Letters to the Editor
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Jose Canseco?
OK I have to ask, what does an irresponsible former baseball player have to do with the price of rice?
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NBC News
Not surprised NBC won't respond, I did tho, this was the final straw for me to stop watching anything but the News Hours and stick to Blogs for real informaton. One NBC loses all it's watchers they can officially be the entertainment news program
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re: shooter, musings
Actually, others have dealt with the tripe well enough.
Still, I do think it is occasionally easy for us to forget that we are a self-selecting minority that ends up reading this site and others (even perhaps on the other side of the fence) for information as opposed to those who passively imbibe MSM drivel.
Whatever the reasons for silence - whether to take a break and do some research/writing, storing up for the future, or to keep this particular post front and center - we haven't exactly been thrown under the bus. Our politicians must also address the 200 million Americans who only listen to the evening news and all of the propaganda that goes with it. Perhaps this will change as more Americans turn to alternative sources of news, but this could be a battle for generations. Obama has played an extremely cautious and careful game, and so they've had to resort to relatively trivial flaps to savage him, but due to the nature of politics he can't tell the truth. If he did he would not be elected. And so we have the conundrum that the honest man seeking power for justice must compromise his morality. Perhaps those like GG who would speak truth to power have an echo of this power, but this is soft and ephemeral and only comes about indirectly as he influences the rest of us. GG's power is because of those who listen to truth, while the president has power despite us.
Judging from those just recently eligible to vote things will change - Helen Thomas received $3000 of flowers for her question to Perino on torture due to a spur-of-the-moment fundraiser on a news aggregator site, largely from a bunch of 20 year olds. There's hope yet.
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Obama/Hillary
From a comment at Free New York blog:
http://blog.freeny.org/?p=3286
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Congratulations on the use of FUBAR in a sentence. I’ve been trying to fit that acronym into my daily oratory for several years, but never could find the correct delivery.
I went to the Steven Colbert event at UB a few weeks ago. The applause given to each candidate, at the mention of their name, was amazing. As a peasant folk, I was relegated to the bleachers where the students readily secured their bongs and tightly rolled papers in anticipation of any mention of Obama. Meanwhile, the bourgeois fare congregated on folding aluminum chairs on a flat of concrete, reserved for those with an accountant aptly able to convert their presence at this event into a tax write-off. In an effort of full disclosure, I’m using the event as a tax write-off too (for entirely selfish reasons).
Anyway, Colbert asked the audience which Demonrat they supported. The bleachers erupted with ear-shattering applause, and considerable lighter flicking, when Obama’s name was called. The announcement of Hillary’s name resulted in a monotone golf clap from the aluminum chair sitters. At this point Colbert verbalized the obvious:
1 - Obama voters are pretty much clueless.
2 - Hillary voters are just as clueless, but have more money, and aren’t nearly as stoned and drunk as the obama crowd.
Thankfully, McCain received the worst response from the crowd. I guess there isn’t anything wrong with blinded, outright hatred, of a republicrat at a college function, especially when he wants to start another 100 year war.
I look forward to not voting for any of the FUBAR candidates in November. Is there a greater waste of time than walking into the voting booth?
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New (FISA) post up
N/T
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bah: re: "low-down crying shame"
ain't that the truth.
At least news actually occurs on those comedy shows. Not so much any more on the "real" news shows.
They (meaning the Institutional News Media) keep misusing their diminishing power to propagandize for their own Palace government, and to promote their own agendas within the Palace. We, the People, are scrutinized like bugs, if we're acknowledged at all. And if one of us should rise to their notice, more often than not, their instinct is to crush him or her to atoms. (Viz: Rev Wright.)
And my question is: why do any Americans put up with it?
Yes, fewer and fewer DO put up with it, but so many of the leaders (in congress and throughout society) are still absolutely in thrall to the whims and desires and demands and customs of the Palace Media, to the point where they dare not do anything or say anything that will earn them media "scrutiny". Instead, they tip toe and they yield, and they tailor their commentary and criticism to the acceptable parameters that have been laid down for "appropriate" comment and criticism. (This was an art form when Republicans ruled all three branches of government and of course the entire corporate hierarchy of the world. They told you in no uncertain terms what you were permitted to criticise and how and how often, and if you deviated, you were shunned, ignored or crushed.)
My point is that we shouldn't put up with it at all.
Years ago a highly creative team formed "Take Back The Media" in response to some of the more egregious outrages of the pre-and-post Bushevik Era. (Google it) They made quite a splash with repeated and very compelling challenges to Big Media hegemony and propaganda. But it always seemed to me their premise was wrong. Their challenges were based on the assumption that We, the People "owned" the Media, and that the Media had somehow been captured by corporate and Republican elements, and that we could somehow take it back.
Uh. No.
We -- as in the People -- have never "owned" or controlled the Big/Institutional Media in this country; we can't very well "take back" what was never ours. The Big Media has always been owned by and served the interests of wealth and power, never the interests of the People in general. Sometimes, in some cases, the interests of wealth and power may coincide with some of the interests of the People, but never have the Big Media been on our side. They exist to tell us what people of wealth and power want us to think and want us to do.
That's still an extraordinarily difficult concept for some people on the progressive end of things to grasp. We can (and do) create our own media, and that media can (but does not necessarily) reflect the interests of the People, and we can criticise the Big Media to our heart's content, but "taking it back?" No. Not gonna happen. It was never ours.
We find news where we find it, and that is sometimes on those comedy shows. But more and more, news we really care about is coming from sources abroad, domestic sources that were once considered radical, independent media, some exceptional Big Media efforts (McClatchy, for example), and a good deal of it is filtered through blogs like this one.
We aren't "taking back" the Media. We are becoming it.