Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Small Words, Lame Thoughts

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Betsy Woodruff made a major sacrifice, and read the governator’s 600-page autobio so we wouldn’t have to:

…here’s the CliffsNotes: Arnold Schwarzenegger started exercising a bunch, bonked a lot of gorgeous women, won a ton of prizes for slowly flexing his chiseled bod to background music, made piles of cash by beating up people in movies, met a boatload of famous people, married a Kennedy, got to be governor and was totally awesome at it, kind of buggered up his family dynamic by having a love child and then not telling his wife for 14 years, and then made a nice list of life tips so you can be an all-American success story too.

Of course, you still might want to read this book, especially if you want to hear all about the intricacies of the European bodybuilding circuit in the 1960s or Maria Shriver’s approach to reupholstery. And if you also happen to like pictures of preposterously pectoralled menfolk in Speedos but for whatever reason have trouble finding them on the Internet, you should boogie on down to your local Barnes and Noble posthaste for a copy of your new favorite book.

Her review is much more entertaining than I can imagine the book is.

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

A Deadly Outbreak Of Scrutiny

And the president’s team can’t contain it:

While Smith and others work around the clock to quarantine the virus, Axlerod and his team remain deep beneath the White House in a specially constructed containment laboratory, racing to find a cure before it has a chance to wipe out Washington as we know it. Although all their experiments have thus far proven unsuccessful, Axlerod refuses to concede.

“If I’ve learned anything in this job, it’s that hope is a strategy,” he said, wiping flopsweat from his combover.

“For instance, maybe Joe Biden will find a cure Wednesday night,” he added.

Hope springs eternal.

Business, Media Criticism, Space

More On The SpaceX Anomaly

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…from Alan Boyle. I don’t think this is quite right, though:

What caused the engine’s sudden pressure release, which was apparently strong enough to blow off the fairing?

I think this is a misstatement of the issue. I could be wrong, because we’re still awaiting clarification from SpaceX, but my understanding is that when they shut the engine down, and there was no pressure field coming from the nozzle, the differential pressure resulting from Max Q resulted in it “imploding” inward and breaking off (and perhaps taking the nozzle with it, but that’s less clear). All that is clear is that SpaceX claims that the powerhead itself wasn’t damaged, because they continued to receive telemetry from it.

I should note that if this is the case, it eliminates any earlier concerns about the upper-stage engine causing a catastrophic failure, though questions remain about about why Orbcomm is in the wrong orbit. This is clearly a second-stage issue.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here’s the current story from Joe Pappalardo at Popular Mechanics. I’ll probably be elaborating on it after getting more info from SpaceX.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

The Midsummer Night’s Dream

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Is it the end, after four and a half long years, and not just a midsummer night?

You may remember the plot. Titania, queen of the fairies, has been placed under a spell by Oberon with the help of the mischievous Puck. It has caused her to fall in love with a cloddish man named Bottom, who has in turn been placed under a spell that has turned his head into that of an ass. Later on she receives the antidote that magically undoes the spell. Looking at the creature she formerly adored, she is now not only repelled, she wonders how it was that she could have ever been so thoroughly fooled:

TITANIA: My Oberon! what visions have I seen! Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.

OBERON: There lies your love.

TITANIA: How came these things to pass? O, how mine eyes do loathe his visage now!

We in this country have had many kinds of presidents, good and bad, beloved and detested. But have we ever before had a president whose career and persona have been based to such an enormous extent on a carefully constructed narrative that in turn rests on weaving a spell over a charmed public? And was the antidote finally administered last Wednesday night, at the hands of that not-so-very-Puckish guy, Mitt Romney?

Let’s hope so. For those of us never bought in, it’s been a long nightmare.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Ruh Roh

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GM may yet have to go through a real bankruptcy:

Well, what do you know, the Obama Administration didn’t reveal all the details to the judge. Is anyone surprised that this gang of Chicago thugs decided that the judge didn’t need to know the sweetheart deal that would save their union buddies?

It sounds like Judge Gerber is ready to reopen the whole thing, essentially forcing GM into a real bankruptcy, including having to pay back the $27 billion to the Treasury… which, given that they only have about $30 billion on hand, could spell the end of GM.

Or at least the end of the sweetheart deal.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Journalistic Hate Speech

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…from Lara Logan:

“There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan said. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,” she added sarcastically. “It’s such nonsense!”

Logan stepped way out of the “objective,” journalistic role. The audience was riveted as she told of plowing through reams of documents, and interviewing John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a Taliban commander trained by al-Qaida. The Taliban and al-Qaida are teaming up and recruiting new terrorists to do us deadly harm, she reports.

She made a passionate case that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war. We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past: “You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.”

There’s an old saying that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. Guess that a brutal gang rape can have the same effect.

But hey, it’s not the Muslims’ fault they’re so misogynistic and rapey and stuff. It’s just the way they were raised. We have to have sympathy for them.

Seriously, this should be serious debate fodder for Romney, in both debates, but particularly the final one.