Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Latest Media Tongue Bath

3 Comments

Love has no pride:

The thought that love has no pride is an old one. Indeed, it has become something of a cliché. Yet it is achieved the status of cliché by virtue of the truth in it.

CBS’s venerable 60 Minutes show brought us an example of the cliché in action over the weekend. 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft is smitten with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He put his professional skills aside to do public relations for Obama and Clinton in their joint interview with him for the show.

A serious journalist might have tried to learn something on the issues of the day from them. Not Kroft. Lest there be any misunderstanding, Kroft thrust his tongue down their throats as fast as he could and kept it there for the duration.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say they have no shame.

I guess we have to elect Republicans if we want to get real journalism.

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

An Idiotic Gun Buyback

5 Comments

…turns into a gun show:

Police stood in awe as gun enthusiasts and collectors waved wads of cash for the guns being held by those standing in line for the buyback program.

People that had arrived to trade in their weapons for $100 or $200 BuyBack gift cards($100 for handguns, shotguns and rifles, and $200 for assault weapons) soon realized that gun collectors were there and paying top dollar for collectible firearms. So, as the line for the chump cards got longer and longer people began to jump ship and head over to the dealers.

John Diaz, Seattle’s Police Chief, wasn’t pleased with the turn of events, stating “I’d prefer they wouldn’t sell them,” but admitted it’s perfectly legal for private individuals to buy and sell guns, FOR NOW.

For now.

Hilarious. And yes, I know that “idiotic gun buyback” is redundant.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Just to compound the idiocy, a commenter points out:

What a deal. Way better deal than the pawn shop. You can report your gun stolen. Then bring it in for buy back and get your gift card (no questions asked, right?). Then the police return it to you. What a brilliant use of Seattle’s money.

Brilliant indeed.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Skeet Shooting

8 Comments

I’d pay money to watch this:

“If he is a skeet shooter, why have we not heard of this? Why have we not seen photos? Why hasn’t he referenced this at any point in time?” Blackburn said Monday on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront.”

“I tell you what I do think,” she later added. “I think he should invite me to Camp David, and I’ll go skeet shooting with him and I bet I’ll beat him.”

Everyone out there who believes that Barack Obama shoots skeet, raise your hands.

Gee, I don’t feel much of a breeze from all the uplifted arms.

Bob Beckel asked a stupid (or misleading) question on The Five yesterday. “If the president wants to demonize gun owners, why is he saying he’s a likes to shoot guns?”

He wants to demonize people who use politically incorrect guns. You don’t shoot skeet with AR-15s (well, you could, but I don’t think it’s allowed in competition). He’s pretending he’s one of us (see, I like to shoot stuff, too!), while continuing the stupid attack on “assault weapons” (“I can have fund and, per Joe Biden, defend myself with a shotgun. That’s all that anyone should “need”).

Later, after we’re disarmed of the most militarily effective weapons, they’ll come after the shotguns. They play the long game.

[Update a while later]

Sadly, this seems relevant.

Trains Run On Time

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Moral Disarmament

3 Comments

How our kids are being indoctrinated against the Constitution:

In a child’s imagination, a thumb and forefinger make a handy play gun. Some adults, however, see a fully cocked finger and their imaginations run wild. Maybe they imagine today’s finger-pointer coming back one day as a homicidal maniac and pointing a real gun at them. Maybe they see a future NRA member — another threat to their dream of a gun-free world. It’s obvious they don’t see a cop protecting them from robbers, or a soldier from our country’s enemies.

Punishing kids for finger guns has nothing to do with school safety; they know the difference between a finger and a gun as well as adults do. It has everything to do with “moral disarmament.”

What’s more, the idea of using schools as conditioning grounds is not new. Thomas Sowell discusses it at length in his 2009 book “Intellectuals and Society.” After the horrors of World War I, intellectuals of the time determined that “war” and “weapons,” not other nations, were the real enemies. They promoted both military disarmament and “disarming of the mind.”

And didn’t that work out well.

More and more, sending kids to public school seems to constitute child abuse.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Space History

Twenty-Seven Years

50 Comments

That’s how long ago was the beginning of the end for the Shuttle, not even five years after it first flew. Eleven years ago, I recalled the event:

I was sitting in a meeting at the Rockwell Space Transportation Systems Division in Downey, California. It was a status review meeting for a contract on which I was working, called the Space Transportation Architecture Study. It was a joint NASA/USAF contract, and its ostensible purpose was to determine what kind of new launch systems should replace or complement the Space Shuttle. Its real purpose was to try to get the Air Force and NASA Marshall to learn how to play together nicely and stop squabbling over turf and vehicle designs (it failed).

It was a large meeting, with many people in attendance from El Segundo and Colorado Springs (Air Force) and Houston, Huntsville and the Cape (NASA) as well as many Rockwell attendees.

As I sat there, waiting for the meeting to begin, one of my colleagues came running into the room, his face white as a freshly-bleached bedsheet. He leaned over and told me and others, in an insistent sotto voce, “I just saw the Challenger blow up.”

We stared at him in momentary disbelief.

“I’m serious. I just came from the mission control center. It just exploded about a minute after launch.”

One could actually see the news travel across the large meeting room as expressions of early-morning torpor transformed into incredulity and shock. More than most people, even with no more information than the above, we understood the implications. While there was speculation in the media all morning that the crew might be saved, we knew instantly that they were lost. We knew also that we had lost a quarter of the Shuttle fleet, with a replacement cost of a couple billion dollars and several years, and that there would be no flights for a long time, until we understood what had happened.

The ironic purpose of our meeting became at once more significant and utterly meaningless. Most of the NASA people immediately made arrangements to fly back to Houston, Huntsville and the Cape, and we held the session without them, in a perfunctory manner.

This was one of those events, like the more recent one in September, that is indelibly etched into memory–where you were, what you were doing, what you were feeling. I’m curious about any inputs from others, either in comments here or email.

Oh, and I should note that it’s an easy date to remember for me–it was (and remains still) the anniversary of my date of birth…

So today, I start another trip around the sun, and space policy remains a mess.

And it’s not just today. The Apollo 1 fire happened the day before my twelfth birthday. And Columbia was lost four days after my forty eighth. I have no trouble remembering any of these anniversaries.