. Business coverage ranked next, reduced by one-third of the papers.

Yeah, let’s cut out that pesky national news too.

Half of all papers said they had increased the amount of state and local news they published, especially “hyper-local” community news.

Pretty soon maybe there will be an opening to start your own newspaper. The Elm Street Times or the Baker Ave. Post.

At 59 percent of the newspapers, editors said news staffing had declined over the previous three years, and that was true at 85 percent of the large papers. In the months since the survey was taken, the nation’s major newspaper chains have made some of the deepest newsroom cuts on record.

Save your old newspapers and recordings of your favorite tv shows. They could be worth a lot of money on eBay someday soon.

Google’s market share has increased again. According to CNET, the search giant is up to 77.4% of the search ad market.

Yahoo!s share dropped by 2% to 17.8%. The Google-Yahoo! agreement that allows some of Google’s ads to be displayed on Yahoo! SERPs will give Google more than 90% of the search ad market. That has triggered some antitrust concerns with the Department of Justice and others.

Google has achieved the monolithic distinction of being among the companies that can’t wake up in the morning without crossing the line of evil business mogul. Microsoft crossed that line years ago. Now it’s Google’s turn, and from the looks of things, Yahoo! will never make it. We may soon see a search environment where Yahoo! is no longer a player and with Google dominating both the search and the search advertising industries it is possible that a forced breakup to protect consumers may be inevitable. But we’re a few years from that yet.

Happy Birthday Disneyland! 53 years old.

Located in Anaheim, California, Disneyland has attracted millions of people from all around the world and is one of the largest amusement parks in history. It opened on July 17, 1955, at the height of the Leave It To Beaver era. That’s no small wonder since, to many people, Disneyland represents just that: A throwback to the halcyon days of innocents and puritanism.

Disneyland was renamed Disneyland Park in 1998. The company now has three other locations worldwide: Disneyland Resort Paris, Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, and Tokyo Disneyland.

Disneyland has been called Magic Kingdom and has been instrumental in turning fantasy into reality for millions of tourists from every corner of the globe. The park cost $17 million to build and was operational within one year of its groundbreaking. It is now a regular part of the American conscience and an embed of U.S. culture. Go Disney!

The New Yorker, you no doubt have heard by now, satirized popular misconceptions about Obama and wife Michelle’s identity on its most recent cover.

Initially, Barack Obama called the cover “tasteless,” but his most recent comment, on Larry King Live, was an acknowledgment of the First Amendment and he essentially said that the satire fell on its face, but The New Yorker has its rights.

I’m not sure why this has ever been an issue. Literary magazines have always been involved in satire. Some magazines are nothing but satire. Others include satire in their daily mix. The best magazines use satire as a way to deliver an important message. The New Yorker cover was just making fun of stupid people who really believe that stuff about Obama. It’s point is to highlight the ignorance and blatant ridiculousness of a certain mindset. And Obama himself expressed some dismay, something I’d have expected from the unrefined McCain. But I’m glad the leading Democrat finally pulled his head out of his arse and saw the light. Now can all get back to taking things seriously.

The Sillicon Valley Mercury News is reporting that the U.S. Census Bureau plans to count gay married persons in its next census the same as it reports unmarried partners. This carries very strange political consequences.

On the one hand, gay married couples are legally married if they marry in Massachusetts or California. Doesn’t that fact mean that they are to be counted among the census numbers as “married couples”? According to representatives of the U.S. Census Bureau, no.

Actually, I think it smacks of the same kind of political compromise that led to the 3/5 rule in the U.S. Constitution. Upon the founding of America, since slaves did not have a right to vote, Northern non-slave owners argued that they should not be counted in the Census numbers. Southerners wanted them counted. The obvious reason was because apportionment of legislative representatives was based on population. The South wanted to increase its power in Congress while the North wanted to diminish the South’s influence. They compromised by allowing slave owners to count their slaves as 3/5 of a person instead of a whole person.

The Census Bureau’s insistence that gay married couples be counted as unmarried partners is the same type of compromise, only it isn’t based so much on economics, as the 3/5 compromise was, as it is based on morality. Christian evangelicals and other conservative factions do not want to recognize marriage for homosexuals. Liberals and gay couples simply want the same political and economic rights as heterosexuals with regard to marriage contracts. The Census Bureau has evidently figured out a “moral compromise” - allow same-sex couples to marry, since they can’t stop it anyway, and don’t count them as married in the Census data, which would acknowledge the legitimacy of the marriage contracts. By disallowing the counting of marriage contracts between same-sex couples in the numbers of total persons who are married, the Census Bureau and its decision makers can essentially de-legitimize the practice of homosexual marriage without taking a stand on its legality. Very clever “moral compromise” on the part of the head counters.