Showing posts with label The media (sigh). Show all posts
Showing posts with label The media (sigh). Show all posts

Dec 10, 2013

Nelson Mandela: A short quiz

True or False: Nelson Mandela was born, lived, and became famous in order to have an extended funeral for the photo-op benefit of every politician, has-been politician, and superannuated journalist who can elbow his way to a teevee camera.

I'm pretty sure the right answer is "False," but  you can surely be forgiven for thinking otherwise.  In other words:

 "Dear Television: 

Enough. We get it. Now shut up and permit Mr. Mandela be laid to rest with some shred of dignity.   

Sincerely. 

Us.







 "

Dec 5, 2013

As if hi-cap magazines aren't evil enough...

... now we face the threat of hi-cap -- multiple warhead? --  cartridges.

Down in Des Moines a thugnut went out in his yard and started blazing away at this and that with something that looked to Des Moines Register reporters like an assault rifle.

No one got hurt until cops arrived and shot the perp down.

Later, a police spokesman and the six -- repeat six -- Register reporters combined to produce this explanation:


Police found a semi-automatic rifle similar to an AR-15 and a handgun with the suspect in the backyard. Several gun cartridges were found in the backyard, police said. (Police Sgt. and spokesman) Halifax said cartridges for the rifle used often contain 10 or 15 rounds.

It is simply mind-numbing that a mirvel like this was developed without any of us gun freeks having heard about it.



Nov 17, 2013

The National Grieving

It has already begun, the annual Niagara of tears for the loss of our Great Leader, a grieving this year made more significant by one of the magic-number anniversaries. It happened fifty years ago come Friday.

I am prepared, handkerchiefs laundered and stacked at the ready. My screen glows with multiple Windex treatments so I miss no detail of the video tributes to the man who illuminated the planet and would have saved it but for the mischance of death.

Already written and on the blog queue is a finely detailed account, some nine thousand words after the most brutal editing and condensation. It explains to a breathlessly awaiting world exactly where I was and what I was thinking on that tragic Day the Music Died.

It is most somber.

November 22, 1963, the death of Aldous Huxley.

C.S. Lewis, too.


Nov 16, 2013

O! Brave New World!

Tear-mongering television has about turned the Tacloban disaster into just another ho-hummer, something like a sudden rain storm which ruins Mrs. Abernathy's garden party.

To wit: The CBS teevee news correspondent this morning -- on the spot with disaster in the background -- announced in his lede that while food and water were being delivered to some 100,000 people, "The needs are still enormous. It can take five hours to charge your cell phone."

I weep for the poor victims forced to endure hours without the comfort of a ring tone, but I rejoice in the keen sense of proportionality displayed by the United States electric news industry.

Oct 2, 2013

Another shutdown horror; Smoky Bear goes silent

It's a sane report on our October drama. It includes this line:

"The shutdown will keep park rangers from giving tours at America’s national parks, monuments and historical sites. "

That is true, but if it is important we are truly screwed.

I've listened to my share of  government ranger talks, often enjoyed them, occasionally learned something.  It is difficult, however, to view their absence as a signal that all is lost.

Let's consider Yellowstone, the, errr, icon, of our natural beauty bureaucracy. The ranger will tell you it's a big volcano still deciding when to erupt. That explains the geysers and natural hot tubs and the pretty lake's habit of sloshing water from one end to the other, as when you tilt a dish pan.

He'll also get to the wildlife lecture. Buffalo are big and hairy and can be dangerous. The grizzly might prefer a peanut butter sandwich but gladly settle for a bite of your privates. If you hear a buzz it's a good idea to look for a snake. Throwing rocks at the marmots is considered declasse.

In other words, he offers information which is new to the illiterate or, more likely, the bleating sheep dependent on being led to green grass by an all-knowing government shepherd, those ignorant of public libraries or the lacking foresight to type "y-e-l-l-o-w-s-t-o-n-e  w-i-k-i" into the search box.

Mr. Ranger is, therefore, a special needs instructor for those Americans who spent their classroom time doodling duckies and hot rods and -- having learned from President Clinton that he wears briefs -- spend the rest of the hour speculating what kind of undies the teacher is wearing. And I submit to you, kind reader, that stilling ranger's remedial tongue is not be confused with the final collapse of the Republic.

---

It is a tiny pebble, of course, in the big debate which is generating all the frantic  (mostly) teevee bloviation. Glue together enough little rocks, however, and you begin recognizing a  mountain, sculpted to look like an over-reaching, over-bearing government.












Aug 14, 2013

Grizzly Grub

An  AP story on the big bears of Katmai quotes a young lady psychologist on her mind-blowing honeymoon there in Brown Bear Heaven.

“There’s a bear in the water, and there’s a bear coming down the beach ... and then, we were coming in to eat and there was a bear running by, and there were three bears just over there by the river. So, that was amazing to have it so accessible.”

A mis-attribution? Actually, I think that's what the bears said.

Aug 2, 2013

Altogether now, kids, "The Itsy-Bitsy Hoplophobe..."

As my friend John of the GMA mocks the anti-gun statists: "Well, whaddya know. They do have a playbook."  He found it at the blog of our dependable Robb Allen.

Even the "executive summary"  is gagworthy. For instance: "Advocates for gun violence prevention win the logical debate, but lose on more emotional 
terms". 

Right. After every headline shooting, the antigun forces take to their research cubicles, calmly compile facts and responsible opinions and historical references, then soberly present them to a waiting world in carefully worded white papers. It would be unheard of for them to bawl and snivel all over the teevee audience, beshitting better minds with temper tantrums and crying jags that would get a pre-schooler sent off to the special needs room.

I recommend a read on this. Not that we didn't already know it, but it confirms that   the marching orders to the Pelosi crowd order them to go for the gut, and anything like honest understanding be damned.



Jul 17, 2013

More fun with headlines


A guy shouldn't josh about a death, but, but, but...

Please don't hate me; blame the potato-headed Des Moines Register for:

"Missing Tuber's Body Found in Cedar River."

I apologize again, but I can't help it that I yam what I yam

Jul 16, 2013

The B-37 and the Coop

No, not this air plane.



And not this Coop







This One


Who makes his living as a steely blue-eyed reporter for the Catatonic News Network where, last evening, he interviewed Zimmerman Juror B-37 and bombed.

Anderson in Duuhhh Moment No. 1:   Did you know what went on out  there that night?

Juror B-37:  No one knew exactly what went on but (goes on to  patiently explain what the evidence led jurors to believe occurred.)

Anderson, later, creating Duuhhh Moment No. 2:  Did you know  what went on out there that night?

Juror  B-37:  Look you brain-dead whack job, you need to either seek treatment  for your short-term memory loss or stop doing interviews that last more than 40 seconds. It was a stupid question in the first place, but I answered it 'cuz I know I'm in a  special-needs studio. Now I'm out of here. No, hold it. Why don't you stop picking your toes long enough to crack a dictionary and look up the meaning of "circumstantial." 









Jul 13, 2013

Scoop of the day: Zimmerman rearmed

In the post-verdict evacuations, the most most entertaining -- though least useful  -- is the Huffington Post, output,  and I really think those silly geese are having a collective coronary event. I proffer as foundation the HuffPo lede headline: Zimmerman is  NOT GUILTY ... BUT NOT INNOCENT.

Yes, in huge flaming red, perhaps caused by a burst of legal/journalistic insight. Huff discovers that George Zimmerman wlll get his KelTec 9 back simply because he has never been found gulty of a disqualifying offense.

Jun 25, 2013

Sorry I haven't spoken with you in a couple of days. The weekend was a bit on the social side, mostly with neighbors. We popped in on one another between thunderstorms and engaged in illuminating chit-chat about how nice it was to be between thunderstorms for a change.

Then there was yesterday when I decide to stay within eye shot of my electric television set and pay attention to the Zimmerman trial.  That didn't last long. I caught the prosecution f-bomb lede and the idiotic knock-knock defense  joke. Then I doped out the HLN channel approach to coverage -- two minutes of actual courtroom proceedings as fill between inane analysis by their ever-so-pretty analysts who specialize in  the segue-to-commercial field of legal journalism. I suppose I could have written something for this space after the nausea bout subsided, but the impulse to communicate was too weak.

This morning I decided to give The Vast Waste Land one more chance before test-firing a large weapon, center mass into the small, cheap flat panel. A gentle wave of fantasy stopped me. I became a news personality and, for a moment, loved it. Every one would have to pay attention to me, even the silken news chicks with their fresh leg waxes. And I would be lavishly paid; with the right agent I might even have negotiated a contract awarding me a bonus, say a brick of .22s for every segment in which I remembered not to pick my nose.

I slowly returned to the world-as-it-actually-is when the thought struck that if I were on teevee with Mika or Gretchen,  I would have to pretend that I really, really gave a good goddam about who won the Stanley Cup and how cute it was when everyone on Rush Street decided to celebrate by taking their Rolling Rock outside and fouling Rahm's sidewalks.


May 28, 2013

Making the Underclass Rowdy

While I'm enduring the fourth straight day of rain, fog, and other symptoms of  a world that needs to change its underwear, I'm occupying my time with electronical media.

It's mostly the internet where a little luck on the broker's site will help recoup the cost of those two recent loopholes.  So far this morning, the realized Federal Reserve Cartoons compensate for just under 1 per cent of the Colt/Garand outlay, meaning about 120 straight days of such wild speculation will bring me back to even, FRC-wise, assuming Chairman Bernanke doesn't add  more afterburners over at the Bureauof Printing and Engraving.

But with the other eye I'm occasionally glancing at C-Span where Brooks Brothers   boxers are getting all knotted about the internet "radicalizing" (exclamation points and OMGs) people.

I am sure it does to one degree or another, just like every other mass-communication  enhancer  in history, going back to the papyrus megaphone.  One of the better examples is our own penny press, born in the middle 19th Century (and haven't things gone to Hell since then?).

The internet mimics every other endeavor which makes it easier and easier to prate to  more and more people. In other words, like television and public schools, it arms stupid people with information.*

Even Wiki agrees. The penny papers cost about one-fifth the price of the  established rags and, to boot, offered a powerful selling point:

Simple vocabulary and diction allowed for lower-class and less educated readers to easily understand.

Now, if this way of thinking appeals to the C-Span hand wringers this morning, the logical debate must consider which to outlaw first, the National Enguirer or the Travis McGee Reader and its ilk. Those lower classes are downright dangerous when they learn about stuff happening over in the next block.

---

*Or words and pictures that seem like information. That's important, but it's a subject for another essay.



May 22, 2013

Dear Television,

Thank you. I get it. Everyone in Moore, Oklahoma, is brave and stalwart.  Cops and firemen and ambulance drivers and so forth are braver and stalwarter than average.  Politicians fighting their way through the rubble, deperately seeking a television camera, are bravest and stalwartest of all.

So it is unnecessary for you to keeping telling me. Shoot me an email when you have milked the last emo goop from the tragedy and developed some perspective  on this story's place in the whole wide world of news.

(For instance, Ben Bernanke goes public today with all the reasons he should keep devaluing our currency because President Obama needs lots more Federal Reserve Cartoons to keep the recovery going. Gas at four FRCs and bacon at five is just minor collateral damage which we should ignore.)

---

An aside: Gretchen has her thighs covered this morning, so there's no reason to flip to Fox, no matter what they claim to be reporting about.


Apr 24, 2013

Look, Joe Scarborough

The Boston bomber did not "legally buy an M4."  Not at a gun show, gun store, WalMart, or Dunkin' Donuts.

Period. Story over.

Apr 16, 2013

If it helps us evaluate the quality of information we're getting from our electric teevee sets about whodunit in Boston, we might consider this:

For a few days, the prosecutor shootings in Kaufman County, Texas, commanded the air waves. Virtually every on-air performer conveyed the notion that our culprit was a cabal of racist, ex-con, anti-government, gun-clinging skinheads.

Upon further review, authorities and the media now suggest that the prime suspect is a fat, middle-age, former government employee with hair, a law degree, and a conviction for stealing government computers.

So no matter who Rachel Maddow decides to blame for the Boston bombs during any given on-camera take, we might want to reserve judgement.

Apr 14, 2013

Shall I shoot the bastard?

The fellow in St. George, Utah, did not. He racked his pistol slide.The burglar  ran.The homeowner gave chase. The thug tripped and the homeowner held him under the gun until police arrived.

I call that a near-perfect result, although I understand an opposing view that anyone who invades your bedroom at 4:45 a.m. needs killing, and even that this world is an incrementally better place for each violent criminal who is quickly and economically dispatched to the next. 

That incident is the peg on which the AP's Adam Geller hangs a report on the various views of armed self defense.  While is far from a bad report, it manages to avoid two points most of us find important.

(1) Geller cites studies and experts (often self-styled) who argue that because America suffers less reported crime now than 20 years ago, the need for armed self-defense  is reduced.

This confuses two separate issues. Fewer thugs doing violent things across a nation of 320 million souls is a welcome fact but meaningless to exactly one decent human being facing a criminal in an existential moment when his choice is life or death.  Phrased less abstractly: "This son of a bitch is in my house, threatening me and mine. Killing him immediately is one of my legitimate choices." There couldn't much urge at that moment to ponder the latest FBI crime report. 

(2) Geller reports that more Americans are arming themselves for purposes of self-defense than 20 years ago*  but misses the opportunity to explore the fact as one cause of reduced crime. 

Again,  you and I are in familiar territory here, although the generality of wire service readers probably is not. 

A thief or rapist or killer wants what is yours, but he wants it minimum risk. While he is willing to risk arrest and a protracted trip trough the criminal justice system, he is loathe to chance immediate career termination via  "bang" -- a would-be victim's gun. He looks for the truly unarmed victim from  little gun-free zones to big places governed by such as the Sullivan Act.

It would be more fun to snark the Geller piece to death, but, as I said, it seems to be a honest effort to contribute something useful to the debate.









Apr 8, 2013

Sure, I rather approved of Margaret Thatcher, but

I can save you quite a bit of time this morning if you're the sort of person who gets up, pours a coffee, and clicks the electric teevee in hopes of getting a general sense of what is happening in the world today.

Across all three cable news channels there is but one story, the passing of Ms. Thatcher. Friends, I'm afraid she's going to be dead almost as long as Michael Jackson. 

So you can safely leave your Telescreen blank and go do something useful. 

There is one exception. CNN decided that one other news development was worth a long treatment. They have hired Anthony Bourdain to do some fly-in-and-eat shows for them. 



Mar 21, 2013

And to think Ayn Rand loved Colorado

Once upon a time in America, usually west of the Missouri, there was a useful tradition in journalism. It was a private-sector enterprise called "horse whipping." An editor usually earned the honor by revealing himself to be stupid, self-righteous, and incompetent.

We take you now to Colorado:

The Clements shooting illustrated why the bills, fiercely opposed by gun-rights advocates, were necessary, said Hickenlooper, 61. In a televised new briefing, the first-term Democrat said the killing, while not appearing to be connected with the new laws, was “an act of intimidation.”

The Hickenlooper mentioned is the governor who privately giggles, we suppose, at his progress in making the Centennial State a gun-free zone if you don't count the criminals.

Hickenlooper's new law primarily outlaws high capacity magazines  -- 15 rounds maximum -- and requires a peaceable citizen to buy a background check if he wants to sell Pa's old L.C. Smith to his next-door neighbor. This sort of policy, he implies, would have kept prison boss Clements alive.

--Never mind that we haven't yet the faintest notion of what kind of weapon was used. The possibilities run from a dreaded assault rifle carrying 30 rounds to a less-dreaded assault rifle carrying only 15  to a single-shot Winchester high-wall in .25-20 to a Ruger Black Hawk sixgun to a  .... you get the idea.

(But wait. One more. A really thorough police investigation would make sure no one stole Shotgun Biden's double-barrel 12.)

--Never mind that the killer may have been been able to pass a background check, or had stolen the gun, or borrowed it from his brother-in-law. Or or or.

Governor, there is yet no reason to believe your linkage exists, and you are blood dancing over the unfortunate Mr. Clement's corpse. We award you the Scarlet Letter D. For demagogue. Or dope. Or duplicitous.

Now, a bit of cleanup here. I opened with a shot at the reporters and editors responsible for the cited paragraph, and that in and of itself is unfair. Carefully and somewhat charitably read, it merely reports the Hickenlooper dissimulation. It becomes both fair and germane in context of the entire fawning report, beginning  with the lede:

Colorado begins the task of implementing its toughest gun laws in a decade even as police searched for a suspect, and a motive, in the shooting death of the state’s top prisons official.

And ending:


Debra Reed, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said the Clements killing proved why such laws are crucial.
“This is incredibly sad irony that this has taken place less than 24 hours before the governor planned to sign meaningful gun legislation,” she said. “There is no better illustration of what damage guns can do in the wrong hands.”

Those Brady kids are always good for a dandy tear-jerk finish, aren't they?

---

The other thing, I guess, is that I'm probably a little over the line in implying that we ought to restore corporal punishment for propagandists posing as journalists.

Okay. I recant. You shouldnt. I will go only this far.  If you horse-whip one who richly deserves it, I shall refrain from editorializing against you.









Mar 6, 2013

Zimmerman "Stuns" Court Observers?

His lawyers waived a separate hearing on a Stand Your Ground defense, and ABC News headlined the stunning of "court observers."

Maybe some "observers" are more easily stunned than others. I doubt many students of self-defense law were even trickle-charged.

George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin.  Beyond that, the debate is open. If it was legally justifiable -- as it may have been --  it was on grounds other than Florida's Stand Your Ground law. Zimmerman left that legal cloak behind when he stopped his car, got out, and initiated the confrontation. A suspicious looking kid quietly walking through your night-time neighborhood is grounds for calling the cops, watching from a discreet distance, and taking steps to protect yourself in case he confronts you.

Zimmerman's self-defense argument will succeed or fail based on a judicial determination of what happened after he faced Martin and then, as he alleges, walked away. The details are in dispute and foggy. That's why we have courts.

---

Stand your ground law laws should be universal -- a simple affirmation of your right to use all necessary force to stay alive when a criminal threatens you. If we insist that they give full police power to every guy with a suspicion, we'll lose them, state-by-state.


Mar 5, 2013

The gun news from Lunchtime O'Booze

Just in case you haven't had your fill of media ignorance on firearms technology, I offer this one. It's part of a live blog from The Guardian (of England) of Senator Feinstein's hearing on her bill to ban assaultish-looking weapons.

A Dr. Begg is testifying about his dismay as he tried to treat Newtown victims. Then:

Begg presents a horrible video in which a ballistics expert demonstrates what a bullet from an AR-15 can do. The expert in the video shoots a block of gelatin-like material – flesh-like material – with a .22 rifle. Then he shoots one with an AR-15. The .22 bullet passes cleanly through. The AR-15 bullet goes in and then explodes.

It's certainly possible to compact more ignorance into a short paragraph, but most writers would be hard-pressed.

It would probably do no good to set this reporter down and explain, slowly, in short words, that a video illustrating a point of physics with ballistics gel is neutral rather than "horrible." Now, if it used a Fleet Street reporter to demonstrate the same point, that would be "horrible." Wouldn't it? Well, uhhhh...

Never mind his conflation of bullet diameter with terminal ballistics. We could just send him a telegram stating "An AR-15  is  almost always  a .22 rifle." Maybe that would send him to a library where he would occupy himself in close study of Guns for Dummies -- and looking in vain for evidence that criminals typically use bullet which "explode."

But to end on a positive note, he appears to have done a thorough and professional job of informing his reading public about who cried and at what level of intensity.

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Title credit to Edwin Newman in Strictly Speaking