Old Reliable: Matt Drudge

Yesterday afternoon the state of Alaska found that Governor Sarah "Flat-Earther" Palin abused her power in her handling of the Wooten/Monegan/Troopergate scandal. But you already knew that, I'm sure.

Unless, of course, you get your news from the Drudge Report. I'd link it, but if you have a PC as soon as you click the link your computer will have so many Trojan Horses it will be the stuff of legends. (Ba dum BA!)

Nutshell: Matt Drudge is a right-wing mouthpiece who sits in front of his computer 20 hours a day trolling the intertubes for incendiary headlines such as "Cindy McCain accuses Obama of endangering her son in Iraq" and "Did 'SOUTH PARK' go too far this time?" to link on his website. It's a good place to go looking for news stories about freaks in middle America who have some sort of "I'm Allergic to My Refrigerator" club, but a lousy place to go for unbiased news links.

Had Barack Obama been found guilty of the sort of misconduct Palin was found to have committed in the Alaskan state report, I would be willing to bet actual cash money that Drudge would have unearthed some extreme close-up of Obama looking like he was about to eat a baby and splashed it across the top of his site with the gigantic headline "GUILTY!"

Take a look at today's Drudge page. It's kind of like Where's Waldo, but without the so-last-season red striped shirt.



See up at the top where Obama would be eating the baby? Now see that little waving lady down in the corner? And the little bitty headline under it? No?

Try here.

Good old Drudge.

Also, All Cats Will Be Required to Wear Sweaters

There have been recent rumblings about the potential reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, legislation that would require television and radio stations broadcasting through federal airwaves to provide a balance of liberal and conservative political content. Putting aside whether or not that is a good idea (per Rasmussen, 47% of Americans think it is and 39% don't), what I find beyond hilarious is that the same policy is being evaluated for the internet.

THE INTERNET.

When Rasmussen posed the following question: "Should the government require web sites and bloggers that offer political commentary to present opposing viewpoints?" 31% of Americans responded yes.

When when when are these octogenarians going to realize that they cannot legislate internet content? I can snap my fingers and have the entire second season of Heroes on my hard drive in an hour without a single cent changing hands, but the government is somehow going to come up with a super-sekrit-hacker-proof-intarwebs-controller that is going to effectively monitor my blog content?

Right. May I interest you in a country song?

(Here's hoping no one tells Congress about Britain... I think they have the intarwebs there, too! Shhh!)

But out of respect for those of you who think that censoring internet content is not only possible but nifty, here is the opposing viewpoint.

Paris is for Fighters

To say I am not a big fan of Paris Hilton is like saying I am not a big fan of stabbing myself in the hand with a fork.

But I have to give her pretty crazy props for this:

"Loves it."

And in the event that you live under a rock, here's the McCain attack add that Paris Hilton was responding to:



The best part? Guess who wants their $4,600 McCain campaign donation back? That's right. Ma and Pa Hilton.

What's That Go to Do with the Price of Rice in Sioux Falls?

In one of the more baffling abdications of journalistic responsibility in at least, I don't know, a month, the mainstream media continues to by and large ignore the fact that our planet is experiencing an increasingly serious food shortage. But it might get harder for the likes of Chris Matthews and Larry King to keep their heads buried in the mineral-depleted soil as the soaring costs of basic foodstuffs begin to impinge upon the U.S. marketplace. Already in the past week, multiple reports of rice and grain rationing are coming out of cities as disparate as San Francisco and Sioux Falls.

Ironically, this is partially a robbing Peter problem — diversion of edible crops to the manufacture of biofuels has helped to shape the situation. Another component is the incessant plundering of grain fields to feed the nation's millions of dead cows walking.

But really, can our busy journalists be blamed for getting distracted by things like Miley Cyrus' green bra? I mean, it is Green Week or whatever, right?

I'd Like to Meet a Lapel Pin Voter

Here are the four things that ABC moderators attempted to hammer Barack Obama on during the first half of tonight's Democratic debate in Pennsylvania:

- Not wearing a flag pin on his lapel (curiously, Hillary Clinton's bare lapel somehow eluded notice);
- Reverend Wright;
- Being "elitist"; and
- His so-called connections to a domestic terrorist group that was active in the 1960s (although strangely they neglected to ask Clinton about her connections to the same group, even though her husband pardoned two of them).

Here are four things that were not brought by the moderators at any point during the debate:

- The plummeting value of the U.S. dollar;
- Today's Supreme Court decision that use of lethal injection does not constitute not cruel and unusual punishment;
- Admissions this week that Still-President Bush was actively aware of his administration's approval of torture techniques; and
- Education, environment and the economy (okay, technically that's three, but they're linked — especially somewhere like Pennsylvania — and not one of them was brought up anyway).

But I suppose considering the fact that one of the moderators was former Bill Clinton advisor George Stephanopoulos, I should settle for being pleasantly surprised that they didn't ask Obama if his wife's status as a Marxist Islamo-fascist baby-eater would adversely influence his presidency.

Retrieved a Nothing

In what I consider to be an unqualified success of a day, I spent the afternoon consuming, cover-to-cover, a full four of the 25 heretofore unread magazines decorating my coffee table. I read one each of Harper's, The Nation, NEA Today and California Educator.

Of the many excellent paragraphs I read today, the most fabulous by far was located in the "Findings" section of Harper's:

"A sex hormone was found in the drinking water of San Francisco, and anti-anxiety medications were found in the drinking water of Southern California. Prozac was revealed not to work, researchers demonstrated that placebos are more effective if the drugs for which they stand in are said to be more expensive, and a Scottish study determined that roughly half of a person's happiness is due to genetics. Physicists stored and retrieved a nothing."

Why I Like the Stuff I Like

While I lazily and confessedly use the Fellow Travelers link in my sidebar as something of a makeshift self-serving set of bookmarks, I thought I'd take a moment to explain why they're worth checking out for the rest of you who wander through here occasionally.

Daily Kos — I'm a big proponent of tossing the myth of objective journalism out the window and returning to the days of owning one's lens and reporting accordingly. And that's what Kossacks do.

Go Fug Yourself — Because thongkinis are never okay.

Open Left — A less cool Daily Kos, but still worth an occasional browse.

Slightly Perfervid — A friend's insightful and often amusing blog asserting that happiness and neuroses are not mutually exclusive.

The Futon Critic — This site is pretty much the only way I can keep track of what is airing when, since there's about as much consistency and logic to network airing schedules these days as there is to Bush's position on FISA.

The Huffington Post — Sort of like The Drudge Report, but with way more bloggers and way fewer trojan horses.

The Mean Bean — A friend's fledgling vegetarian blog. Lots of awesome recipes for people who are more microwave than Martha.

United Hollywood — Because if there's one thing I love more than pop culture, it's organized labor. Wait, strike that, reverse it. Or not. Doesn't matter; UH has both.

Do you write or read an awesome blog I don't know about (*cough*ProjectRunway*cough*)? Let me know!

Freudian Much?

Best. Quote. Ever.

"The candidates that can't face Fox, can't face Al Qaeda." — Roger Ailes, CEO of the Faux News Network

This gem was in reference to the Democrats' refusal to participate in a Faux News debate back in April (probably because they had recently broadcast the "story" that Obama is a militant Muslim, which he's, you know, not).

Did you see what Ailes did there? He just compared his own network to Al Qaeda! He's calling his own "reporters" as ferocious an enemy as terrorists! Seriously, this seems like something you'd find in The Onion.

Accuracy Schmaccuracy

Today I learned a fun fact from John Kerry: Thomas Jefferson was only 33 years old when he "penned those words, we hold these truths to be self evident, into the Constitution." Now, I take his point — if I've written something that quotable by the time I'm 33, I'll feel like I have a laurel or two to fluff up my pillow. But as a history teacher, I feel duty-bound to point out that Jefferson didn't so much "pen those words into the Constitution" as pen them into the Declaration of Independence.

It's okay, Senator Kerry. Bill O'Reilly made the exact same mistake just a couple of months back. The only difference is that he got called on it on his own show by an elementary school student.

This is why I get my news from the BBC**.

** And now your Moment of Zen: According to a recent study, more than half of British teens believe that Sherlock Holmes actually existed. Moreover, roughly a quarter believe that Winston Churchill was fictional.

Maybe they thought they were being asked if he was fissional? Like, with the atomic — yeah, no.

This Just In?

Today, in between learning that Senator John McCain (of "only an a—hole would put together a budget like this" fame**) is calling for a higher level of dialogue among the Republican candidates and that Senator Barack Obama has proposed a $75 billion economic relief package including immediate middle class tax cuts and a one-time increase in Social Security payments, I learned something else — Britney Spears has lost visitation rights with her children.

Who cares??? Why oh why must I subjected to the intimate judicial goings on of some has-been pop trollop when I'm trying to WATCH THE NEWS?!?!?

Excuse me while I try not to hyperventilate.

See. Here's the thing. I walk around all day long with all manner of utterly useless junk in my head. The Lost numbers are 4-8-15-16-23-42. President Lincoln changed his facial hair stylings because some little girl wrote him a letter saying that he ought to. My mother's baby-sitter grew up to marry Alex Trebec. See, useless! So the last thing I need when I'm trying to wade through the spinning smoking scraps of scurrilousness that comprise politics in contemporary America is getting poked in the eye by Britney "Lousy Weave" Spears.

**And Now Your Moment of Zen:

Pete Domenici, the senator who John McCain called an a—hole, endorsed McCain's presidential candidacy on Monday.

And Nary a Bill-O in Sight

I have a theory : Khazad-Dum (of Gandalfian fame) was not a geological chasm at all, but was actually Rupert Murdoch’s pants pocket. Only a cavern deep enough to swallow Tolkein’s fiercest wizard is deep and dark enough to contain all of Murdoch’s money. I know this because when I wanted to watch Iowa primary coverage at 11:00 last night, the only station still carrying live coverage was my dear friend Fox News. So I watched.

It was… edifying. I learned that watching Republican TV apparently means that I’m likely to be in the market for joint and cartilege formula as well as a home security system (now that was a funny ad — beware youths in hoodies who burst through your front door at three o’clock in the afternoon when you’re home alone washing dishes while your husband is at work… or with his mistress).

In addition to some amusing implications about the Fox audience based on the station’s marketing assumptions, I picked up a few other interesting items.

First, Fox News refuses to invite libertarian Republican Party contender Ron Paul to participate in their televised Republican primary debates because in their words “he’s not going to be president” — this despite acknowledging that he more than doubled the number of votes received by invitee Rudy Giuliani in the Iowa primary with ten percent of the vote. Who needs actual human voters when we have 24-hour news stations to select our viable candidates for us!

Second, Rush Limbaugh hates Mike Huckabee almost as much as he likes making fun of his own drug-induced hearing loss. Hey, I confess, I’d like the guy if he weren’t kind of a fascist.

Third, the only women Fox allows to grace the screen are those with bleach blonde hair and primary color sweaters.

Fourth, there’s at least one Fox commentator capable of uttering the phrases “rich patrician Republican” and “I think Rush is wrong” — in the same sentence, even!

Fifth, Mike Huckabee brought Chuck Norris up on stage with him, while Mitt Romney brought along Olympic skater Dan Jansen. I think I now understand the election results.

Having now officially walked a mile in someone else’s Manolos, I’m going to go shower. At length.

Rocking All the Way to the Bank

There's this thing I have my journalism students do during the first week of school where they bring in any magazine of their choice and cover every single ad with the same color construction paper. At first they think it's pretty fun — look ma, no work — but then they start to notice how much blue or green or red paper there is. It's pretty powerful.

The only magazines to which I subscribe are The Nation and Harper's, both of which boast an extremely low ad to content ratio. I just thumbed through the copy of The Nation sitting on my coffee table and discovered that only 11 out of the 40 pages were ads. Furthermore, it wasn't until page 14 that I found the first full-page ad. Pretty cool. The January 2008 issue of Harper's had an even lower 18 percent ad content, albeit a little more front-heavy in the distribution.

I figured my magazine collection probably wouldn't accurately reflect the quantity of advertising contained in the average American bird-cage liner, so I did a little research. According to a publishing industry website, the average magazine's ad to content ratio is 1:1, meaning that a full fifty percent of what you're paying for when you pick up a copy of Newsweek or Sports Illustrated is the privilege to be sold to someone else.

Of course, that fifty percent average takes into account magazines like The Nation and Adbusters (which contains exactly zero percent advertising). That means that somewhere there's got to be a magazine that's pretty much entirely ads! Sure enough, Vogue boasts an impressive 87 percent ad content. Somewhere a board member is very, very happy. (Then again, with a magazine like that, can you really tell the difference between the ads and the editorial content anyway?)

Today I strayed outside of my little haven of lefty news rags and thumbed through the latest Rolling Stone (which, for all that it styles itself as a lefty news rag, is no such thing). It was sort of like reading the The Nation upside down and backwards, because I don't think it was until page 15 that I actually saw one iota of non-advertising content — and that was just the table of contents! Or should I say, "contents."

All I know is that by the time I'd gotten halfway through, I felt strangely compelled to smoke, drink and then go driving on a twisty mountain road. In that order. Also, I kind of wanted to change my middle name to "Killah" but to be fair, that's probably been building for a while now.

Bury Me with It

By request, here's a little more investigative post-journalism. In contemplating how to blog out the year, I had initially decided to identify what I thought should have been heralded as the most important news stories of 2007. But someone else beat me to it, and really, in this post-modern world of ours, isn't originality so last year?

So. According to some other guy, here are the Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007! I underlined my favorites.

#1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media
#2 Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran
#3 Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger
#4 Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the US
#5 High-Tech Genocide in Congo
#6 Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy
# 7 US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq
#8 Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act
#9 The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall
#10 Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians
#11 Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed
#12 Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines
#13 New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup
#14 Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US
#15 Chemical Industry is EPA’s Primary Research Partner
#16 Ecuador and Mexico Defy US on International Criminal Court
#17 Iraq Invasion Promotes OPEC Agenda
#18 Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story
#19 Destruction of Rainforests Worst Ever
#20 Bottled Water: A Global Environmental Problem
#21 Gold Mining Threatens Ancient Andean Glaciers
#22 $Billions in Homeland Security Spending Undisclosed
#23 US Oil Targets Kyoto in Europe
#24 Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year
#25 US Military in Paraguay Threatens Region

You can read the full text of each story by clicking here. I've got to say, looking back at all the things that no one bothered to look at this year, I think I'll ring out 2007 with a hat-tip to Mario Savio:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

Ah, be still my bleeding heart. In honor of Mario Savio and Dick "Halliburton" Cheney and everyone in between, my new year's resolution for 2008 is to read stories like these as they happen, and maybe even do a little throwing myself on the gears. Viva la revolución, baby!

Nimble Jugglers That Deceive

What better way to bury a news story than to sneak it through on a day when the vast majority of Americans are guaranteed to be distracted by mountains of tryptophan or embarrassing antics courtesy drunken co-workers? Thanks to the internet, I bring you the top ten most common ways to bury a news story.

My favorite technique is the Friday-afternooner. Did you know that the Environmental Protection Agency lowered the clean air standards about a month ago? Me neither. But you know who did? People who watched the news at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, November 15. So that would be, um, my retired world history teacher, that weird guy who works at the gas station, and Karl Rove.

Go Team Democracy!

It's Not a Conspiracy Theory if It's True

It's good to know that in times of intense global turmoil, with pressing issues such as war, environmental degradation and human rights crying out for public action, I can turn to the U.S. media to keep me informed in a timely and accurate manner. Why, if I hadn't spent an hour at the gym today treadmilling to CNN, how else would I have gotten up-to-the-minute updates on the breaking news story (their words) about New York's latest dumpster baby?

I mean, why would I want to know about the Senate okaying another no-strings Iraq War budget or pending legislation that would shield wiretappers or Greenpeace's latest endeavor to halt a Japanese whaling vessel (all of which happened today) when I can get a point/counterpoint on Baby Christina? (And who knew there were even two possible opinions there? Thanks CNN!)

You know, all I have to say is it sure was nice of Al Gore to invent the Internet so I can get some actual news around here.

Speaking of the Internet, it helped me shed a little bit of light on what kind of person would want his 24-hour news network to spend an entire hour covering the fact that the Hardy Boys pulled a baby out of a paper bag instead of, well, anything else. To wit: CNN is owned by TimeWarner, which is chaired by C.E.O. Richard Parsons, who happens to fill his spare time with activities such as serving on the Citigroup Board of Directors, co-chairing a commission on Social Security for President Bush and, according to insiders, very likely planning a mayoral campaign for New York City's 2009 election. I hope he's gotten together a good anti-babies-in-New-York-dumpsters platform. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that legitimate news events are being kept off of the proverbial front page in favor of a little good old-fashioned fear mongering human interest piece.

But perhaps I'm being too harsh. They did, after all, take a five-minute break from the "news" coverage to announce that CNN anchor Nancy Grace has set up a baby blog to keep her adoring public informed about her pregnancy. It's twins!

OH, I almost forgot! Laughter Shrapnel is officially one month old today. Hooray! Maybe I should set up a separate baby blog blog...