More media gun grind

One of my MSM moles is a hunter who owns a few fine shotguns and a couple of semi-auto pistols. However, he would be the first to disclaim any expert knowledge of firearms technology, nomenclature,  and law.

The trouble is, he's one of those retro types who believes that  words appearing in  media reports ought to be within at least a long pistol shot of truth. So when the news involves guns, he is quite willing to ask questions before typing. He is also developing a good eye for even the smaller inanities and is nice enough to pass them on to me for my amusement. Such as:


…From (an AP)  story today on a shooting in R---------.

"Detectives combed a six-block area for spent gun casings and……. ."

I would think a "gun casing" would be big and pretty easy to find.

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Me too, and since he has set out to improve the accuracy of firearms reporting in his news room, he received this response:


(sigh) While you're educating your colleagues on Elementary Firearms Studies 101 (remedial), maybe this will help them remember:

"Guns sometimes go in cases which are quite rarely spent. So do the bullets and powder which make up ammunition, which is quite often spent.  Sausage goes in casings.  Remember this and your readers won't think you're such a f-----g meathead."

I didn't suggest he print that out and post it on the bulletin board. I should have.

Oh shut up

I thought Spiro Agnew had a point that night in Iowa when he blasted guys like Huntley and Brinkley and Cronkite for their "instant analyses" of presidential speeches.  (Full disclosure: I'd been drinking and wasn't even in the Des Moines hall where the veep ranted. I was at Joe's  in Iowa City, recuperating from a  day of reporting the public university industry's  plans to slip another inch into the body of taxpayers. So I had to watch Spiro on Joe's black and white teevee set.)

Spiro hated television news for the wrong reasons.  Because teevee hated his meal ticket, Nixon. Logic dictates that we should hate it is because it is a community of celebrity thespians posing as an information source.

This is never more apparent than on days of high political ceremony.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The American public will get a competing mix of rhetoric and imagery in President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday, a speech that offers a heavy dose on the economy even as it plays out against a visual backdrop dominated by the current national debate over guns.

Please note the phrases "rhetoric and imagery" and  "visual backdrop."

First lady Michelle Obama will sit with the parents of a Chicago teenager shot and killed just days after she performed at the president's inauguration. Twenty-two House members have invited people affected by gun violence...That confluence of message and symbolism illustrates where Obama is in his presidency following his re-election.

When presidential  speeches deal with large problems, they ought to be analyzed, both instantly and more reflectively.  That's one of the ways we keep ourselves from being flim-flammed. But how the Hell do you analyze the face of an aggrieved mother, one eye teared up with honest grief and the other shining in the glory of being on national television? With Michelle. Herself!

You don't analyze it of course. You just hope your image consultants are correct in predicting that it will persuade x per cent more of x demographic to  jump on your bandwagon.  Or that they're incorrect, if you happen to be on the other side.

The result is a cesspool dunking of logical thought processes -- of sober discussion of what's wrong and what might fix it at what cost. One other result among decent folk is revulsion at the exploitation of ordinary people -- the real and imagined victims -- paraded before the closeup lenses to stir emotion in advancement of a political agenda.

This little essay probably ought to be written tomorrow, after the Obama performance. It is not because the ravenous goat of teevee time-filling has already begun analyzing the president's undelivered monologue. Further, it has the complete lowdown on the rebuttals from Rubio and Paul. Analyses don't get much more instant than that, do they Spiro?


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As your candidate for president, I offer a partial solution. I shall decline to contribute to a great national psychodrama, the annual posture-fest posing as serious debate about  how America should administer its affairs.  At no time will I address the congress in the presence of television cameras. I will simply obey Article 2, Section 3, of the Constitution of the United States.

He (the president) shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient. 

He need not do it in a Barnum and Bailey extravaganza, in the Big Top. under the lights. He doesn't even have to do it in person. Or annually.

I will do it as often as necessary, in writing with annotated footnotes to verify or explain my factual allegations.  No pictures. None. Copies will be freely available to every citizen -- from crazed bag ladies on down to electronic news personalities and congresspersons.

I guess it is another way of  intoning my own "I have a Dreeeeeeem."  I dream of an America where citizens sit around the coffee tables with policy proposals in front of them, in large type black and white. They quietly read and think and react, "if...then..it follows."

Should they find then "then"  reasonable, they applaud and support me. Should they find it otherwise they deem me full of shit and vote for someone else.

It might help, but, of course, it might not. We should try it anyway, if only to spare ourselves the annual aesthetic embarrassment of nationally televised tears soaking through the first lady's bodice.

Giggle-snort gun report

Multiple layers of fact checking and editorial oversight  at the New York Times:

Correction: February 2, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the type of weapon that President Obama fired in a photo released Saturday by the White House. It was a shotgun, not a rifle.

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Some years ago a teacher's wife here went public with an anti-gun rant which included a charitable bone to us blasters. Something very like: "No one wants to take away your pistols for shooting skeet..."

The nice old lady didn't work for the New York Times. But she could have.

H/T Roberta.

Travis McGee at the Inauguration

Nothing short of new dance routine by Chookie McCall could have lured Trav to The Dubliner on any day of any year -- particularly this morning  when his gnarled elbows would have brushed a gaggle of self-styled journalists. MSNBC chose to, ahem, "cover" the inauguration from the place.

Wouldn't they just.

How they love high-polish hip and the beautiful people who make it glitter, especially in a contrived ethnic atmosphere, in this case Irish. My ass. It's as Irish as lutefisk.

I grant The Dubliner one point. It's five o'clock girl flock tends toward sleek young loveliness whose chatter sounds -- from a distance --  enchanting. Closer, you learn that it concerns shopping.  Let it pass. Step away, sigh at the waste, and recall your Bierce; ...all too human to impute unlikely virtues to the cute.

The men, so to speak, put you in mind of a 10-year fraternity reunion attended by Countess Mara neckties attached to those alumni whose MasterCard's would still bear the expense.

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Did you ever notice that Travis didn't often use vulgar words?

Thrust into that crowd, I think he would have made an exception. Four letters, maybe 11. Then he'd have backed out the door, turned, and walked no more than 15 strides to the next-door Irish Times.

Hugh's place is a little seedy, but its political ops and hustlers tend to have honest Irish surnames and, often enough, fresh brogues. Among the still sober, conversation is generally a witty and bipartisan exploration of why things are still so FUBAR. The unsober (due to fairly priced Guinness and Jamison) tend to say hardly anything, at most a cynical grunt. That's a rhetorical approach a guy can quickly learn to love.

Besides, The Irish Times often features semi-talented (at worst) live Irish performers. They do rebel music with a loud flourish suggesting that disdain for the goddam English usurpers is alive and well. So tell me Sean O'Farrell where the gatherin is to be .. with me PIKE upon me shoulder at the RISIN' of the MOON.

The other place gives you something like a tape of  Mel Torme singing Danny Boy. I'll bet Mika swoons.

Newtown and Elian Gonzales

If they can try to drive the debate with heart-rending -- if not entirely logical --  visual symbols, so can I.

What debate? Why, the one insisting that only the Only Ones be permitted modern weapons.

Newtown and Reuters

I get blue when learning of tyke death, whether singly or in wholesale lots. Under the influence of emotion I offer only poor analyses. So on Newtown, I want to restrict myself to nibbling around the edges for  while.

We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics," Obama said in apparent reference to the influence of the National Rifle Association over members of Congress.

Let's parse that into two word-sets -- everything before "Obama said" and everything after.

The president is to be excused. His words are ritual. Both ends of the boat are sinking so we all must bail. We must end the manifestations of evil which are part of Mankind Stew. And we must be bipartisan. The Prominent Class is conditioned to so remark, not unlike the retail clerk's "Have a nice day."  So I leave him alone on that and recognize that he, too, undoubtedly was sad.

The rest of it quietly illustrates an ugliness of journalism. In what was presented as a workaday spot news report, the reporters assume the misty robe of the Oracle. They reveal to us a meaning which only they have the wisdom to discover.  The president used only three operative nouns in his sentence. Not one of them referred to the National Rifle Association, nor weapons of any kind. His sentence would have been perfectly appropriate and pertinent had the tragedy been a fire.

But two decided he meant the NRA and implied he was noble to do so. They wrote it.  Someone copy read it. And at least one senior editor cleared it for world wide distribution on wires of a once-great news service. It was, in fact, Reuters' opening salvo in the war to shift blame from the man who murdered to those who did not.

Strange signals in the air

New Hampshire Public Radio alleges that the world has only one broadcast station run by criminals and one by psychiatric patients.

Isn't it just like government radio to get its facts all screwed up? They forgot Fox News and MSNBC.

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Hat tip to Blaine Thompson on Facebook. He's the man who runs Indiana Radio Watch, a must-read for area media types and interesting to radio freaks everywhere.

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(Oh hush, please. I +know+ cable is technically not "broadcasting.")

The wisest of the wise

Lindsey Graham just told MSNBC that if Romney loses it is for "just one reason -- demographics."

Man, you just can't fool a United States senator. Or a crack political analyst like Chuck Todd who treated the Lindsey revelation as a profound, eerrrrr, revelation, like, y'know, from Mount Sinai.

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Richard J. Daley of Chicago: When people are out of work unemployment results.

CNN has just made the Walking Dead zombies look compassionate and tasteful. A producer who missed a fine career as a ghoul sicced his film crew on the woman whose sons were "swept from her arms" and on the man who refused to take her and the boys in. Or who did not.

J---- H. C----- on a pogo stick.

It isn't often I wake up with Rachael Maddow,  just the occasional Saturday morning when the electrical teevee happens to be on Channel 63 as I click the power button. That usually happens only on mornings of lazy and lethargic grumpiness.

What the Hell.The primary alternative is Fox News, similar lies, only in shorter sentences and smaller words. Not worth the effort of  another clicker punch.

So Rachael and I communed for a few minutes as Miss Folger trickle charged my  heart.  I wasn't too surprised that she was analyzing the Romney and Obama campaigns, nor that she was operating from a V-word base, although she didn't use the word. Takeaway: Republicans hate women.

Then, on a lighter note, she shifted to her closer, the cocktail of the day, mixed on-camera, right before your very eyes, accompanied by the sort of coy giggling you often see in a high school girl about to commit her first venal sin. (That's the sort of thing I always associate with girls who like boys. But I digress.)

Which brings me to my segment closer: The Rachael cocktail is made of cognac, grenadine, lemon juice, and champagne. I submit to you, my fellow Americans, that anyone who accepts political advice from a woman who hustles crap like that should be instantly and permanently disenfranchised.

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There is nothing like waking up with the Maddow woman to make a guy relish the thought of a nearby loophole.

I'm about packed, taking just enough stuff to justify having a table. The idea is to buy, not sell, so I'll have to listen to other lies today.

"Jim, this gun comes with quite a story behind it...".

As Skeeter Skelton once remarked on the subject. "Great. But how much is it without the story? I already heard a couple-three Rachaelwhoppers today."

Softly, softly, cache monkey

The AP is carrying a rambling but interesting review of Asian monkeyshines. It concentrates on squabbles about which nations own which guano piles in the western Pacific.

It is refreshingly free of explanations that Hillary Rodham is there, on the job, and carrying solutions to Oriental angst such as the Korea-Japan spat over the Dokdo Islands. This strategic treasure in the Sea of Japan is about half-way between the disputants. It is made up of 46 acres of rock which, at last report, was home to a Korean octopus fisherman, his wife, and a handful of ROK cops.


"Korea and Japan have a bitter history  (says The Associated Press)   ...  Thumbing one's nose at Tokyo has long had substantial cache for millions of Koreans.

Uhh, look. A Rocky Mountain fur trapper hid his plews in a cache. A girl I knew in Yokosuka sometimes stuck a flower in her hair. That gave her a certain cachet.

I know. Spell-check is cheaper than an editor.

Like The Rolling Stones

I try not to miss Brandon's stories in the local weekly. He always treats me to a novel view of the English language. This week he gushes about the remodeling of an old WPA project, a shelter house made of a concrete slab piled high with granite boulder walls.

"It's been in the works for over five years and finally, renovations to one of the most dynamic shelters in Dickinson County is complete..."

Tectonic movement aside, where's it going, Brandon?

Calling Chris Hayes

Report to surgery for tongue adjustments. Or brain modification.  Possibly both.

Chris was blatting about the real importance of Assange and Wikileaks a moment ago and referred to the National Security Act and the Patriot Act."

 He then said there a quite distance  between "the principle and the abstract."

A Tramp Abroad

Mitt, you doofus, when you're a guest in another man's home you do not remark that the drapes need cleaning.

The proper answer to Fleet Street representatives is: "As a guest in your  country I am inspired by the achievements of the great British people and their leaders. Any nation which turned back Napoleon is capable of whatever is necessary to ensure a successful Olympic celebration."

Notes:

1.  It is acceptable to surreptitiously cross your fingers while delivering the statement.

2.  Do not mention Dunkirk.

Hee-Haw

Tam broke out her dissection kit and went to work on Bill O'Reilly* for an idiotic comment about ammunition stashes and the crack government anti-terrorist machine.

A commenter made the point that only Hulk Hogan could carry 6,000 rounds of ammunition, the hoard Aurora Red allegedly possessed. Good point.  (O'Reilly said it was 60,000 rounds. Never mind. Who depends on teevee personalities for facts anyway?)

Too lazy to do the arithmetic, I walked out to the shack and weighed a 20-round box of .257 Roberts, loaded with c. 70-grainers,  the closest thing I have to the usual AK47 rounds. One box equals a little more than one pound. Hence 6,000 rounds of 7.62x39 hefts out to quite a bit more than 300 pounds,

Even a better figure of a man than that scrawny-ass loser could handle an ammo load of, at best, 50 or 60 pounds in addition to the weapon itself, the gas mask, the grenades, the body armor, and the tactical Barlow.

If he wanted more at hand for extended mayhem he'd need a pack animal.

We must therefore rally behind common-sense laws to restrict deadly donkey trafficking . If this makes it more dififcult for law-abiding citizens to buy and sell Bill O'Reilly, remember: It's for the children.

 Even tighter restrictions are needed on small, easily concealed burros.


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*The facts force me to qualify this. I am speaking only metaphorically. More's the pity.

Attention, whores:

The Lookout (Yahoo! "News") pleads:

Please send a photograph of yourself in front of your home holding a sign with: how much your home was worth when you bought it its current value. Let us know where you live, when you purchased your home, the number of members in your household and how your mortgage has affected your life. What decisions have you made as a result of your purchasing and paying for your home?


I'll pass, Yahoo, but I doubt it will make a noticeable dent in your response rate.  There's no shortage of people who think the whine is an excellent  coping mechanism.  


 Besides, if you want another tear-jerker series, you can come around and take your own gawddam pictures. 

Oh, what horrific Candy

You haven't seen my three little essays on the Batman massacre. Two of them are in draft, desperately seeking focus. The other one has been dismissed to the ether as utter bullshit.

But you can see this one because it has Candy Crowley in it. I knew Candy Crowley, and if name-dropping doesn't justify a post, nothing does.

Candy was on local teevee, reading news to a medium market.  Off duty she occupied her time being an insufferable bitch. Let it be said, however, that she was a gorgeous insufferable bitch, and that would account for Ted Turner calling her up to the majors. She's been there ever since, a nice fit with the CNN view that if it ain't Left it ain't right. And I suppose that helps account for her continued presence, post beauty.

Sic transit hourglass. I mean, just figuratively speaking. But teevee pandering endures forever.

I caught a brief snatch of her this morning as she interviewed John McCain.* She was being shocked and horrified that the Aurora killer was able to purchase (and here her jaw drops, her eyes go wide, and she enunciates ever syllable precisely) six. thou. sand. rounds. of. am.mu.ni.tion. car.tridges. ov. er. the. IN.TER.NET. !

She didn't approve of the drum magazine, either. Or the "bomb-making supplies." Taken altogether, she thought that we must find a way to spy out everyone with 6,000 rounds,**  a big  jammy magazine, and/or a small tank of propane.

Candy, you twit, did it ever occur to you that you might reserve your public display of injured horror for that which you know something about?

At the simplest level, the internet is the worst possible place to equip yourself for terror. There's a paper trail, the credit card, the IP address, the delivery records. You can get everything you need at WalMart or Farm Fleet Supply. Walk in. Pick up what you need. Pay cash. Walk out.

And the "tear" gas. We need to track people who buy gas or its percursers.  I know it may seem a bit tyrannical to put everyone guilty of possessing a gallon of bleach and a quart of ammonia on the no-fly list. But it's for the children.

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**I don't remember what McCain said. It doesn't matter.

**Put your hands down. They are watching.

Colorado

It isn't hugely important , and some people will find it insensitive to bring it up so soon after the Batman massacre. But, since reporters and editors get paid to relay  coherent information:

CNN has said several times that the shooter was armed with "an AK-47-type weapon, and a rifle, and two handguns."

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Mayor Bloomberg is, quite unexpectedly, not worried about an appearance of insensitivity. He was immediately in the papers and on the air with his standard demand that police confiscate the firearms of everyone who did not shoot up a theatre last night.

The Stanley Cup

Eight days before the summer solstice, the electric teevee and all the papers are giddy about something called The Stanley Cup. For those of you whose lives have been sufficiently full without knowing what that is, it is a gimcrack given for "hockey," one of the few games in which no one has ever actually seen a goal being scored.

This mistimed irelevancy at least illustrates how badly America has strayed from the Great Cosmic Plan.

God ordained certain seasons, to wit:

June, July, August -- Baseball, with a brief extension permitting the World Series to be played in September.

September, October, November -- Football, again with a special dispensation permitting a contest on New Year's Day which must pit the champion of the Big Ten against some Left Coast pickups.

December, January , and February --  Basketball.

March, April, and May are reserved for sporting romance, the private consummations of which must be neither photographed nor televised. Its public exposure is limited to (a) planning June weddings and (b) bankrupting parents in executing said plans.

Hockey is omitted. It is not an American sport. If Los Angeles insists otherwise it simply verifies the widely held view that it is not an American city.

(If LA  remains intransigent on the subject, a trade can be arranged -- the whole damned city and all of its slurbs for a couple of nice quiet lakes in Northwest Ontario. Plus a draft choice to be announced later.  Perhaps...).

Shrewd Al Sharpton

Romney said  there's only a limited amount of money available to hire teachers, cops, and firemen.

That gave Al Sharpton the theme for his daily diatribe. Sarcastically, he just asked if we really wanted to be  nation of "fewer firefighters, teachers, and first responders."

Notice the omission of  "police officers."

Sharpton knows his audience.
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