Media Criticism

Not Must-See TV

But it’s worth a listen. Heck, I even turned Greta down for it.

Yes, Mickey, that is damning it with faint praise, but it’s what happened to be on at the time that I linked to it from Glenn’s site. I would have turned down Hannity and Colmes, too, and probably O’Reilly, unless he had some really interesting guest on (a rare event). But not Brit Hume.

Here’s the problem. Political commentary doesn’t make for compelling video, even if it offers the entertainment of watching human robots (a combination of natural ability, and many frozen frames as the video buffer fills up). Even on high-bandwidth media (i.e., my satellite dish), talking heads are talking heads, and most of the time I rarely watch, but listen to it as I’m doing things elsewhere in the house. Well, unless Lauri Dhue, or Megyn Kendall, or various other newsbabes come on. Then, for some strange reason, I feel compelled to actually come into the room to view the screen. I’ve no idea why, but perhaps Robert Wright does.

But I thought the conversation was interesting, and much easier on the ears than the shout shows, and more intelligent than most of them as well. So one suggestion might be to bag the video, because it really is very little value added, and do bloggingmouths.radio instead. Bandwidth doesn’t yet grow on trees, and sticking with audio would open up the audience to the dialup crowd, and allow easier storage of shows, both for users and the server, with reduced bandwidth charges for all.

But even then, the question is, what is the value of listening to guys (and gals) talk, as opposed to reading what they write, which for me has a much higher baud rate for lower bandwidth. I had the same problem in college. I rarely attended the lectures, unless I explicitly had to in order to get the grade, because I don’t take information in that well through my ears, at least if I want to retain it. I always preferred to read the book, which offered me much more data in a given amount of time than having to listen to someone slowly mouth the words.

But given that I do keep a news channel on in background when I’m working, and I could download the audio and listen to it while exercising or out for a walk, one could certainly do worse than checking them out. As I mentioned up at the top, I know I was. Doing worse, that is.

Science And Society

Innumeracy

I’m watching (in the background) The Wizard of Oz. I just noticed that when the wizard hands out the diploma to the scarecrow to give him a brain, the scarecrow says (apparently as evidence of his newfound knowledge) that “…the sum of the squares of the sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square of the other one.”

The problem being, of course, that it’s not true, at least not in Euclidean geometry. Pythagoras’ Theorem applies to right triangles, not isosceles triangles (triangles with two equal sides).

But then, perhaps the movie was making a subtle statement that having a diploma and spouting intelligent-sounding nonsense is all that constitutes smarts…

Political Commentary

Lying Liars

Glenn is glad to see Senator McCain defending the president from the accusations of lying us into war. Me, too.

But the Senator goes too far. In turn, he is in fact guilty of the same thing of which he accuses the Democrats (and the same thing of which many of them falsely accuse the president).

I don’t know when it became common in public discourse to completely erase the crucial distinction between making a false statement and lying. It probably goes back further than this, but the first time I noticed it was when the president’s father went back on his pledge (“read my lips”) to oppose new taxes, and then acquiesced to them under pressure from the Democrats who ran Congress and some “moderate” Republicans. As a result, many charged President Bush the elder with “lying” at the convention.

But going back on a pledge isn’t a “lie.” It’s certainly deplorable, but there can be good reasons for doing so (though I don’t think they were valid in this case). But to break a promise is not a lie, unless the person intended to break it at the time it was made. It is in fact not reasonable to talk about “lies” about future events, since ultimately the future is unknowable to anyone–it is merely possible to be wrong (again, unless the prediction is made with the knowledge that the event will be different than the prediction, and is fully within one’s control). It may be that the first President Bush had no intention of keeping his pledge, but I certainly have no way to get into his mind to know that. Absent some “smoking gun” memo (“Ha, ha, ha…I certainly put it over those anti-tax rubes last night”), I doubt if anyone else does either.

And that’s what it comes down to. It is not sufficient to make a false statement and be a liar. It has to be made in the knowledge that the statement is false, with the deliberate intent to deceive.

Now, I believe that in fact many accusing the president of lying, pace McCain’s accusation, are in fact telling lies (that is, they don’t really believe that he is lying, and are simply saying this to politically damage him, and are indifferent to, or in some extreme cases, happy about, the degree to which this damages the war effort). But it’s certainly possible to make such an accusation and not be a liar, which is to say that the accuser actually believes the accusation.

We’ve certainly seen enough people suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome to find it credible that people believe such nonsense, so it’s unfair to brand them all intrinsically liars. It should be sufficient to call them deranged, unless the Senator has some personal knowledge that they know what they are claiming is false. Accordingly, he should, in the interest of defending the principle, apologize for his own overly broad accusation.

[Update a few minutes later]

Hey, and speaking of deranged, here’s the head of the DNC:

Asked what the president withheld, Dean charged that Bush withheld proof that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks [The president never made a claim of such a connection–ed]. Dean claims Bush deliberately corrupted intelligence reports and sent them to Congress.

“The intelligence was corrupted, not just because of the incompetence of the CIA; it was corrupted because it was being changed around before it was presented to Congress,” he said. “Stuff was taken out and not presented. All of this business about weapons of mass destruction, there was significant and substantial evidence passed from the CIA and the State Department to, perhaps, the office of the vice president — we don’t know just where — in the White House that said, ‘There is a strong body of opinion that says they don’t have a nuclear program, nor do they have weapons of mass destruction.’ And that intelligence was not given to the Congress of the United States.”

Dean repeatedly characterized the Bush administration as “corrupt.”

Well, maybe he’s lying, but after the scream, I have to go with deranged.

This from the party of Bill Clinton. Who, by the way, admitted to lying…

Political Commentary

Howard The Duck?

Sounds more like Howard the Chicken. Bwwwuuuckk, bwuckk, bucckk, bucckkk…

Maybe he doesn’t want to have to talk about his lousy fundraising, which is the thing that he supposedly was hired to do (and if he did it, his claw-in-mouth tendencies might be forgiven). Ken Mehlman would be sure to rib him for it in a head to head, but Russert might have been too polite to mention it.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The photoshoppers are having fun already.

“This doctor is a quack.”

Political Commentary

Warren Beatty’s Incipient Political Career

…is mercilessly mocked by Mark Steyn:

Will he do it? “I don’t want to run for governor,” he said the other day, making it sound like he’s interested in the role but he won’t audition. He’s certainly in the right party: The Democrats have already taken on most of the characteristics of a bad Hollywood project — no ideas, script full of ancient cliches, but if you can get the right star to commit to it we just might make this thing fly. And, though he’s never run for office before, Beatty has the crucial ingredient: name recognition. All over California, women are going: “Warren Beatty? Oh, yeah, right, now I remember. That guy I had sex with in the late ’60s.”

…In 2003, you’ll recall, the Los Angeles Times assigned a special team to look into Arnold’s sexual background. If they do Warren in the same way, it’ll be the biggest hiring bonanza in U.S. journalism for a century. Usually, when his magnificent track record of famous conquests is brought up, Beatty indignantly points out that he’s had sex with a lot of very obscure women, too…

…Whether this hands-on approach to tackling the problems of the unemployed can be applied statewide is doubtful. No governor can have sex with every struggling woman in California, though, of course, Beatty does have the advantage of an impressive head start…

Political Commentary

Warren Beatty’s Incipient Political Career

…is mercilessly mocked by Mark Steyn:

Will he do it? “I don’t want to run for governor,” he said the other day, making it sound like he’s interested in the role but he won’t audition. He’s certainly in the right party: The Democrats have already taken on most of the characteristics of a bad Hollywood project — no ideas, script full of ancient cliches, but if you can get the right star to commit to it we just might make this thing fly. And, though he’s never run for office before, Beatty has the crucial ingredient: name recognition. All over California, women are going: “Warren Beatty? Oh, yeah, right, now I remember. That guy I had sex with in the late ’60s.”

…In 2003, you’ll recall, the Los Angeles Times assigned a special team to look into Arnold’s sexual background. If they do Warren in the same way, it’ll be the biggest hiring bonanza in U.S. journalism for a century. Usually, when his magnificent track record of famous conquests is brought up, Beatty indignantly points out that he’s had sex with a lot of very obscure women, too…

…Whether this hands-on approach to tackling the problems of the unemployed can be applied statewide is doubtful. No governor can have sex with every struggling woman in California, though, of course, Beatty does have the advantage of an impressive head start…

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!