Great news, Mr. President! The liberal governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, has been identified as a client of a prostitution ring. As we all know, the mainstream media is obsessed with sex and will cover nothing else for weeks. That whole deal where you vetoed the bill that would have outlawed waterboarding – you know, torture – thus placing you in the same category as the terrorists we’re fighting, won’t see the light of the front page ever again.
Pop the bubbly!
The Indignant Citizen
Monday, March 10, 2008
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Please Go Away, Jim Oberweis
Who’s laughing now, Jimmy?
Hey Jim Oberweis, are you getting the message yet that voters in Illinois would prefer if you fucked off? Has it occurred to you yet that you’ve essentially spent $9 million to pay for research that indicates voters
in this state want you to go off to your hateful, racist corner and seriously diddle yourself? You’re oh for six, man. Zero for six. A big, fucking doughnut hole for six. Maybe come Nov. 3 you should think about sacrificing a live chicken? I guess there’s something to be said for sticking to your principles, such as they are, but Jesus, Jim, even David Duke had the good sense to know when to quit. Then again, Duke managed to win an election. Once. I’m not sure if that’s more of an indictment of the voters in Louisiana’s 81st District (who in fairness had just that one lapse – I mean, it was the 80s. . . .) or of you for being a six-time loser who refuses to accept the will of the people.
Jim, this is Illinois. You’ve tried six times to buy elections. If you were going to succeed you would have by now. It’s not like the electorate here isn’t predisposed to being bought off or bamboozled by misleading political ads. People just don’t like you, OK? They … don’t … like … you. If there was a box on the ballot next to “Just Not Jim Oberweis,” a majority of voters would check it.
The writing is on the wall, and probably a few other places. You’re not gonna win. So go on, now. Git. Buh bye. See ya. Adios. (Oops, that last one is Spanish for “goodbye,” in case one of your ice cream store employees hasn’t clued you in.)
I know you’re still on the ballot for the general election. I know that even though Democrat Bill Foster whupped you 53% to 47% in a district that Republican waterboy Dennis Hastert owned for years, we’re probably going to have to listen to you spew your malevolent rhetoric at least once more. But it’s going to be a tough year to peddle hate, Jim. We’ve had it shoved down our throats for going on seven years, now. People are tired of being told who to hate and why. They prefer to figure those things out on their own. And based on this weekend’s result, I’d say they’re doing OK.
The Indignant Citizen
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Time to Mow the Lawn
It appears that reports of Hillary Clinton’s political death have been exaggerated. Then again, what’s new?
As of 10:40 or so Tuesday night in Chicago, Clinton was leading Barack Obama in the polls in both Texas and Ohio, the two big prizes delegate-wise in today’s four-state primary contest. She and Obama split two appetizer states, with Rhode Island going to Clinton and Vermont to Obama.
It’s remarkable how often the mainstream press has written off the Clintons over the past 16 years. And yet … here they still are. The only example that’s of interest for our purposes is the most recent one, in which most political pundits have spoken of nothing else for the past two weeks other than Obama’s 11 primary wins in a row and how Clinton would have to drop out if she didn’t win Texas and Ohio. Now guess what: It appears Obama’s win streak reached 12 (with the calling of Vermont for him earlier in the night) and stopped there. And Clinton may well have won Texas and Ohio. In fact, the New York Times has called Ohio for Clinton, as of 10:47 p.m.
To hear the papers and the TV news tell it recently, Obama had this thing wrapped up. Now it appears the mainstream media got it wrong again.
Today was not journalism’s finest day in my eyes. I mean, it wasn’t a great day on a number of levels, starting with my experience on public transit this morning, during which I greeted no fewer than five people with a nod and a “Good morning,” only to have it returned with a blank stare and a turn-away or a silent pass-by in each case.
The I read this story in the Times, and figured maybe it was just time to give up on journalism. The worst part isn’t this story about the discovery of the fraud; no, the worst part is reading the book review from Feb. 26 and the fawning, credulous profile of the fraudster author published by the Times on Feb. 28.
In the profile in particular there were so many opportunities for the reporter to fact-check this story, to attempt to verify basic information—such as whether the author graduated from the University of Oregon, as she claimed—and yet in every instance the reporter failed to do so. It was disheartening.
Journalism is pissing itself into irrelevance. I mean, what are we doing? Where are we adding value to people’s lives? I mean, there are journalists doing good work every day; all one has to do is visit www.gangrey.com to see examples of it. But that good work just seems to be overwhelmed by a constant avalanche of stupidity and vanity shitting down on us from all levels of our profession. I get so depressed thinking about it sometimes, about the coiffed ass-clowns plying their trade on local and national TV, and the lazy hacks using up oxygen and ink at local newspapers. I mean, what’s the point of it all? So much of it is so obviously irrelevant, it’s no wonder readers regard the news profession with the same sad pity bordering on outright hostility that they do lawyers, politicians and used-car salesmen.
I always tell people the same story whenever a conversation turns to the pedantic content of local newspapers. This is what happens, I say, when businesspeople try to run news operations. They bring in focus groups, and the focus groups give feedback like, “I don’t have time to read your paper. I start to, but then I have to go mow the lawn.” The business school response is, “We have to make the stories shorter, or add more graphics, because our readers have too much to do. We need to give them only the information they need, and not waste their time.”
I guess when you gear school curriculum around making sure kids can score highly on standardized tests dreamed up by dullards in Iowa (note I did not say Iowa dullards, thus avoiding the implication that all Iowans are dullards), it shouldn’t be a surprise that critical thinking gets left out as a skill that’s taught. The result, quite naturally, is a group of business managers who respond to focus group comments like “I don’t have time to read the paper” with “We have to make the paper fit into people’s short attention spans.”
The more intelligent, and I think useful, question to ask there is, why is someone thinking about mowing the lawn not long after starting to read the paper? Could it be the story is not engaging in any way, or interesting? Could it be the person has already absorbed all of the most basic information in connection with whatever issue the story is covering on the evening news the night before and, finding nothing new—no analysis or context—in the paper, has decided to do something else?
I struggle with this in my own job. Is our little band of journalists providing anything of use to our readers, or are we just regurgitating cold facts that have already been absorbed? Are we writing just to write, or are we informing people?
Is it too late for journalism, or can it be saved somehow? Today I’m depressed, and I see no hope. I see mainstream journalism deteriorating into rumor mongering in an attempt to stay “hip” and “relevant,” or collapsing under the weight of its own bombast and self-importance.
With luck, the sun will come out tomorrow, and my mood will improve, and with it my outlook on my chosen profession.
The Indignant Citizen
As of 10:40 or so Tuesday night in Chicago, Clinton was leading Barack Obama in the polls in both Texas and Ohio, the two big prizes delegate-wise in today’s four-state primary contest. She and Obama split two appetizer states, with Rhode Island going to Clinton and Vermont to Obama.
It’s remarkable how often the mainstream press has written off the Clintons over the past 16 years. And yet … here they still are. The only example that’s of interest for our purposes is the most recent one, in which most political pundits have spoken of nothing else for the past two weeks other than Obama’s 11 primary wins in a row and how Clinton would have to drop out if she didn’t win Texas and Ohio. Now guess what: It appears Obama’s win streak reached 12 (with the calling of Vermont for him earlier in the night) and stopped there. And Clinton may well have won Texas and Ohio. In fact, the New York Times has called Ohio for Clinton, as of 10:47 p.m.
To hear the papers and the TV news tell it recently, Obama had this thing wrapped up. Now it appears the mainstream media got it wrong again.
Today was not journalism’s finest day in my eyes. I mean, it wasn’t a great day on a number of levels, starting with my experience on public transit this morning, during which I greeted no fewer than five people with a nod and a “Good morning,” only to have it returned with a blank stare and a turn-away or a silent pass-by in each case.
The I read this story in the Times, and figured maybe it was just time to give up on journalism. The worst part isn’t this story about the discovery of the fraud; no, the worst part is reading the book review from Feb. 26 and the fawning, credulous profile of the fraudster author published by the Times on Feb. 28.
In the profile in particular there were so many opportunities for the reporter to fact-check this story, to attempt to verify basic information—such as whether the author graduated from the University of Oregon, as she claimed—and yet in every instance the reporter failed to do so. It was disheartening.
Journalism is pissing itself into irrelevance. I mean, what are we doing? Where are we adding value to people’s lives? I mean, there are journalists doing good work every day; all one has to do is visit www.gangrey.com to see examples of it. But that good work just seems to be overwhelmed by a constant avalanche of stupidity and vanity shitting down on us from all levels of our profession. I get so depressed thinking about it sometimes, about the coiffed ass-clowns plying their trade on local and national TV, and the lazy hacks using up oxygen and ink at local newspapers. I mean, what’s the point of it all? So much of it is so obviously irrelevant, it’s no wonder readers regard the news profession with the same sad pity bordering on outright hostility that they do lawyers, politicians and used-car salesmen.
I always tell people the same story whenever a conversation turns to the pedantic content of local newspapers. This is what happens, I say, when businesspeople try to run news operations. They bring in focus groups, and the focus groups give feedback like, “I don’t have time to read your paper. I start to, but then I have to go mow the lawn.” The business school response is, “We have to make the stories shorter, or add more graphics, because our readers have too much to do. We need to give them only the information they need, and not waste their time.”
I guess when you gear school curriculum around making sure kids can score highly on standardized tests dreamed up by dullards in Iowa (note I did not say Iowa dullards, thus avoiding the implication that all Iowans are dullards), it shouldn’t be a surprise that critical thinking gets left out as a skill that’s taught. The result, quite naturally, is a group of business managers who respond to focus group comments like “I don’t have time to read the paper” with “We have to make the paper fit into people’s short attention spans.”
The more intelligent, and I think useful, question to ask there is, why is someone thinking about mowing the lawn not long after starting to read the paper? Could it be the story is not engaging in any way, or interesting? Could it be the person has already absorbed all of the most basic information in connection with whatever issue the story is covering on the evening news the night before and, finding nothing new—no analysis or context—in the paper, has decided to do something else?
I struggle with this in my own job. Is our little band of journalists providing anything of use to our readers, or are we just regurgitating cold facts that have already been absorbed? Are we writing just to write, or are we informing people?
Is it too late for journalism, or can it be saved somehow? Today I’m depressed, and I see no hope. I see mainstream journalism deteriorating into rumor mongering in an attempt to stay “hip” and “relevant,” or collapsing under the weight of its own bombast and self-importance.
With luck, the sun will come out tomorrow, and my mood will improve, and with it my outlook on my chosen profession.
The Indignant Citizen
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