Sorry, after re-listening to the first few Million-Dollar President productions from PRI, which is the pilot-set for PRI’s new morning news The Takeaway, airing now on a precious few PRI stations, I am writing this so I don’t become so depressed I slit my wrists after listening to the hosts of this program joking their way through an interview on The Bob Edwards Show. Just like NPR’s Trailer- Bryant Park Project, these guys have clearly used focus groups composed of children with the IQ of a turnip. Seriously, I know a whole lot of 20-somethings, and none of them are so brain-damaged as to listen to this nonsense.
Let me ignore NPR’s entry into the dumned-down-news category and focus on PRI’s as demonstrated in the Billion-Dollar President disaster, hosted by Adaora Udoji and John Hockenberry. The first episode/pilot aired a few months ago, and began with the formerly-respected Hockenberry telling an outright lie. No, you read that right, a news program starting out running a phony news story delivered with the somberness of legitimate news. I honestly was so stunned by the utter stupidity of such an act I was unable to move…what the hell happened to a formerly-respected journalist who is remembered for his solid reportage on NPR by those of us who grew up with the public radio system? A guy who goes off to the major networks and performs solid reporting there? What deadly trauma could possibly have changed him into a wanna-be standup comedian and…well…a liar? (more…)
An opinion piece from Shaun Dakin, CEO of Citizens for Civil Discourse, the nonpartisan, nonprofit group that recently launched the National Political Do Not Contact Registry. It won’t help, but maybe if we let them know we don’t want to be annoyed by them, they’ll buy a clue and stop annoying us.
You know, I try to remain apolitical in this blog, but the current Justice Department hasn’t seen a telecommunications merger it didn’t love. While I’m not surprised, I am disappointed, since I can’t imagine a single satellite radio company not being a de facto monopoly.
All this flap about some contract employees reviewing the U.S. passport records of the major presidential candidates seems to me to be a little misguided. What worries me isn’t that some non-government-employee contractors reviewed these files…what frightens me is that the United States government is maintaining detailed records on its citizens who travel abroad. I’m not surprised that “security” was breeched (any time there’s a database, information from it will be stolen), but I am terrified that people in this country who have done nothing wrong, who have done nothing whatsoever other than visit a foreign country, are being so closely and secretly monitored by the government. Orwell wouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose…
This coming “Super Tuesday,” XMPR (XM Satellite Radio Channel 133) will be running a news special from PRI/WNYC/New York Times/BBC on the election; air time is 7:00 PM to 3:00 AM Eastern time. More information (although d*mned little…) is available at http://www.americasexitpoll.org/
Note this is from The Billion Dollar President and The Morning Show production team, so plan on it being light on actual news and long on happy-talk segments apparently designed for focus groups comprised of drug-addled or brain-damaged teenagers, but it should at least cover the basics of the election in real-time between the chatting-with-elementary-kids and what-clothing-the-spouse-is-wearing segments. (Lord, what I wouldn’t give for someone to challenge NPR’s radio news dominance with anything not designed for old people’s twisted ideas of what kids want…)
Yeah, I want to get my scathing review of The Billion Dollar President posted, asking the question, “Didn’t John Hockenberry used to be a respected journalist?” but I haven’t had the time. Apologies, but I’ll get there, I promise.
I played hooky again yesterday…and believe me, it takes something to get me out of my bunny slippers and on the road for a four-hour drive. But yesterday, instead of working, I took a drive to my favorite inside-the-beltway coffee shop…er…bookstore (hey, there’s very little more relaxing than sitting downstairs sipping the perfect cappuccino and smelling all those delightful books right on the other side of the doorway…) Politics and Prose. You should remember this bookstore from my previous visits (I’ve posted about the trip down to see Studs Terkel), and if anything’s changed the coffee is even tastier.
But last night’s visit was to see an institution in journalism, Daniel Schorr. Info, multimedia after the jump. (more…)
From the article: “‘They would go in even after we had signed contracts and try to persuade government officials to scrap their contract and sign a contract with them instead. That’s not a partnership.’
Mr Negroponte cited an example in Peru where Intel sales staff tried to persuade the country’s vice-minister of education, Oscar Becerra Tresierra, to buy the Intel Classmate PC.
Peru has ordered 270,000 XO laptops from OLPC.
Mr Negroponte said that similar events had happened ‘time and time and time again’.”
And you wonder why I’m becoming an Intel-free shop?
Ok, I admit it, I’m really sad. Not that CompUSA was any great shakes as an electronics store, but it’s the only electronics store left that has a store close-by in Maryland that doesn’t have one in York, since Best Buy (not one of my favorites, BTW, and one I like a whole lot less than CompUSA) opened one here. It was the last excuse I had to drive down, then stop at Hunt Valley on the way back for a stop at Noodles and Co. or Chipotle Grill. Heck, even the Krispy Kreem on Old York Road closed down. (*sigh*)
From the article: “The appearance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on the agenda of the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting gives a kind of scholarly imprimatur to a phenomenon that first emerged in 2005, during the debate in Kansas over whether intelligent design should be taught in public school sciences classes.”
I’m reluctant to comment further, since I may inadvertently blaspheme.
Wow…talk about frightening. From the article: Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence says, “Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety…I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of anonymity, but [also] what safeguards we want in place to be sure that giving that doesn’t empty our bank account or do something equally bad elsewhere.”
Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that defends online free speech, privacy and intellectual property rights, rebuts, “Anonymity has been important since the Federalist Papers were written under pseudonyms…the government has tremendous power: the police power, the ability to arrest, to detain, to take away rights. Tying together that someone has spoken out on an issue with their identity is a far more dangerous thing if it is the government that is trying to tie it together.”
I’m with Mr. Opsahl - just because you have nothing to hide doesn’t mean you want your government to know all about you. I’m imagining the same arguments about, “We need security, so we have to mildly limit some civil rights” have been made time and time again, by the world’s greatest dictators and worst police states.
There’s a d*mned good reason to have the Constitution - it’s to protect the weak from the abuse of the strong. Congress should pass no law giving the powerful the ability to abuse the weak.
I don’t care if the government knows how I feel on this issue (indeed, I have forwarded a link to this posting to Senator Arlen Specter of the Judiciary Committee…I do care if the government places this information into an electronic dossier to keep an eye on me for “subversive thoughts,” or even if it simply records and parses the information as I send it from my office computer across the Internet to my server without cause or warrant. And that, kids, is the direction Mr. Kerr seems to want to take us.
The Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention is next weekend, and for those of you in the area who might be on-the-fence about attending this great three-day event, I thought I’d show just a few clips from last year’s freshman version.
And if you are planning to attend, please stop by and say hello…I’ll be the rotund guy behind the video camera, probably swilling coffee or chugging down an energy drink. ;)
The Justice Department says Net Neutrality, that is requiring Internet providers to provide the same service to all hosts instead of throttling service to competitors, is a Bad Thing. Can you remember the days when the Justice Department protected the consumer against big business instead of protecting big business against the consumer? (Thanks to Stewart Wright for the pointer!)
From the editorial: “The reason why the price freeze and new packages by themselves cannot fully protect satellite radio consumers is that XM and Sirius compete along multiple dimensions for subscribers, including programming choice, equipment, and the amount of commercial time (virtually none today). Committing to refrain from adjusting one of these levers of competition for a fixed duration does not protect consumers against a degradation of programming, an increase in equipment costs, or a sudden infusion of commercials.”
Someone finally gets it. It just isn’t something I’d expect from The Washington Times.
There goes one of my favorite shows. Mantegna is an uninspiring actor (best-known in this household for butchering the character of Spencer) and certainly no replacement for the excellent although troubled Mandy Patinkin.
(Ah, c’mon, I got a million hot dog jokes, but even I didn’t use the line from the Chicago Trib story, “the company neither condones nor relishes such actions.”)
Filed under: Television, News — Charlie Summers @ 1:14 pm
At this year’s Defcon convention (a hacker’s-and-crackers convention dealing with computer security), NBC Dateline producer Michelle Madigan attended as a conventioneer (allegedly refusing press credentials), allegedly carrying in her purse a hidden pinhole camera. She was busted, and…er…escorted off the premises:
Now I have to tell you, while you’ll probably never find anyone who is a stronger supporter of the freedom of the press (yes, I’m in the United States), a vital element in keeping the people of this country free and never more vital than today, I am getting a little weary of the tactics some “reporters” are using; many seem to think the First Amendment gives them carte blanch to do whatever they want, regardless of the legality or morality, to get a story — the more sensational, the better. Had this sleezy news magazine (anyone remember adding explosives to gas tanks?) just had its producer acquire press credentials, they might have gotten an excellent story about the good and the bad of computer security…instead, they wanted to ambush some thirteen-year-old bragging to impress the blonde, so they could put together some salacious “story” about the evils of kids learning about computer security with children seen through bug-eyed, night-visioned lenses.
She got what she deserved, in my humble opinion, and Dateline should issue a strong apology not only to the convention, but to the American people for abusing the Constitutional rights they have been guaranteed. I thought this nonsense was going away with the Weekly World News?
Or maybe some of these hackers-and-crackers, some of the brightest and most dangerous computer experts around, should start poking around in the production staff’s life…I wonder how they’d like having their credit card statements and personal life details made public…all in the interest of “news,” of course, and little different than secreting a hidden camera inside a purse. After all…if these people are going to profess to sit on-high and decide what is and is not something we as the American people should know (and as recent events have shown, they are so terribly good at making those decisions), shouldn’t we know a little about how they spend their lives?
(*sigh*) Snyder hosted the last true last-night “talk show” filled with intelligence and humor; his Late Late Show was him sitting with a guest, just talking. When Kilborn was getting ready to take over, Snyder in his top-of-the-show monolog referred to the show getting ready, “for comedy” with a snide and sarcastic turn.
I watched Tomorrow sitting on the floor in my parents’ house eating swiss cheese and chips, and I watched the Late Late Show lying on the floor of a room in the Hershey Medical Center. Some of us have missed you ever since you left, and always held a secret hope you’d come back in some form or another to save us from the childish “humor” painfully on display in late-late night from all three networks. Now there’s no hope at all for intellect to triumph over boorish toilet humor.
