Category Archives: Media Criticism

Don’t Just Do Something

Stand there. My thoughts on yesterday’s tragic events, and the predictable reactions to them.

[Update a few minutes later]

“You can almost hear the disappointment on the left that he was a pot head rather than a Tea Partyer.”

“Almost hear” it? Hell, it’s palpable.

[Update later morning]

Two sicknesses on display on Arizona.

[Update a few minutes later]

A colossal failure of journalism. In other words, business as usual.

[Update a couple minutes later]

In defense of inflamed rhetoric:

For as long as I’ve been alive, crosshairs and bull’s-eyes have been an accepted part of the graphical lexicon when it comes to political debates. Such “inflammatory” words as targeting, attacking, destroying, blasting, crushing, burying, knee-capping, and others have similarly guided political thought and action. Not once have the use of these images or words tempted me or anybody else I know to kill. I’ve listened to, read—and even written!—vicious attacks on government without reaching for my gun. I’ve even gotten angry, for goodness’ sake, without coming close to assassinating a politician or a judge.

From what I can tell, I’m not an outlier. Only the tiniest handful of people—most of whom are already behind bars, in psychiatric institutions, or on psycho-meds—can be driven to kill by political whispers or shouts. Asking us to forever hold our tongues lest we awake their deeper demons infantilizes and neuters us and makes politicians no safer.

Well, actually, it may make politicians somewhat safer, but I’m not sure that the safety of politicians should be the highest priority goal. Partly because infantilizing and neutering us is what it’s all about for many politicians and their media enablers.

The “Highjackers Of Islam”

Who are they, really?

For years, we’ve heard how the peaceful religion of Islam has been hijacked by extremists.

What if it’s the other way around? Worse, what if the peaceful hijackers are losing their bid to take over the religion?

We need to nurture the apostates, but we can’t pretend they aren’t apostates. We are at war with Islam, whether we like it or not. Or to put it another way, we may not be interested in Islam, but Islam is definitely interested in us. And Israel has absolutely nothing to do with it, other than being on the front lines in the war.

An NPR Head Rolls

This shouldn’t be enough to save them, though:

The Board has expressed confidence in Vivian Schiller’s leadership going forward. She accepted responsibility as CEO and cooperated fully with the review process. The Board, however, expressed concern over her role in the termination process and has voted that she will not receive a 2010 bonus.

NPR also announced that Ellen Weiss, Senior Vice-President for News, has resigned.

As noted at the post, she was treated a lot better than Juan Williams was.

And NPR should still be defunded. This incident wasn’t a reason, but it will serve as a good excuse to do what should have been done long ago on principle.

Shut Up And Sell Books

While there are some fundamental structural reasons for book stores to be failing, I’m sure that being politically stupid didn’t help Borders. It’s not a great business model to go out of your way to alienate many of your customers. It’s actually the same problem that much of the media has.

I have to say, though, that the downfall of the chain does sadden me, for nostalgic reaons. I knew Borders when no one had ever heard of it, when it was just the best book store in Ann Arbor three decades ago, before it became a chain. I wonder if the original one (actually, the original one moved into Jacobsons department store after it went under) in Ann Arbor will survive?

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Debunked:

There is a lot of plastic trash floating in the Pacific Ocean, but claims that the “Great Garbage Patch” between California and Japan is twice the size of Texas are grossly exaggerated, according to an analysis by an Oregon State University scientist.

I’m shocked, shocked that an environmental issue has been overhyped by the media. This part had me scratching my head, though:

Calculations show that the amount of energy it would take to remove plastics from the ocean is roughly 250 times the mass of the plastic itself;

Huh? If they’re talking about the mass equivalence of the energy in an Einsteinian sense, that’s obviously nonsense, but I’m sure that’s not what they mean. But what do they mean?

The Christaphobia

of Hollywood and the elitist left:

Because those craaaazy red states are the places where you’re likely to find fundies, and the Westboro church is just the natural extrapolation of the red-state fundie ideas, right? RED STATE! OOHGABOOGA! Think of it: horror movies often have guys who A) kidnap victims, B) saw off their heads, and C) film it all for their own enjoyment. Oh, if only there really was a group of religious extremists who did these all things – it would give a movie a certain horrible topicality you just don’t get with unkillable bogeymen. But Smith would never do a movie about Al Qaeda in, say, a city in a blue state. No one would produce it; no one would distribute it. But a movie that links the Westboro church to something inherent in the ideological distinction of a “red state” will get you backslaps from all the right-thinking people. It’s lazy. It’s super-lazy.

A couple points. First, this is just more slander of Christians while ignoring the fact that Fred Phelps and his fellow vile cretinous loony tunes are Democrats. But as with Timothy McVeigh, they never let reality get in the way of an urban myth when they see an opportunity to smear conservatives and Christians.

Second, they’re both Christophobes and Islamaphobes. They’re Christaphobes in the same sense that they (projecting) accuse others of being “Islamaphobes,” that is, they have an irrational fear of Christians (at least as far as their remaining hale and hearty goes, though perhaps their fear that Christians will help undo the state that they worship is genuine). On the other hand, while those they call “Islamaphobes” have a quite reasonable concern about a foreign totalitarian ideology making a foothold in our own culture, the leftist elites have a simple and genuine fear of actual violence from Muslims (though they rarely state it explicitly), were they to ever give them the same treatment that they fearlessly mete out to peace-loving Christians (and conservatives) every day.