A Pulitzer? For this?

"...the Wright Brothers and what kind of country allowed them to go off on their own and change everything?

Beyond its facile and overblown reading of history, this is just bad writing. If this qualifies for a Pulitzer, I have some high-school essays I'd like to submit.

I am surprised your state of awareness of this problem exists. On the same day COngress was grilling Gen Petraeus, the White House chose to hold a Medal of Honor ceremony. In the ceremony, President Bush cried real tears, and the camera went into CLOSE UP.

Now my first question as a media student was, who arranged this footage, did the White House set up the cameras? Who decided to edit this piece. If NBC was a truly liberal rag, the camera could have been fifty feet away, and those real tears would have never been evident, as they should not have been. This was hot and steamy propaganda, and dovetails just about right with Noonan's piece. She is leftovers from the Reagan days.

I occasionally fire off these media outrages to your 5things email address, but I notice no one pays attention to these things. You just talk about the media evidently, you don't do anything about it, like just a smidge of forensic work.

Ulitmately it all started for NBC at the FAMOUS Red Sea interview with Colin Powell. I would sure like to know what really happened there, and who is Elizabeth. Meanwhile you all crywhine about the Media, after the fact, but you wouldn't know a real act of propaganda if it hit you in the face.

As for John McCain getting misty-eyed over contemplating the Wright Brothers: it is well documented in his biography that he was the pioneering member of the "Twelve Feet High Club."

For anyone who wants another example of subtle but pervasive media bias, feast your eyes on excerpts from this simple AP report of Barack Obama playing basketball with the University of North Carolina basketball team:

http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2008/04/29/D90BID3G1_political_play_of_the_day/index.html

"For all his basketball skills, Barack Obama was out of his league."

..."he raced up and down the court with the much younger and much bigger college players, many of whom dwarfed the 6-foot-2 Obama."

"In his March NCAA tournament picks, Obama selected North Carolina, but the Tar Heels lost to eventual champion Kansas in the semifinals."

"Though the players, who were relishing banging on each other, gave Obama his shots, he was unable to score."

Point for point and line for line, the article sets up impossible expectations (did whoever wrote this actually think Obama, a 45-year old politician, was going to outplay a college basketball team?), then repeatedly drives home the idea of Obama failing, incapable of winning, literally "out of his league" against "bigger" "champions".

The unnamed writer of the AP article is clearly engaged in what advertisers refer to as priming behavior. As Malcolm Gladwell described it in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, priming is used by advertisers to deliberately link people or things to concepts without explaining those concepts, or even making people consciously aware of it.

Use negative words and phrases consistently around a single subject, and people will subconsciously associate that subject with those negative words or phrases- even if no one actually says "Barack Obama is unable to score and out of his league against bigger champions."

What I find most worrisome about all this is that, once you understand the concept of priming, it becomes quite apparent that the author of the AP article really is doing this deliberately. Simply put, someone in the AP is using their position to wilfully attack the Obama campaign via a press agency whose reputation was forged ostensibly based on its nonpartisan credentials. It is almost like watching an infiltration campaign bearing fruit.

I occasionally fire off these media outrages to your 5things email address, but I notice no one pays attention to these things. You just talk about the media evidently, you don't do anything about it, like just a smidge of forensic work.

-- aveutter

If you think that moronic 'Five Things' feature is the place to send your complaints about the media, you aren't the sharpest tool in the tool shed yourself there, Sport.

The voice of Brain makes me recall a little league ball game. A teen named Brian goes for a foul pop-up.

The media hails Williams for diving into the bleacher and landing on Peggy Noonan's lap.

P. Noonan gives Brian a bite of a Snicker Candy bar. So, Brian wants to give Peggy a Pulitzer.

Media. tit for tat?

Frank Sinatra sings solo at the Pulitzer party event.

The news stuns baseball players. Fans play bingo.

Media players report Brian Wiliams runs,

and makes a diving catch, eats a snicker,

post~ landing on Peggy's lap. We sit to watch in the bleachers.

Salon may increase bleacher fans if they give readers snickers.

"We are professional space-fillers, frivolously tossing content-pebbles in an ever-widening canyon of demand, cranking out one silly pack-mule after another for toothpaste and sneaker ads to ride on straight into the brains of the stupefied public."

http://www.nypress.com/17/26/news&columns/MattTaibbi.cfm

Pretty good stuff....

But this quote begs for a reply:

"Brian Williams...found that specific commentary...it to be "sparkling," worthy of a Pulitzer, something you should "curl up with" and "give it the quality time it deserves."

I'll give it "quality time." On the toilet.

She always perceives the USA as a Norman Rockwell painting, an American version of the Aryan mythology where wholesome looking, pious, patriotic, church going Caucasians, who practice modest, restrained marital sex only when it's time to enlarge the family congregate. In her idiotic and insane imagination, the great heroes are robber barons like Ford, Getty and Hearst. In her hallucinatory mind, dark skinned people are seen only when serving lemonade on a hot mid-western afternoon.

Has Noonan been seen staggering around town with a bottle in her hand? I can't believe that piece (as far as what was quoted) wasn't written by a drunk, or a college newspaper editor. It's nothing but disconnected half-thoughts and buzzwords and cheap metaphors.

I'm going to write an article about how McCain has America in his swinging ball sack, and how the little people out in the desolate heartlands write letters to me asking where they can find America in Hillary. If they stuck their hands down her pants, would they find America there?

It's a legitimate question.