Archive for the ‘media’ Category

his piece from the globe on the death of Mother Theresa is my favorite column of all time on any subject. It’s not available online but you can get a glimpse of the idea of it here:

Well, I think the past week has been, you know, nearly totally media-driven. I think it’s–we’re crazed by celebrity in this culture, not just here in this country. And much of the coverage of the funeral is certainly media-driven, and much of the attraction to the coverage is because it’s so media-driven. And an odd thing happened today. If you believe in God, or a higher being, it’s almost as if God tapped the news media around the world on the shoulder at about 1 o’clock this afternoon and said, “It’s time to straighten your priorities out. Mother Teresa is dead.”

For five straight days we have been making Princess Diana larger than life. She seems like a very wonderful woman, a nice woman. She was 36 years of age. A woman died in Calcutta today who spent all of her life touching the poor and helping the poor. And I’m going to be interested, and I think many Americans would be interested to see if Peter Jennings and Dan Rather and CNN and Tom Brokaw go to Calcutta.

Now today on Morning Joe it was a pox upon all incumbent houses. Sorry Mike you should know better, it isn’t republican incumbents in trouble. Show me some polls that indicate that? It is democrats who are on the run, if you don’t believe me ask David Olby.

Now Margaret Carlson on the same show is trying to talk about the “two year cycle”, the of course the administration will lose seats line.

You would think the tea parties and this healthcare nonsense never happened. C’mon guys!

And Barnicle you still need to get them to do a show from a diner in Fitchburg.

Update: Bennett is Utah is one I should have thought of.

Interesting take on Morning Joe this morning:

The administration is now taking heat over its slow response to the oil leak. Joe and Mike Barnicle both agreed that BP was working with the government and that their response has been good.

This is in stark contrast to the Boot on the Neck rhetoric of the administration.

The problem is they can’t go after BP without highlighting the administrations response. Watch for more BP “stepping up to the plate” rhetoric on CNN & MSNBC.

With stories coming out about the Obama administration’s cash connections and the head of interior rafting while the gulf leaked the White House would rather have a different tone of stories out there.

Oh and Barnicle is right they have stepped up to the plate but nobody wanted to talk about that before.

Given that 20 years ago the whole idea of “Gay Marriage” was considered nonsense was practically everyone in the country a bigot at that time?

When the subject of civil unions came up and we were assured by those pushing for them that it would not lead to Gay Marriage where those people making said assurances bigots? If not why?

When the Massachusetts supreme court mandated gay marriage by a 4-3 vote did that suddenly make the braking point where people who disagreed with the decision were now formally bigots?

If a person is age 60 or above at what age in life did they have to publicly support gay marriage to prove they are not a bigot? How about age 40?

Since gay marriage was considered a bad joke 20+ years ago can we assume that all members of congress and pols of the 20th century were bigots?

The question that the main stream media needs to ask is this? Is there any reason why you give any credence to this fool?

Update: Robert Stacy makes a similar point.

The first being the murder of a young college girl in Virginia.

George Huguely, 22, of Chevy Chase had been the starting quarterback, an honor roll student and a lacrosse all-American at the renowned Landon School.

Yeardley Love, 22, of Baltimore County had been a four-year member of the lacrosse and field hockey teams at Notre Dame Prep in Baltimore.

At some point, they had a romantic relationship. But early Monday, Love was found dead inside her apartment, and a few hours later, Huguely was charged in her death.

This is a horrible thing and our hearts rightly go out to her family and community.

The second despicable thing is Norah O’Donnell report that just showed on MSNBC.

O’Donnell when reporting on the Murder brings up the Duke LaCross case and mentions a letter where the accused murder wrote how those players were treated unfairly.

The only even remote connection between the two cases was the fact that the girl was a lacrosse player and the falsely accused Duke players were also lacrosse players. Update: Apparently the girl’s killer played lacrosse too.

For O’Donnell to bring this up to suggest that Huguely’s support of the falsely accused Duke players has any connection to this and to include it in her report is a journalist disgrace. To use this murder to try to score a cheap political point is disgusting and says a lot about O’Donnell. None of it honorable.

I would hope that MSNBC refutes O’Donnell and she considers an apology. As the report took place on Morning Joe I’ll tweet him to see what they say.

Update: The producers and editors of that story owe an apology too.

Update 2: Legal insurrection finds some slightly less despicable but misleading reporting. Ironically both reporters mentioned are regulars on Morning Joe too.