Did you ever say anything really mean about someone that you thought was just between yourself and someone else, only to find out they later told them everything? Then it makes everything really UNCOMFORTABLE, maybe even ends relationships? We've probably all been in that situation, hopefully in a younger day, I know who to trust now, also, some things are just better left unsaid because they would be devastating to a person, why do it? And how about the people that repeat such potentially hurtful information? Why do they do it? Nothing better to talk about? Not enough drama in their own lives? Thought it would be helpful? What if you've been the receiver of such news? But I thought we were best friends?!? This is how I view Wikileaks today.
I honestly don't get where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is coming from. The albino-esqe super intellectual appeared on The Colbert Report a few months ago and I agreed with his views of the media and dumbed-down journalism, his call for more information and more transparency in the world. But I just don't get what these recent leaks have to do with any of that, and how they are helping anyone? The leaks are all just a he said she said collection of non-information about what American diplomats think of foreign leaders, it's all really frank but probably nothing we don't know already. My biggest issue is that Obama does not need another problem to deal with right now, another stupid distraction for American media to focus on. It makes me a tad suspicious as the people who get smeared here are Obama and Hillary Clinton, what's up with that?
Some cursory research on Assange, points to a strange, liberal-nightmare of parenting upbringing with musician, hippy type parents who belonged to a New Age cult that practiced yoga and giving LSD to children, a mix of public and home schooling, as well as being in hiding for five years with his mother and half brother over a bitter divorce battle. He attended University in Australia and became a sort of avant-garde computer hacker, breaking into an Australian University and ,the Canadian, Nortel Communications. The prosecutors found no reason other than the ability to do it and the pleasure in it, I'm sorry but this sounds like the definition of a sociopath. Since his youth in Australia he has lived a sort of life on-the-run, living in Africa and Iceland. He has been called "the ethical hacker" and won Amnesty International Awards for exposing political assassinations in Kenya, Ok, I'm good with that, Africa needs some exposing, maybe a lot of governments do, where the hell were you during the Bush era!?!?
The recent leaks I am not good with, if this leads to the U.S. and Russia falling through on the START treaty, that is not helping the world. I am on the side of we all need to know where and how many nuclear arms and materials are floating around out there, especially the stuff near the Middle East and Afghanistan. If these leaks also diminish Obama more and the Americans elect Sarah Palin as President, that is also not helping, one can only imagine the made up call to war the Republicans will think of next.
I spent the morning trying to find out exactly what the right wing spin will be on this. Too early to say, The Sun newspaper has nothing, I'm not surprised though, they only react and they have to get all their talking points in a row, they are still talking about Portugal getting the UN Security Seat over Canada from months ago! FOX News is taking a National Security side, which is actually the side of the Obama administration, I suppose they have to at this point as their public online poll shows most think it's a threat to the US. My guess is that they will try to blame the victim here, there was an article that gleefully went through all the leaks, can you believe so-and-so said this about so-and-so? OMG! Maybe from a comment thread I figure out the FOX attack in this situation,uninformed comments that ask who leaked this anyway? probably the Obama administration! Ahh, the good old, report half the news and leave out important information to make their viewers angry modus. Their viewers are too suspicious of other news sources so many do not or will not go to the New York Times to see the smiling picture of Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army Intelligence Officer who gave info to Wikileaks previously and is currently in a lot of trouble! Yeah, it's usually something a lot more mundane than Government conspiracy, usually more like self interest.
So what usually happens when someone tells someone else exactly what you think of them? Usually you stop trusting that person with certain information and maybe you stop talking to them altogether. Sometimes you might even become closer to the one you unintentionally offended, because of the guilt and you don't want them thinking you're really that heartless.
As for self-described anarchists, I've met my fair share, they're kind of fun for a while, and then they just become tiresome, they don't want anyone else's rules, just their own.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
The Sun Also Rises
So the Sun media, famous for it's tabloid opinion based newspapers in Canada finally got its license to broadcast SunTV, ha ha but not the license they wanted; the CRTC gave them ordinary pay cable status just like most cable stations. Leger Marketing did a survey last fall that shows 76% of Canadians are unwilling to pay extra for another news channel, so I wish them well.
Anyone who grew up in a city that carried the Sun knows what they are about, it's all opinion, advertisements and sunshine girls, there used to be sunshine boys too but maybe they thought that was too gay? I'm not even sure they have sun shine girls anymore? Did they have to bow to political correctness and not be so demeaning and objectifying to women? In the modern world I have read some of their articles online and used to comment at times because their stance was always egregiously right wing or just plain old sexist, homophobic or racist. I abandoned that little hobby because it was causing undue stress and the regular followers were just plain scary. They have no moderation on their site so there was a regular crowd of cooks, some were even White Supremacists. It always got to a point where people would get way off topic, personally insult, threaten, even impersonate under one of my fake names. I really just wanted to destroy one of their dumb arguments with logic or an actual fact but these folksy-folks are foul mouthed and really angry at anyone they perceive as a "paleo-liberal". I always wondered where all the anger came from? I don't think it's real or justified. You live in a country where you can apparently have the time to write to comment threads and/or own a computer to do so, we don't have it so bad in this country my friend!
Apparently SunTV already broadcasts in Toronto and London, Ontario, it looks kinda like A Channel, sort of an independent station nobody would watch because it's a bunch of American sitcoms in syndication. By the by they are also operating with a $50.3 million deficit. Oh those conservatives, why are they so bad at running anything and racking up debt?
I had a look at the Sun TV News website, I'm sure conservatives everywhere are already wetting their panties! There is a big banner that says "STRAIGHT TALK", maybe that's their answer to "Fair and Balanced"? Sounds like they took it from John McCain's Straight Talk Express campaign bus, we all remember when the wheels came off that thing! They are also rounding up a who's who of Canadian right-wing pundits to be their newsy personalities: David Akin, the guy who first spread the rumour on his twitter that Gordon Lightfoot had died, then later retracted and said he heard it from someone else, Charles Adler, who's been on TV since I was a lad and sometimes substitutes for Sean Hannity on FOX News, Ezra Levant, total right wing lunatic who is short and (fake) angry; he was responsible for bringing Ann Coulter to speak at Canadian Universities, Brian Lilley, who has written numerous run-of-the-mill right wing articles for the National Post, and Krista Erickson, I couldn't find out anything about her but she will be perfect in the role of hot chick, the kind FOX News have for straight men to ogle, they are nothing but T&A to lure the testosterone laden.
Although SunTV will be based in Toronto, they also include a banner that says "with SunTV News the West will be in" I'm not sure what that means? Being based in Toronto and all. I guess they want to get that 60 plus crowd that are still so angry with Trudeau and the NEP out here in Alberta? I think it's a way for Toronto media types to appear to not be elitist to a Calgary type audience, even though they probably are, why not have the station in Calgary then? Please leave "the West" out of this anyway, Calgary has an undercurrent of Liberalism that is surfacing recently - check out the new mayor. I've always found Edmonton to have a strong Liberal leaning. Vancouver? I like to think of it as San Francisco North and as Saskatchewan goes, perhaps kind of a toss up, you can see anti-abortion signs in the country but there is a long history of the NDP too. Who wants to revitalize regional arguments anyway? Where did that get us? I am quite happy to just call myself Canadian thank you very much.
So there's the model for FOX North, a bunch of angry white guys who are really just shills for the Conservative Party. Sorry Ezra, being Jewish does not exactly qualify as a minority, I think it's called "white minority" in the U.S. Census, as opposed to "non-white minority" check one please. Of course living in Calgary I have had experience meeting actual right wing media types. At first, because they never have gaydar, they think I am on their side, big white guy with a goatee and a scowl (it's just my natural look!), then they find out I'm not on their side and don't buy their tawdry remarks and thinly veiled right wingery. Sure, I have argued some but after a while it's like, what the hell is your problem? Haven't you ever met different people before? I'm not buying into your arguments so please leave me alone, trying to drink and talk to someone else now. I'm not sure where the right wing get their entitlement to anger? Are you not rich enough? Corporations don't have enough power?
Anyone who grew up in a city that carried the Sun knows what they are about, it's all opinion, advertisements and sunshine girls, there used to be sunshine boys too but maybe they thought that was too gay? I'm not even sure they have sun shine girls anymore? Did they have to bow to political correctness and not be so demeaning and objectifying to women? In the modern world I have read some of their articles online and used to comment at times because their stance was always egregiously right wing or just plain old sexist, homophobic or racist. I abandoned that little hobby because it was causing undue stress and the regular followers were just plain scary. They have no moderation on their site so there was a regular crowd of cooks, some were even White Supremacists. It always got to a point where people would get way off topic, personally insult, threaten, even impersonate under one of my fake names. I really just wanted to destroy one of their dumb arguments with logic or an actual fact but these folksy-folks are foul mouthed and really angry at anyone they perceive as a "paleo-liberal". I always wondered where all the anger came from? I don't think it's real or justified. You live in a country where you can apparently have the time to write to comment threads and/or own a computer to do so, we don't have it so bad in this country my friend!
Apparently SunTV already broadcasts in Toronto and London, Ontario, it looks kinda like A Channel, sort of an independent station nobody would watch because it's a bunch of American sitcoms in syndication. By the by they are also operating with a $50.3 million deficit. Oh those conservatives, why are they so bad at running anything and racking up debt?
I had a look at the Sun TV News website, I'm sure conservatives everywhere are already wetting their panties! There is a big banner that says "STRAIGHT TALK", maybe that's their answer to "Fair and Balanced"? Sounds like they took it from John McCain's Straight Talk Express campaign bus, we all remember when the wheels came off that thing! They are also rounding up a who's who of Canadian right-wing pundits to be their newsy personalities: David Akin, the guy who first spread the rumour on his twitter that Gordon Lightfoot had died, then later retracted and said he heard it from someone else, Charles Adler, who's been on TV since I was a lad and sometimes substitutes for Sean Hannity on FOX News, Ezra Levant, total right wing lunatic who is short and (fake) angry; he was responsible for bringing Ann Coulter to speak at Canadian Universities, Brian Lilley, who has written numerous run-of-the-mill right wing articles for the National Post, and Krista Erickson, I couldn't find out anything about her but she will be perfect in the role of hot chick, the kind FOX News have for straight men to ogle, they are nothing but T&A to lure the testosterone laden.
Although SunTV will be based in Toronto, they also include a banner that says "with SunTV News the West will be in" I'm not sure what that means? Being based in Toronto and all. I guess they want to get that 60 plus crowd that are still so angry with Trudeau and the NEP out here in Alberta? I think it's a way for Toronto media types to appear to not be elitist to a Calgary type audience, even though they probably are, why not have the station in Calgary then? Please leave "the West" out of this anyway, Calgary has an undercurrent of Liberalism that is surfacing recently - check out the new mayor. I've always found Edmonton to have a strong Liberal leaning. Vancouver? I like to think of it as San Francisco North and as Saskatchewan goes, perhaps kind of a toss up, you can see anti-abortion signs in the country but there is a long history of the NDP too. Who wants to revitalize regional arguments anyway? Where did that get us? I am quite happy to just call myself Canadian thank you very much.
So there's the model for FOX North, a bunch of angry white guys who are really just shills for the Conservative Party. Sorry Ezra, being Jewish does not exactly qualify as a minority, I think it's called "white minority" in the U.S. Census, as opposed to "non-white minority" check one please. Of course living in Calgary I have had experience meeting actual right wing media types. At first, because they never have gaydar, they think I am on their side, big white guy with a goatee and a scowl (it's just my natural look!), then they find out I'm not on their side and don't buy their tawdry remarks and thinly veiled right wingery. Sure, I have argued some but after a while it's like, what the hell is your problem? Haven't you ever met different people before? I'm not buying into your arguments so please leave me alone, trying to drink and talk to someone else now. I'm not sure where the right wing get their entitlement to anger? Are you not rich enough? Corporations don't have enough power?
Thursday, November 25, 2010
The bi-curious fox
OK, I admit I watched the last episode of Dancing With The bloody Stars out of sheer curiosity, I banned the show from my household 2 years ago because really, who has this much time to spare? Yay, Jennifer Gray won, just as Jimmy Kimmel predicted from the beginning. Now Bristol can go on to her next career, modelling mom jeans, I've seen enough of this show in my life to know that contestants always lose weight! Sorry, couldn't resist!
The more important television moment of the week was on Glee; this weeks episode with Finn's mom marrying Kurt's dad was a real tear jerker. The wedding part was already great for those that love that kind of stuff, I know you're out there, but the real moment was when Finn asked Kurt, the gay character, to dance and said something about being his brother, I don't remember exactly, I was tearing up a little. In the storyline we see that Kurt is having a hard time being harassed by a closeted super beefy Football player, even suffering death threats, turns out the other male Glee members all tried fighting this character in the locker room while Finn backed away. Finn of course feels guilty and thus we get to the scene at the wedding where he accepts Kurt as his step brother and brother in a wider context as well as a big sorry for not defending you, aided by song and dance of course. Wow, Liberal Media at it's best!
For me this is important because it is suggesting that society is getting over homophobia, or at least putting the idea out there on one of the most popular shows on television. It's a big moment as I firmly believe art reflects life, it's never life reflecting art unless you are Madonna or Andy Warhol. Are things really changing for the younger generation?
When I was a teen, before the internet but in the age of the Walkman, it felt a little scary to be gay. Looking back I suppose nothing really violent ever happened to me but the threat was always there. I did not have the accepting parents the fictional Kurt on Glee does, my parents thought gays were all waiters and flight attendants and used words like "fruit" or "fag", even sometimes to me. High School was not really an escape, it was something one had to go thru until you could go live an actual life after grade 12. My gym locker got broken into once, all my stuff stolen and something with the word "faggot" scrawled all over the front. I got my dad to write me a bogus excuse note after that and then I just never showed up for PhysEd the next 2 months till the end of the year and nothing happened, the instructor passed me and luckily we didn't have to take PhysEd after Grade 10. Those school days were hard, people were going to notice that you had no interest in sports, no girlfriends and/or never talked about sex at all, I was more interested in music and fashion. There were likely whisper campaigns by the preppy girls, I would have torn one to shreds if it weren't for the fact that no one could tell one apart from the other, they all wore bobbed hair, up-turned collar shirts and pearls, which one of them started it, who the hell knows!?!? There was also the threat of violence at times, I remember my friends forming a semi-circle around me while I crouched down so some insane jock who was intent on beating me up at an off campus dance didn't see me, we all made it to the safety of some parents car somehow. It wasn't all bad though, the AIDS crisis was making people aware of the gays and in a sympathetic way. The modern way of thinking was to accept people, being a racist homophobe was not considered cool amongst a growing few. Although Jack Tripper was just pretending to be gay on Three's Company, network TV had the first gay character in its history on Dallas, and Boy George was telling Barbara Walters he was "bisexual", times were slowly changing.
By the time I was in my 30's we won most of the legal battles in Canada including the right to marry although it became a huge issue for our American friends, who are still trying even to just get into the military. Somehow Canadians followed a logical course of social change and law while the Ultra-Conservatives in the U.S. made it a wedge issue in their country. Isn't it just so funny that we found out recently Bush's campaign manager for the 2004 election came out as gay? Ken Mehlman was the inventor of using the gay-marriage issue to scare middle America into voting for Republicans, because they had to defend traditional marriage or the country would be destroyed by the gays. Reminds me of when I see former High School bullies in my local gay bar or at Pride Parades, it's happened a time or two.
So, for me this weeks Glee was a real milestone, I hope gay teens everywhere are feeling encouraged.
Which brings me to, how the hell does FOX Network coincide in the same universe as FOX News?!? The FOX News that constantly beats the drum of "Liberal" and "Mainstream Media" destroying America. I'm going to guess Bill O'Reilly would call the creators of Glee "pinheads" and not "patriots" and then there's Glenn Beck who thinks everyone is a puppet of the evil liberal George Soros. It is true Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation owns both FOX Network and FOX News, so they create the "Liberal Media" that all the personalities on FOX News constantly harp about? FOX is responsible for The Simpsons, American Idol, House, Glee, American Dad and Family Guy, some of the most popular shows in television and also some of the most subversive to mainstream culture, certainly subversive to the right wing rhetoric of people like Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin, especially Glenn Beck! So tell me how it is Murdoch gets it both ways? Somebody get Glenn Beck on the phone because this looks like the biggest conspiracy of all!
I'll be writing a thank you card to Rupert Murdoch for supporting gay rights and representation in his shows, from Homer turning gay once, to making Adam Lambert a superstar and the gay-positive story lines on Glee, thanks old man! You sure have done a lot for us over the years!
The more important television moment of the week was on Glee; this weeks episode with Finn's mom marrying Kurt's dad was a real tear jerker. The wedding part was already great for those that love that kind of stuff, I know you're out there, but the real moment was when Finn asked Kurt, the gay character, to dance and said something about being his brother, I don't remember exactly, I was tearing up a little. In the storyline we see that Kurt is having a hard time being harassed by a closeted super beefy Football player, even suffering death threats, turns out the other male Glee members all tried fighting this character in the locker room while Finn backed away. Finn of course feels guilty and thus we get to the scene at the wedding where he accepts Kurt as his step brother and brother in a wider context as well as a big sorry for not defending you, aided by song and dance of course. Wow, Liberal Media at it's best!
For me this is important because it is suggesting that society is getting over homophobia, or at least putting the idea out there on one of the most popular shows on television. It's a big moment as I firmly believe art reflects life, it's never life reflecting art unless you are Madonna or Andy Warhol. Are things really changing for the younger generation?
When I was a teen, before the internet but in the age of the Walkman, it felt a little scary to be gay. Looking back I suppose nothing really violent ever happened to me but the threat was always there. I did not have the accepting parents the fictional Kurt on Glee does, my parents thought gays were all waiters and flight attendants and used words like "fruit" or "fag", even sometimes to me. High School was not really an escape, it was something one had to go thru until you could go live an actual life after grade 12. My gym locker got broken into once, all my stuff stolen and something with the word "faggot" scrawled all over the front. I got my dad to write me a bogus excuse note after that and then I just never showed up for PhysEd the next 2 months till the end of the year and nothing happened, the instructor passed me and luckily we didn't have to take PhysEd after Grade 10. Those school days were hard, people were going to notice that you had no interest in sports, no girlfriends and/or never talked about sex at all, I was more interested in music and fashion. There were likely whisper campaigns by the preppy girls, I would have torn one to shreds if it weren't for the fact that no one could tell one apart from the other, they all wore bobbed hair, up-turned collar shirts and pearls, which one of them started it, who the hell knows!?!? There was also the threat of violence at times, I remember my friends forming a semi-circle around me while I crouched down so some insane jock who was intent on beating me up at an off campus dance didn't see me, we all made it to the safety of some parents car somehow. It wasn't all bad though, the AIDS crisis was making people aware of the gays and in a sympathetic way. The modern way of thinking was to accept people, being a racist homophobe was not considered cool amongst a growing few. Although Jack Tripper was just pretending to be gay on Three's Company, network TV had the first gay character in its history on Dallas, and Boy George was telling Barbara Walters he was "bisexual", times were slowly changing.
By the time I was in my 30's we won most of the legal battles in Canada including the right to marry although it became a huge issue for our American friends, who are still trying even to just get into the military. Somehow Canadians followed a logical course of social change and law while the Ultra-Conservatives in the U.S. made it a wedge issue in their country. Isn't it just so funny that we found out recently Bush's campaign manager for the 2004 election came out as gay? Ken Mehlman was the inventor of using the gay-marriage issue to scare middle America into voting for Republicans, because they had to defend traditional marriage or the country would be destroyed by the gays. Reminds me of when I see former High School bullies in my local gay bar or at Pride Parades, it's happened a time or two.
So, for me this weeks Glee was a real milestone, I hope gay teens everywhere are feeling encouraged.
Which brings me to, how the hell does FOX Network coincide in the same universe as FOX News?!? The FOX News that constantly beats the drum of "Liberal" and "Mainstream Media" destroying America. I'm going to guess Bill O'Reilly would call the creators of Glee "pinheads" and not "patriots" and then there's Glenn Beck who thinks everyone is a puppet of the evil liberal George Soros. It is true Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation owns both FOX Network and FOX News, so they create the "Liberal Media" that all the personalities on FOX News constantly harp about? FOX is responsible for The Simpsons, American Idol, House, Glee, American Dad and Family Guy, some of the most popular shows in television and also some of the most subversive to mainstream culture, certainly subversive to the right wing rhetoric of people like Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin, especially Glenn Beck! So tell me how it is Murdoch gets it both ways? Somebody get Glenn Beck on the phone because this looks like the biggest conspiracy of all!
I'll be writing a thank you card to Rupert Murdoch for supporting gay rights and representation in his shows, from Homer turning gay once, to making Adam Lambert a superstar and the gay-positive story lines on Glee, thanks old man! You sure have done a lot for us over the years!
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
I Was A Breaking News Addict
When I was growing up people got news from the local Newspaper, Network News and maybe 60 Minutes, or 5th Estate if you lived in Canada. I will always remember the tiny black and white plastic television that sat near our kitchen table, it was fun watching the Brady Bunch while pretending to do homework but everybody had to be quiet when the News was on! So I was never completely unaware of the world growing up but people didn't care as much about news stories then it seemed. The main points of whatever issue of the day were probably well understood by most people through this medium but I don't remember the editorializing like we have today, everybody's entitled to an opinion now.
The morning of September 11th 2001 was just another Tuesday for me, the weather was dull and cool the day before and would be for another few days. My big plan for the day was to watch Dr. Phil on Oprah, who was going to be appearing every Tuesday to tell wacky women to get real, my other plans were to walk the dog, weather pending, and maybe do dishes. I didn't even watch news in the morning in those days, other than for weather because I live in Canada and local traffic. When I turned on the TV I was all uh-oh, Live News, smoking building that I recognize as the UN or World Trade Centre in New York. Wasn't thinking of the time difference, hadn't even had one coffee yet but I was worried people were in there burning to death. My husband was just going out the door and almost to the garage when I yelled out the back door "someone blew up a building in New York!"
I used to mainly watch Canadian Networks for news in those days but during 9/11 all our information was pretty much coming from American feeds anyway so why not just flip to CNN since they are probably there in New York right now?. And that's how it started. I watched CNN until probably 2am that day. I flipped over to the Golden Girls because I thought it would be light and take my mind off this stuff but it was the episode where Rose was dreaming about her dead husband and thinking it was real until Blanche had a heart to heart with her and helped her accept reality. That didn't help! I also had so many questions about the mysterious terrorists and if there were survivors and if Bush was going to start bombing somebody, did I need to start driving to the in-laws farm? That's when I became addicted to breaking news, it didn't help the Anthrax thing was just after that and who knew what Bush was planning after these attacks?
In those 9/11 days I was the only person I knew who watched The Daily Show and I thoroughly enjoyed his questioning and mockery of the relatively new phenomenon of Cable News, I see that period as when Cable News and Jon Stewart were becoming what we know them as now. Maybe I kept watching CNN to see if they were going to ask some hard questions when the Iraq War started. Well they didn't, but at least the state of comedy was reaching new highs. Watching from Canada many of us could see a bias toward the Bush administration on CNN and a disregard for actual journalism. FOX News was not allowed in Canada in those days but I could see what they were doing by watching The Daily Show and it all looked dangerous, like dangerous to standard democratic pratices such as journalism, everything was becoming opinion and personalities.
Of course FOX News led the wave of personality opinions, and still does, they say they are #1 in ratings but that is in the over 50 demographic, number one with old folks, doesn't seem like a sustainable plan to me. Even if they are popular or not maybe it's perceived that way by other Cable News outfits. This is probably why we see CNN trying to have personalities like Lou Dobbs or Rick Sanchez only to find out maybe they have too much personality to handle! It seems CNN is always trying to pander to some sort of popularity contest, now they're all about tweeting and having Jack Cafferty read out people's online comments. I thought I liked the Cafferty File segments, at least I did when he was slandering the Bush Administration and openly supporting Obama, now it's all about supporting the Tea Party, and maybe the reason is not with Jack himself but CNN trying to increase ratings. So they are not actual news but a ratings seeking business. Sure, news has always been a business but a business with standards, it used to be that way, it's important for the democracy everyone says they love so much, to report facts so we can make decisions about who we'd like to represent us.
Yesterday I saw Michael Moore on Keith Olberman's Countdown, sorry CNN I went looking for information elsewhere, turns out a guy called Wendell Potter who used to work for the Health Insurance industry is openly apologizing for an organized smear campaign against Moore and his movie Sicko. We also learn that big Insurance companies helped create a fake front group called Health Care America Now that CNN interviewed as a real entity. Yet not a word of this story on CNN today, News You Can Trust? I think it would cut into all the time they devote to gushing over the Tea Party. Now we know CNN was giving air time to a fake organization just to create drama I think they should make a retraction. They are all about drama though, I got really turned off by their blatant support of the Tea Party marches and later candidates for office, the smiling reports on Obama's falling approval numbers. It seemed like they were trying to write a script or at least force a prediction they could be right about. I remember all their predictions about incumbent rage, everyone is going to vote against incumbents, which didn't come true, at least in the numbers they were talking about. I was expecting Wolf Blitzer to start a countdown to the "Death of Hope", maybe they would have a countdown clock in the corner of the screen to the exact moment everybody lost their audacity of hope?
So I don't watch as much news anymore, or at least I'm trying, I sometimes still need to know how stories are being covered in the wide world of infotainment. I agree with Jon Stewart when he says if FOX is going to be right and MSNBC is going to be left then maybe CNN should try actual journalism. Somebody should, because Cable News is more about Royal Weddings than potential war between the Koreas, this is why so many of us would rather get information from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report or Bill Maher. It seems like these comedy guys do more research and explore more sides of a story than what we call news these days. When you study Art History and look at the French Revolution period one gets very bored of the fluffy pastel Baroque style of painting with fat ladies and cupid characters flying all over. What is considered among the most important works of that period is actually the satirical cartoons, it says a lot, people will tire of style, it is substance that they seek.
OK, gotta go now, CNN is interviewing Alaska's Tea Party backed Joe Miller, I think they're trying to cause more drama by supporting his fantasy that he won the election over Lisa Murkowski.
The morning of September 11th 2001 was just another Tuesday for me, the weather was dull and cool the day before and would be for another few days. My big plan for the day was to watch Dr. Phil on Oprah, who was going to be appearing every Tuesday to tell wacky women to get real, my other plans were to walk the dog, weather pending, and maybe do dishes. I didn't even watch news in the morning in those days, other than for weather because I live in Canada and local traffic. When I turned on the TV I was all uh-oh, Live News, smoking building that I recognize as the UN or World Trade Centre in New York. Wasn't thinking of the time difference, hadn't even had one coffee yet but I was worried people were in there burning to death. My husband was just going out the door and almost to the garage when I yelled out the back door "someone blew up a building in New York!"
I used to mainly watch Canadian Networks for news in those days but during 9/11 all our information was pretty much coming from American feeds anyway so why not just flip to CNN since they are probably there in New York right now?. And that's how it started. I watched CNN until probably 2am that day. I flipped over to the Golden Girls because I thought it would be light and take my mind off this stuff but it was the episode where Rose was dreaming about her dead husband and thinking it was real until Blanche had a heart to heart with her and helped her accept reality. That didn't help! I also had so many questions about the mysterious terrorists and if there were survivors and if Bush was going to start bombing somebody, did I need to start driving to the in-laws farm? That's when I became addicted to breaking news, it didn't help the Anthrax thing was just after that and who knew what Bush was planning after these attacks?
In those 9/11 days I was the only person I knew who watched The Daily Show and I thoroughly enjoyed his questioning and mockery of the relatively new phenomenon of Cable News, I see that period as when Cable News and Jon Stewart were becoming what we know them as now. Maybe I kept watching CNN to see if they were going to ask some hard questions when the Iraq War started. Well they didn't, but at least the state of comedy was reaching new highs. Watching from Canada many of us could see a bias toward the Bush administration on CNN and a disregard for actual journalism. FOX News was not allowed in Canada in those days but I could see what they were doing by watching The Daily Show and it all looked dangerous, like dangerous to standard democratic pratices such as journalism, everything was becoming opinion and personalities.
Of course FOX News led the wave of personality opinions, and still does, they say they are #1 in ratings but that is in the over 50 demographic, number one with old folks, doesn't seem like a sustainable plan to me. Even if they are popular or not maybe it's perceived that way by other Cable News outfits. This is probably why we see CNN trying to have personalities like Lou Dobbs or Rick Sanchez only to find out maybe they have too much personality to handle! It seems CNN is always trying to pander to some sort of popularity contest, now they're all about tweeting and having Jack Cafferty read out people's online comments. I thought I liked the Cafferty File segments, at least I did when he was slandering the Bush Administration and openly supporting Obama, now it's all about supporting the Tea Party, and maybe the reason is not with Jack himself but CNN trying to increase ratings. So they are not actual news but a ratings seeking business. Sure, news has always been a business but a business with standards, it used to be that way, it's important for the democracy everyone says they love so much, to report facts so we can make decisions about who we'd like to represent us.
Yesterday I saw Michael Moore on Keith Olberman's Countdown, sorry CNN I went looking for information elsewhere, turns out a guy called Wendell Potter who used to work for the Health Insurance industry is openly apologizing for an organized smear campaign against Moore and his movie Sicko. We also learn that big Insurance companies helped create a fake front group called Health Care America Now that CNN interviewed as a real entity. Yet not a word of this story on CNN today, News You Can Trust? I think it would cut into all the time they devote to gushing over the Tea Party. Now we know CNN was giving air time to a fake organization just to create drama I think they should make a retraction. They are all about drama though, I got really turned off by their blatant support of the Tea Party marches and later candidates for office, the smiling reports on Obama's falling approval numbers. It seemed like they were trying to write a script or at least force a prediction they could be right about. I remember all their predictions about incumbent rage, everyone is going to vote against incumbents, which didn't come true, at least in the numbers they were talking about. I was expecting Wolf Blitzer to start a countdown to the "Death of Hope", maybe they would have a countdown clock in the corner of the screen to the exact moment everybody lost their audacity of hope?
So I don't watch as much news anymore, or at least I'm trying, I sometimes still need to know how stories are being covered in the wide world of infotainment. I agree with Jon Stewart when he says if FOX is going to be right and MSNBC is going to be left then maybe CNN should try actual journalism. Somebody should, because Cable News is more about Royal Weddings than potential war between the Koreas, this is why so many of us would rather get information from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report or Bill Maher. It seems like these comedy guys do more research and explore more sides of a story than what we call news these days. When you study Art History and look at the French Revolution period one gets very bored of the fluffy pastel Baroque style of painting with fat ladies and cupid characters flying all over. What is considered among the most important works of that period is actually the satirical cartoons, it says a lot, people will tire of style, it is substance that they seek.
OK, gotta go now, CNN is interviewing Alaska's Tea Party backed Joe Miller, I think they're trying to cause more drama by supporting his fantasy that he won the election over Lisa Murkowski.
Monday, November 22, 2010
President of the United States of Internet
I am really getting Palin fatigue these days. They are everywhere in the "lamestream media"; isn't it funny that Sarah Palin criticizes the media any chance she gets from her paid chair on FOX News but will appear on Network TV dancing contests and Barbara Walters interviews? My guess is that she doesn't despise this kind of media, just the media that might ask her a reasonable question like, what do you read? Why didn't she just say the real America doesn't read, at least it would have been honest? Meet The Press was talking a little about the Palin phenomenon yesterday and the question was posed, what does Washington think of this Palin takeover of the media? Well they have no idea, was the answer. They meant both Democrats and Republicans, they are too busy thinking about the next fight to even notice this stuff. Well, my friends, that's the essence of politicians, on one hand it's probably good they don't have time for continuing dance dramas on TV, and on the other it will be to their chagrin.
Last week we witnessed the Palin baby bears lash out on facebook over criticism of Palin's Alaska. It's all too juvenile to go over the details, but let's just say 16 year old Willow Palin called a classmate a "faggot" online. While I don't really care what foul mouthed little kids say, it does send up a red flag. Reading public online comments on this story, many people said who cares? Didn't we all use slurs at this age? No, I didn't and nor did my friends. Maybe I grew up in a different time, the freewheeling 80's? I kid of course, the Reagan years, the age of AIDS and a big recession to boot, the times were pretty conservative actually. My parents' generation used ethnic slurs and most of us at that time were trying to define ourselves against that, also my giant High School was the living example of the Canadian dream of Multiculturalism. Many of my friends came from far and wide, just like our anthem says, and certainly not all white, so no, my generation was maybe the first to try tolerance. I certainly remember jock types calling me a "faggot", it strikes fear into my heart to this day; they are fighting words or rather words to beat you up by. I believe the f word is as negative to homosexuals as the n word is to African Americans, so I do not take it lightly. I worry that a younger generation throws around these words without thought. They know it's bad and potentially hurtful and it's their only weapon when they don't have actual words or thoughts. If you look at Willow's tweet she used the wrong "your", she actually meant "you're" as in you are such a faggot. Hmmm somewhere along the line kids cannot summon up enough Grade school grammar to even fire off an insult correctly. Nor can they put together an argument. The boy who criticized Palin's Alaska simply said the show is failing, hummph not really a criticism just a jab. Young man, you should say where and how it is failing, but I guess you can't on twitter as there are not enough characters available. So we enter a world where all arguments must be settled in a few sentences? Enter Sarah Palin's 2012 strategy, there is no substance, no policy, only talking points and sound bites. Remember when George Bush didn't even know what the internet was? Maybe he called it "the interweb" that's how I remember it anyway, I long for those days! Sarah may very well win the next election because she is becoming the Queen of the TwitterSphere and perhaps all other media as well. I think I see her strategy now: send out tweets, appear on fake reality shows that you have full editorial control over, get the kids involved too, let the family say whatever it wants and the "Lamestream media" will react over it. It's all about Mass Distraction; while everyone is worried about what Willow said, nobody will notice who Sarah is actually palling around with on FOX News and making millions of dollars. It will be a very sad day when the Americans forgo their first Black President over the first President of the Internet. She knows it's what the public want, the public want an American Idol election, a reality show vote. Sarah Palin is now a reality show, the problem with reality TV though is that very little of it is actually real.
Last week we witnessed the Palin baby bears lash out on facebook over criticism of Palin's Alaska. It's all too juvenile to go over the details, but let's just say 16 year old Willow Palin called a classmate a "faggot" online. While I don't really care what foul mouthed little kids say, it does send up a red flag. Reading public online comments on this story, many people said who cares? Didn't we all use slurs at this age? No, I didn't and nor did my friends. Maybe I grew up in a different time, the freewheeling 80's? I kid of course, the Reagan years, the age of AIDS and a big recession to boot, the times were pretty conservative actually. My parents' generation used ethnic slurs and most of us at that time were trying to define ourselves against that, also my giant High School was the living example of the Canadian dream of Multiculturalism. Many of my friends came from far and wide, just like our anthem says, and certainly not all white, so no, my generation was maybe the first to try tolerance. I certainly remember jock types calling me a "faggot", it strikes fear into my heart to this day; they are fighting words or rather words to beat you up by. I believe the f word is as negative to homosexuals as the n word is to African Americans, so I do not take it lightly. I worry that a younger generation throws around these words without thought. They know it's bad and potentially hurtful and it's their only weapon when they don't have actual words or thoughts. If you look at Willow's tweet she used the wrong "your", she actually meant "you're" as in you are such a faggot. Hmmm somewhere along the line kids cannot summon up enough Grade school grammar to even fire off an insult correctly. Nor can they put together an argument. The boy who criticized Palin's Alaska simply said the show is failing, hummph not really a criticism just a jab. Young man, you should say where and how it is failing, but I guess you can't on twitter as there are not enough characters available. So we enter a world where all arguments must be settled in a few sentences? Enter Sarah Palin's 2012 strategy, there is no substance, no policy, only talking points and sound bites. Remember when George Bush didn't even know what the internet was? Maybe he called it "the interweb" that's how I remember it anyway, I long for those days! Sarah may very well win the next election because she is becoming the Queen of the TwitterSphere and perhaps all other media as well. I think I see her strategy now: send out tweets, appear on fake reality shows that you have full editorial control over, get the kids involved too, let the family say whatever it wants and the "Lamestream media" will react over it. It's all about Mass Distraction; while everyone is worried about what Willow said, nobody will notice who Sarah is actually palling around with on FOX News and making millions of dollars. It will be a very sad day when the Americans forgo their first Black President over the first President of the Internet. She knows it's what the public want, the public want an American Idol election, a reality show vote. Sarah Palin is now a reality show, the problem with reality TV though is that very little of it is actually real.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Who am I?
It would seem the new pass time of our culture is self-expression via the internet. I have been in the business of self-expression for some time as an artist and graduate of Art College some time ago. That's not all though, we are all many things, not just what we chose as a career, that's the beauty of life.
The title of this blog "Beautiful World" comes from a great old DEVO song, one of my favourite bands to this day. There's a lot of truth to what they said "It's a beautiful world we live in, a sweet romantic place, beautiful people everywhere, the way they show they care,... they way they comb their hair." I know! Just have a look at TMZ these days! Of course DEVO was being sarcastic, a beautiful world for you but not for me as the last lines of the song go. I remember the video ending with scenes of riots and atomic bombs and the stop animation rose growing from bud to full bloom to total decay. OK, I'm not that morose, that kind of thinking did inform my adolescence though. There is sarcastic truth to it, it may be a beautiful world for you but it is not for everyone. I like to think I give both sides of a story their fair chance, and in this insanely polarized world of made up news and political dog fighting I don't think rationality has a chance anymore. My dad was pretty good at pointing out inconsistencies in logic (or the Bible) TV shows and movies. I remember going to see ET the Extraterrestrial with him and he commented "if ET could make all the kids bicycles fly why didn't he just fly up to the spaceship?" I know, I try to carry this tradition of ruining movies for people to this day. I learned to sharpen my critical thinking skills in Art College, what do you think we do? finger paint all day? No, studying the art process involves much more, criticizing other works, and your own, learning self censorship, self editing was the popular term, knowing your influences and others, and most of all respect, something our society lacks. Self respect, respect for others, respect for ideas and history and the ability to put that into a perspective that makes sense personally. Does society practice any of this anymore? To me it looks like people spout any disgusting shit they want because it will gain attention or money and I'm looking at the right-wing personalties out there when I say this, and a little at some of the younger generation, who apparently have nothing better to do than bully others online, because they haven't expanded their minds since Grade 3?
Yeah, this stuff makes me worry a little about our world, where we are going, can people even think for themselves anymore? This is why I have chosen to Blog.
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