A very positive development; on 900 AM, July 10th.
per the bulletproof one ….
Browsing Posts in media
[ACTION ITEMS: Read Smitty and Stacy. Keep current with Chris Cassone. Read Matthew Vadum and Barbara Espinosa, And by all means attend the Tax Day Tea Party.]
In case you were concerned, let me assure you the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy is alive and well, and in key.
(left) The Other B.B. King and Blind Melon McCain highlighted the evening with their soulful stylings.
Friends, I am sorry if you were not at the Third Annual Smittypalooza in Washington DC, because it was one of the coolest events I’ve attended in some time – and right on the eve of tomorrow’s Tax Day Tea Party. Tomorrow is a big deal, and tonight was a great way to kick it off.
It was about service, it was about fedoras, it was about imminent revolution, it was about citizen journalism as well as paid journalism … but more than anything, it was about the music. Stacy McCain, my friends, would be one HELL of a front man if there was a tip jar angle. I am convinced of this.
To put the evening in perspective, for those of you who do not know: Chris Smith, aka Smitty (center), is Stacy McCain’s co-blogger at The Other McCain, which our regular readers know is one of my favorite blogs and should be one of yours, too. Every year or so Smitty hosts the Smittypalooza in DC. It draws some really interesting visitors and this was no exception.
Here, Chris Cassone plays his new song, City on the Hill. (Click below to listen)
I had been shooting the breeze with Chris for about ten minutes, not knowing him from Adam, when the discussion got around to the 9-12 Tea Party event in DC. After I told him I was there he said “That’s where I played my song.” I asked, “What song is that?” He said “Take Our Country Back.”
Whoa. As you can tell from my video, I thought that was the seminal moment of the 9-12 demonstration. So it was wonderful to meet Chris in person. I recommend everyone check out his Web site and stay apprised of what he is doing. Chris Cassone is a really nice guy and he is providing the sound track for a sea change in America’s political culture.
A couple other impressive people at Smittypalooza were Matthew Vadum and Barbara Espinosa.
Matthew Vadum is one of the key journalists covering criminal leftist organizations such as ACORN. Read this and this to see why I believe he deserves some kind of medal of honor for his work.
Barbara Espinosa is an activist from Arizona who is now also a blogger. What an interesting lady! She is new to blogging, although with Stacy as her mentor she has a very good technical foundation to apply her knowledge and grassroots experience to the blogosphere.
Thank you, Smitty and friends, for a fantastic evening.
While searching for an update on the Washington Redskins – Flozell Adams situation, I ran across this.
How cool. Rich Tandler and I used to spend hours fiercely arguing Redskins/Cowboys back in the early 1990s during the pre-World Wide Web era, on CompuServe. That was in another life for me – a couple years before I even knew Linda B – before the ‘Boys had won their first Super Bowl of the Jerry Jones era, back when Rich was managing a restaurant in Midlothian, VA.
Rich was almost as erudite as I, and somewhat more knowledgeable, thus a worthy opponent. Plus he was always a gentleman, so I am glad to see him in the big time. Good on ye’, Rich!
Does this come as a surprise to anyone?
I foresee a future – a near future – where at 95% of “news” outlets the only persons with any public credibility whatsoever will be the weather reporters and sports reporters. Television news programs will begin with weather, followed by sports, followed by Hollywood gossip, and then close with the gaggle of propaganda- and rumor-mongers, formerly known as news, now simply called Voices: Dogs have voices, squeaky bicycles have voices, and these folks have voices, and all are about equally worth listening to. When they appear on the screen Americans en masse will change the channel to Fox News.
On a related note, for a stellar example of the doublespeak that passes for reporting on “unemployment” these days, take one of your three allotted visits to the Washington Post Web site this year and check out the lead article, Jobless rate may rise as many are drawn back to labor force:
The increase in jobs highlighted in the nation’s most recent unemployment report carried the sound of economic promise, but Obama administration officials said Sunday that the public shouldn’t expect any dramatic improvement in the jobless rate, largely because of the effect of thousands of “discouraged” unemployed people who have resumed their search for work.
You see, what is reported as the number of “unemployed” counts merely those who are registered with government agencies as seeking work. It does not count the millions of other people who are also out of work at the time. So whenever you see a quantity or percentage figure for “unemployment” you need to mentally add an asterisk which means “this number is actually MUCH higher.”
Read that Washington Post report creative writing exercise and, after marveling at the author’s bold attempt to construe sense out of gobbledygook, you will have a good understanding of why most “news” organizations need to soon go the way of the buggy whip.
UPDATE: Oh, just noticed the chart everyone needs to stick on the refrigerator, also courtesy of a true news organization.
If Americans under the age of thirty had the slightest inkling of what the Obama administration is doing to them, they would be marching on DC with torches and pitchforks.
This is hilarious. The people on MSNBC are so warped, the other libs are starting to make fun of them.
Keith Olbermann is in need of some psychiatric help. “Get a grip” often comes to mind. Stewart is a comedian with a political bent. MSNBC is a joke with a political bent , Kieth is just the straight man.
UPDATE: This is mostly Jon Stewart eviscerating Kieth Olbermann. Eight minutes of Kieth would be the longest day of my life.
I spent the other night watching the Obama implosion on one of the Obama networks (MSNBC) and in the course noted that MSNBC is unbelievably horrible from a talent perspective, much like the old Air America was: just really sucky television by people who did not belong there, and with commensurately abysmal ratings.
Well it turns out Air America radio has still been on the air – I honestly thought it went out of business when the godawful Al Franken television program got the deep six a couple years ago. But alas, Air America radio has been around, albeit apparently only playing on a few college networks piped into the dorms via the AC circuits:
The news did not come as a total surprise to staffers. The company, which was founded in 2004, has never been on sound financial footing. The company first filed for bankruptcy protection in 2006, but managed to stay on the air at that time.
The fact is, liberals are generally boring as on-air talkers because they tend to be wrong about everything, and consequently it’s tiresome to hear them prattle on because in order to make their points they have to lie. The audience can pick up on this pretty quickly. Thus the atrocious ratings the other cable news networks get compared to Fox. Compared to Fox the other stations are so piss poor in terms of audience they are all like the New Jersey Reds up against the Harlem Globetrotters: They don’t even belong on the same playing field, but we are also happy and amused to see them there.
I hope they don’t all go the way of Air America, but eventually someone is going to tire of losing money so they probably will.
Media panel, discussing opinion vs reporting, and “news judgments,” including what goes on their news outlets and what goes on their blogs.
Left to right: Ryan Nobles of NBC 12, Julian Walker of Virginian-Pilot, Anita Kumar of Washington Post, Kimball Payne of Daily Press and Shad Plank. (Vivian moderating)
Hillary Clinton has become a strange spectacle, who really has no dog in the fight but is left with no more of a role than mouthing the words:
Hillary Clinton is not exactly setting the world on fire at the moment, but she is doing her best to compete with Barack Obama over who can give the most apologies for their country on foreign soil. Obama clearly had an edge until recently with major set piece speeches in Strasbourg and Cairo which frankly made the dove-like Jimmy Carter look like Dick Cheney in comparison. You can hardly switch on talk radio in America (with audiences of tens of millions across the country) without listening to outraged callers fed up with their own president rubbishing America’s past actions in front of foreign audiences.
Heh.
Thank you, Ace.
UPDATE: Welcome to our Other McCain visitors!! And thanks to our buddy RS for yet another Stacylanche, of which few have been repaid by even the barest attempt at a Rule #2 reacharound. My bad. I have a post in the works on some of the brightest stars in the blogosphere and R.S. McCain will be featured prominently, it’s just this year has been a bad year for getting anything serious done in my off hours so I have been totally remiss in acknowledging the latest developments such as the new majordomo of DC blogs.
Ugh. Anyone watching the Tour this year? If you are, you know it is a combination of a) the most interesting competition in a few years, and b) the biggest ripoff for viewers – perhaps ever.
What is happening is the broadcast is being regularly interrupted with ad hoc commercial breaks which completely pre-empt portions of the event. The cable network Versus is providing a fantastic, entertaining program, and half-hour segments are even touted as “commercial free” – most of these hosted by Nature’s Valley. Periodically, as any television broadcast does, the Versus program officially breaks for commercials. All fine and good.
The problem is that – at least on Comcast cable, which is what I have – there are many, many additional commercial breaks which are not integrated into the program and are, in fact, just dropped onto the broadcast. So you have the excellent announcers reporting the event and then suddenly it goes into one and a half minutes of commercials … and then the Tour comes back on with us having completely missed whatever occurred during the break. The program does not pause and then pick up where it left off. YOU JUST END UP MISSING WHATEVER YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE SEEN WHEN THE BREAK FOR COMMERCIALS OCCURRED.
To reiterate: There are the normal commercial breaks, when the announcers say “And when we return we will see thus-and-so.” But there are extra commercial breaks which overwrite the program. It is like if a football game showed the team breaking the huddle, and then going to commercial, and then coming back on two plays later with absolutely no mention of what happened in the meantime.
I have to think either Versus is run by idiots, or Comcast cable is dropping commercials into the Versus broadcast. If the former, god help us that as a species we could put together such a great program and then ruin it. If the latter, Comcast should be sued – by every bike race fan on the planet, but especially by Nature’s Valley, who are paying to have their name attached to “commercial free” 30-minute segments which turn out to be anything but and make both Nature’s Valley and Versus look like grifters.
It is a shame that such an interesting year for the Tour – with Lance Armstrong returning and a major conflict brewing on arguably the best team in years, Astana – should be marred by a broadcast which randomly deletes significant segments of the action, like some bush league 1950s-era television broadcast.
Oddly enough, our household had already been scheduled to switch from Comcast to Verizon tomorrow, so I should be able to check if the same BS is happening on other cable providers, and thus determine if the morons are at the Versus television network or Comcast cable television. Somebody is ruining the broadcast of this year’s Tour de France, and it will be worthwhile to see exactly who is at fault.
It appears that Obama, who when he was a candidate thought there were 57 states in the US, has now declared Putin president of Russia. I am sure Medvedev does not mind. Really. Unlike a good ol’ fashioned Bushism, an Obama misstep this is not worthy of mention at the New York Times, or any NBC outlet, etc. This kind of blithering or faux pas was parroted by the MSM ad nauseum to drive home the point that Bush is an idiot — despite the fact that his grades were higher than either of his presidential electoral opponents. Both of whom the media declared intellectual paragons: Kerry was the nuanced war hero who survived being shot three times by 50 cal fire; Gore was a scientist.
This is but another example of the media fawning over the Democrat in the office. If there is a negative story, run it if you must, but do so in the least damaging way. If the politician in question is a Republican, hammer them with all the innuendo and viciousness possible, and, repeat as often as needed until the maximum damage possible is done. Identify them as Republican of course, but, if the scandal involves a Democrat, the party affiliation is not needed.
This is why MSM is bleeding money like a stuck pig. People know the difference between news and propaganda. MSM has morphed over the years into a brigade of water carriers for the Democrat party. 90% of them have never voted Republican ever. In an attempt to mask their rank partisanship– they declare they are listed as independents on the voter rolls; all the while rooting for the left. When people protest against the policy’s of the left, the “reporters” shout them down and echo the Democrat party line while declaring they are objective; this is the pathetic current posture of our fourth estate. The giggle factor shoots through the roof when Obama laments how one out of all the media outlets is not sycophantic; this is really terrifying because none of the media outlet should be sycophantic but Obama does not realize it.
The American people have been harmed by this media. We deserve better. For this great republic to continue we need a media that harbors no favoritism. This is impossible at the individual level. The media at large must be representative of the views of the whole country. If we were to have a robust fourth estate, we would actually see some policing of both parties. We would see policy that was actually beneficial to the whole country. Both parties could stop in their mutual race to the intellectual and ethical nadir. Barney Frank belongs in a cell. The members of the Obama administration who entertained paying the Washington Post for access should be under investigation. The bills the congress is passing would be read, reasoned over and debated.
The emperor has no clothes. It is a pathetic spectacle.
Just watch, nothing further really needs to be said.
It is amazing that our President and Press have remained as passive as they have in the face of this and countless other such acts in Iran. The real interesting question is what is the source of the unrest, face it both candidates were hand picked by the Mullahs. Another example:
To intervene or not? Loudoun Insider at TooConservative provide some analysis. Unfortunately I do not agree, air strikes without boots on the ground will only give the Mullahs a scapegoat with some measure of credibility. After the past 7 years, our press has so damaged us we cannot engage in such ventures. Obama’s great ‘I’m sorry tour’ only sealed the deal. The ideal of American exceptionalism is dead.
UPDATE:
Protest organisers held in Iranian raid – report
I guess at first glance I could see how the latest Charlie the Clown episode might seem like something significant, but in order to make that claim you have to assume ABC network news is significant.
This, I would submit, is a false assumption. ABC News reporting objectively on El Dipshitio? That cow has left the barn. ABC’s evening news is a joke, and Charlie broadcasting from the Blue Room or wherever is but a munchkin hop compared to the mad shark-jumping Peter Jennings era.
This is wild. It appears we truly are moving toward a soviet style government. Obama and his pack of thugs are now taking over the media. It is not enough that they call him God, and have shivers up and down their legs, or a lump in their throat, or tears in their eyes. Nope. Being sycophants is not enough. Obama and his team are out for direct control.
I recommend we rename ABC ‘Truth’ (pravda) and we rename NBC ‘News’ (isvestia). Then we will be able to say as they did in the USSR – there is no truth in the news and no news in the truth. The next move is to teach our troops to goosestep.
It is not enough for Obama to control GM and Chrysler. It is not enough for Obama to control the banks. Obama wants to control the pay of all employees of all publicly held companies. Obama wants to control the health industry outright. To do this Obama needs to even further tighten his control of the flow of public information. This is done by controlling the programing directly at the ‘objective’ news outlets. Just in case the poor little dears don’t get it, move the anchor into the white house. This will bring order.
We are seeing the government taking over the economy, the media and health services. The czars who are in charge of all these functions do so without congressional oversight. This is an incredible amassing of power in the presidency. I recall the liberal loons worrying about an imperial presidency under Bush. This is an order of magnitude worse. Such is the nature of this much concentrated power. Can someone please tell me how this is not becoming a dictatorial state?
I’ve got no definitive information except the basic report that Martin Casey, longtime editor of the Loudoun Easterner, is no longer with the paper. Forgive me if this has been reported in some other forum; whatever, I never saw it until now.
I sent a press release and received the following reply:
Thank you for contacting the Loudoun Easterner. As of Friday, May 8, Martin Casey is no longer with the newspaper.
I’m sure something more substantive will follow.
Martin has been a media institution in Loudoun County, editing a paper which has gamely fought on in a very competitive media battlefield here. We have a ridiculous number of local newspapers – I think currently it is five. Frankly, I don’t know how you pull away from the pack in such a marketing environment. But the Easterner has done it for years now, in no small part because their managing editor has also served as a primary reporter and columnist.
I have a lot of respect for the man because he held to personal principles but was generally fair in presenting different points of view. We had a conversation a couple years ago about the illegal migration issue, and I explained my interest in the problem was based on people I knew who’d lost their livelihoods to companies employing illegal workers, and people who had difficulties in their neighborhoods because of boarding houses. Martin responded by noting a local Catholic priest who had decided to learn to speak Spanish as a way of dealing with the burgeoning immigrant community.
Point-Counterpoint: My initial reaction was, “So what would the priest say to those who lost their jobs or who had their neighborhood streets turned into industrial zones?” On the face of it we were coming at the issue from two different perspectives, it seemed, but coverage of the issue at the Easterner was always balanced, in my opinion. I think Martin Casey did a really good job ensuring the Easterner presented both sides so that the residents of this area had the most accurate information. His reporting was always fair during a time when the topic of illegal immigration did not always get such treatment in the local press.
Job well done, Mr. Casey: I hope you are off to an enjoyable next stage in life.
