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What's wrong with *this* image?
(look all the way to the right)
Reinforcing those snobby, exclusory New England stereotypes . . .
What's wrong with this image?
Take a closer look at all of the dates . . .
'Running Thoughts': 'Law & Order' and Late-Night TV
Woohooo! I'm back, baby!!!
Also, it's awesome to see the grammatical errors once they're. See if you can spot them - it's a fun game! Although, there seems to be some disagreement as to whether or not the errors are actually errors . . . I love the English language.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/blog/1380000138.html#1130014113
Running Thoughts: Wagging Political
The pre-editing version.
This past Sunday having been the first Sunday following Karl Rove’s announcement of his impending resignation as White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Mr. Rove enjoyed prominence on my usual political talkshows, whether as guest or as topic. What was a discourse common to both David Gregory on Meet the Press and John McLaughlin on The McLaughlin Group was the question as to whether Mr. Rove was engaging in one last bit of press-related political puppetry as he went. Meanwhile, over at The Daily Show this Wednesday night, John Stewart was asking Illinois Senator Barack Obama about his reactions to the press’ own manipulations of the words of his campaign. Has the media reached a new bit of meta-realization, I wonder, or is this level of operation old hat (pre-dating the very word, even)?
Mr. Gregory, filling in for Meet’s usual host Tim Russert, questioned Mr. Rove regarding an interview he gave on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program. Mr. Rove had called Senator Hillary Clinton a flawed candidate, asserting that she was the Democratic front-runner but that her negative polling was unprecedented among potential presidential candidates. He explained to Mr. Gregory that what he’d been getting at was that the public seemed to have made up its mind about Mrs. Clinton, as she has been in the public eye for “16 or 17 years”, and that, in that particular scenario, “it’s hard to change opinions”. Mr. Gregory then asked him outright if he, and the Republican party as a whole, were attempting to set Senator Clinton up as the Democratic candidate. In fact, he asked him twice. “Is there a desire by the Republican Party for her to be the nominee? Is that who you want to run against?” He thus effectively gave Mr. Rove a platform upon which to enumerate Senator Clinton’s flaws as a candidate. Yet when Mr. Gregory asked Mr. Rove, “Has Barack Obama measured up to the hype surrounding him?”, Mr. Rove deflected, demurring, “you’ve got an excellent panel coming on, I think, later in the program. Why don’t you ask them this question.”
Who won in this exchange, if there was a way to win? Did Karl Rove set out to discuss Hillary Clinton’s flaws, while setting her up against Barack Obama? Did David Gregory play right into his hands? Or was Mr. Gregory’s assumptions correct, that Mr. Rove actually wanted Mrs. Clinton as the Democratic candidate, possibly because he believed that she could be beaten in the general election?
Meanwhile, over on The McLaughlin Group, host John McLaughlin asked Eleanor Clift, Newsweek Magazine’s Contributing Editor, a question along similar lines: “Does Rove's attack on Hillary benefit her more than it hurts her?” Ms. Clift replied by calling Mr. Rove “a Svengali [for Senator Clinton] to campaign against,” adding, “ . . . she's disciplined. She's on message. She rolls over the opposition.”
So as the media goes in circles discussing earlier happenings within the media, what effect does the attention have on the ultimate subjects? Is there truly no such thing as bad publicity? Does the opportunity to fight back make for a stronger candidate? Who is really pulling the strings here?
What about Barack Obama as puppetmaster? John Stewart provided the Senator with several newspaper clippings in which his words, or his wife’s, had been twisted or taken out of context. He asked the Senator if he felt that he was stuck in particular “narrative[s]”, specifically ones for which, “no matter what you do, because it’s easily categorized, the media and everyone else will just slip whatever happens into those two narratives.” Senator Obama, presenting the proverbial breath of fresh air, replied that one of his staffers had told him to remember that, in reference to the campaign debates, they weren’t “on the level. I think that really strikes to what people are frustrated with in politics, is that so much of what we talk about, so much of what we say, it’s not true, people know it’s not true, all the insiders understand that we’re just game playing, and in the meantime you’ve got these hugely serious problems which are true.”
The Senator later was given the chance to espouse that his campaign tactics were to “break down these narratives, and get to the heart of the question.” He went on to explain what he thought the public meant when they questioned his credentials as a Junior Senator, “When people talk about experience, what they want to know is does he have good judgment. How do we actually get stuff done, what’s common sense.” The show had gone from a line of questioning regarding the media’s effect on a candidate, to the candidate using the media’s doubts about his background to publish his strengths.
So I ask you, in these scenarios, media vs. candidates, which side, exactly, is the tail that is wagging the dog?
Rain!
This is the object attached to our living room lightpull. It makes a cheerful jingling sound whenever I turn the light on or off. I quite enjoy it. Yesterday, I must have pulled too hard in the dark (hoo boy) because, as the light came on, a shower of elephants rained down upon my head. I have yet to find all of the persnickety pachyderms.
(Long view, from the chair.)
Who’s Shaping Whom When the Internet and TV Worlds Collide?
This was written for B&C Beat, but did not go up due to vacation deadlines. Enjoy!
The big news in new media this week was the much-vaunted melding of the minds between CNN and YouTube, coming together this past Monday on the consecrated grounds of the Presidential debates. The unexpected headline grab which set the blogosphere alight occurred earlier than that, and has led to continued raging amongst bloggers and on TV to this day, which was when JetBlue’s handlers requested that the YearlyKos event remove JetBlue’s logo from its website. What has bloggers in a tizzy now is the question of whether or not the proprietor of a blog is responsible for the comments left on the blog by readers. This was all spurred by a campaign of Bill O’Reilly’s, announced on his TV show, to shame JetBlue into revoking its sponsorship of YearlyKos, and which was referenced on television by Mr. O’Reilly as recently as yesterday evening. YearlyKos, of course, is attached to the blog DailyKos. Has TV’s effect on the internet outshined the internet’s effect on TV, at least for this week?
Please note that I would like bonus points for using both the phrase “new media”, as well as “blogosphere”, in the first paragraph of this column.
I caught the tail end of the debate on TV, and it was definitely enough to get me to go online and download the broadcast, in its entirety, to my nifty new video iPod, which I then proceeded to watch while riding the train. I’m not sure if the purveyors of the debate can count my viewership as a previously untapped resource, as I have been known to watch these events in the bar after practice with the closed captioning on – “Shh! I can’t read what Kerry is saying!” – but it is quite likely that, due to the sheer novelty of the event, more than one tech savvy yet politically unmotivated soul was compelled to do the same. Please note also that the question I was privileged to catch on the ‘tube (that’s “boob-“, not “You-“) was, “look at the candidate to your left and tell the audience one thing you like and one thing you dislike about that particular candidate.” This did not make for scintillating television, although it was sort of funny - too long to be very funny, as per the generally accepted rules of comedy, but at least quirkily humorous.
Tuesday’s edition of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with John Stewart featured a “correspondent” who was very upset with the format of the debate, espousing a fear that, by taking the news out of news reporters’ hands and putting it into the hands of the public, via YouTube, the “correspondent” would be out of a job. Of course, this issue at the moment is not a real one, as CNN chose the questions for the debate, and Anderson Cooper hosted it. It did provide some real comedy in reference to the endeavor, and it also outlined the very real fact that the people asking the questions were, well, unprofessional. I suggest that television reporters wait to worry until the public begins to provide really polished content, by which time the reporters will most likely be reporting online, anyway. Until then, while YouTube may spice up CNN, it is still CNN’s show.
Of course, with the ongoing issue between The O’Reilly Factor and Daily Kos, here we have an instance of TV actually sending attention away from itself towards the internet – as if it didn’t receive enough attention already. The question now being posed speaks to accountability, mainly asking, if you run a blog, are you responsible for the contents of the comments posted to your blog? Does the fact that comments opposing the views contained within the posts on your blog are often purposefully left published, in a sort of www letters to the editor policy, and further are often the catalysts for debate within the comments section - does this fact preclude you, the proprietor of the blog, from the responsibility of monitoring the comments section for vulgarity, profanity, and hate speech? Is this an instance in which profanity is not, in fact, profanity, if it is employed in an effort to denounce profanity, as if it were being denounced from a pulpit? Or, would it behoove you, the blog’s proprietor, to remove the offending comment and leave a marker explaining, euphemistically of course, the gist of the comment, so that the resulting debate is not disrupted, in spirit, for posterity’s sake? Should there be an FCC-equivalent in place, monitoring popular blogs? Could there even be, or is it a Sisyphean task? In this same vein, if so-called offending words from DailyKos’ comments section are repeated on The O’Reilly Factor, so as to prove a point as to how vulgar DailyKos is, and again on the show’s website, does that make The O’Reilly Factor just as vulgar?
Comedy Central weighed in again, this time from O’Reilly pseudo-homage The Colbert Report, as the eponymous host Steven Colbert announced that he didn’t “want to talk about Iraq anymore. It's too easy . . . At least there's one place that understands this: Fox News." Colbert went on to say that by denouncing DailyKos, O’Reilly was focusing on “the homeland.”
"Do not go to DailyKos.com," Colbert ordered. DailyKos.com was then flashed on the screen so that, as he explained, “viewers know where not to go."
If new media is really the beast that will kill old media, television is really doing a good job of helping it drives nails into its own coffin.
What's weirder?
. . . the fact that I swallowed or inhaled a bug at the start of my run, or the fact that I coughed it back up twenty-five minutes later?
Dark horse - the fact that I still don't know if I swallowed or inhaled it?
Blech. Protein.
(Long view, from the chair.)
