You Are Dumb - The News

Roots Vegetable

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:38:16 -0500

The News, 29 September 2008

Memo to Chris Matthews: YOU ARE DISOWNED.

Not that you were ever really owned in the first place, but goddammit, for some reason, the general consensus has shifted. And Chris Matthews, of all people, is being considered a liberal more often than not these days. Well, fuck that noise. We don't want him. You can have Mr. Potato Head in your club if you want, but we won't have him as a member of ours.

And for the record, I'd just like to say that I don't call Chris Matthews "Mr. Potato Head" because his head is shaped like an oversized, lumpen potato (although it is). No, I call him Mr. Potato Head because he's Irish. It's not that I have anything against the Irish, it's just that I want to relate to Matthews on a level he can understand - raw, unmitigated ethnic stereotyping.

Mr. Potato Head is not a liberal. Yes, he's apparently supporting Barack Obama. That doesn't make him a liberal. Fuck, Obama himself isn't much of a liberal. I cannot tell you why Señor Cabeza de Patata supports Obama, although I have several theories. The first is that Matthews is stupid. Not that it's stupid to support Obama, but that Matthews support for Obama is predicated on stupid reasons - gut feelings, liking the cut of his jib, or whatever.

My second theory is a crass mercenary nature. Matthews may just be a ruddy, boneheaded weather vane. When everyone decided it was time to hate Bill Clinton for being a horndog, Chris Matthews hated Bill Clinton for being a horndog. When it was time to hump Dubya's leg for being a manly terrorist-fighter in his crotch-enhancing flight suit, Matthews was there working his hips like a jackhammer. And now that Bush's approval rating is in the toilet and throngs of crowds are cheering Obama, Matthews has swung around to line up, even though he apparently hates black people.

During the primaries, in a series of incidents that made Sigmund Freud rise from his grave and weep formaldehyde tears of joy, Matthews would repeatedly contrast Obama's appeal with African-Americans with his lack of support from "regular Americans". Or "hard-working Americans". This planted Matthews firmly into Douche-y Racist Uncle territory. Racist enough to cringe at, but apparently not racist enough to make a fuss over.

So last Friday, Matthews watched the first McCain/Obama debate. I didn't watch it myself, because I know where both candidates stand, and if anyone says something incredibly stupid, like discussing their treasured Dead Soldier Not In Vain Official Mass-Market Bracelets, I'll find out about it after the fact. But Mr. Potato Head gets paid large sums of money to watch things like this and give us his impressions. And here's one of the big things Matthews took away from the debate. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Pat, I think you had a very interesting point tonight, and that is that we don't know who won this debate 'til we know how, to put it bluntly, the white working class guy, the regular working stiff out there, responds... Gene, did it surprise you that he was so un-ethnic tonight? That he never once talked about the condition of African-Americans in this country, never once talked about poor people, never once mentioned poor people..." Chris Matthews, discussing the debate with Pat Buchanan and Gene Robinson.

A couple of things. First, Matthews breaks out the "white = regular" conflation again, which is just white, white icing on the white sheet cake. Second, if there is a hell, and I end up going there, at least five percent of my eternal damnation will consist of Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan discussing how "ethnic" various minorities are acting. And third, fuck you, Chris Matthews. It's like when that other great Irish pundit, Bill O'Reilly (who is more of a corned beef brisket head than a potato head, slablike and unnaturally pink) who was shocked that black folks in a restaurant were using utensils and not shouting profanities.

I mean, what the fuck was Matthews expecting Obama to do? He's been watching Obama speak and run for office for years, and the guy's pretty much had the same demeanor the whole time. It's like Matthews is waiting for the facade to crack and Obama to bust out at least four of Matthews' top ten ethnic stereotypes. But because he's on MSNBC, and because he's sitting next to Pat Buchanan, and because he's lumped in with Keith Olbermann*, he's been officially labeled as part of the Liberal Media.

Well, he's not on our team. If he wants to rip Republicans a new one for a change, that's fine, but that doesn't make him a liberal. It makes him a moron who, through sheer coincidence, happens to be using his Moron Powers for good. It happens rarely, and it never lasts long. In Matthews case, I'm guessing the potato will sprout its evil again around the second week of November.

*Who isn't particularly liberal either, for the record - he's just sanely anti-Bush and pro-Constitution.

Bitchin'

Thu, 22 May 2008 12:32:16 -0500

Election 2008, 22 May 2008

Memo to Alex Castellanos, Maureen Dowd, and Penn Jillette: YOU ARE DUMB.

Bear with me here. We're going to have to dive deep, deep, deep into the rabbit hole on this one. And why is that? Because motherfuckers refuse to understand context. Which means I'm going to have to provide context. And there's a lot of context. Context that explains how Alex Castellanos can be a sexist douchebag for saying something that, stripped of context, is actually correct. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"And some women, by the way, are named that and it's accurate." - The "that" he's referring to is "bitch". Or possibly "white bitch". You see what I mean about context? You see, CNN was discussing whether Hillary Clinton has faced sexism during her run for president. Which is just fucking stupid. Of course she has. She's a woman. Naomi Wolf could write an entire book about what Clinton's faced from Chris Matthews alone. You can argue the relative importance of the sexism, but debating its existence is the kind of oversimplified bullshit cable news exists to peddle.

Where Castellanos is technically correct is that calling a woman a bitch is not automatically, by definition, sexist. I know, because coincidentally, I did it yesterday. Sexism is when you treat a woman worse* than you would treat a man in the same situation. I call stupid women nasty names, I call stupid men nasty names, and I do it because they're stupid. Whereas Castellano lost the moral high ground, because he went on cable news and defended calling women bitches on the grounds that, hey, some women are just bitches.

That defense has never, ever been proffered for a man. It never happens. I watch as little cable news as I can get away with, but believe me, if it had happened, I'd have heard about it. Ergo, it's sexist. I mean, it's not surprising that one of John McCain's advisers would take the opportunity to reinforce the Hillary-bitch connection, but it's still sexist assholery.

On top of that, they were discussing the "white bitch" comment because Maureen Dowd, of all people, referenced it back in February in a column that managed the impressive feat of passive-aggressively attacking Clinton by defending her first. By mentioning this column, CNN instantly violated two cardinal rules of journalism. First, never talk about anything Maureen Dowd says, because she's stupid and tries to pretend she's clever. And second, never talk about a three-month-old Maureen Dowd column, because those things have a shelf-life shorter than the time it takes to read one.

So how do we get from Maureen Dowd to "white bitch" in a way that avoids the obvious joke? Well, as her main piece of evidence that yes, indeed, Hillary Clinton endured sexism, she provided... a Penn Jillette joke. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Obama is just creaming Hillary. You know, all these primaries, you know. And Hillary says it’s not fair, because they’re being held in February, and February is Black History Month. And unfortunately for Hillary, there’s no White Bitch Month."

Now, I hate to pick on Penn Jillette. Despite his crazy libertarianism, he's a force for good when it comes to debunking mysticism and championing reason. But this is an awful, awful joke, mainly because there -is- a Women's History Month. In March. Which is right after February. So there's no reason for the joke's strawclinton to have said that. The joke's premise is fatally flawed.

But on the big list of problems Hillary's had with sexism, a shitty sexist joke from a fucking Ron Paul supporter, from Vegas, in a state she won, is not the shining example that makes your case iron-clad. So, working back up the chain, we've got Penn Jillette, wrong for making a shitty, sexist joke. Maureen Dowd, wrong for putting Penn Jillette's awful joke on display, and Alex Castellanos, for defending Penn's joke like it was a serious piece of accurate political analysis. There. Now everyone, crawl back in your fucking holes and try not to make me talk about shit like this again.

*For semantic purposes, "worse" encompasses almost the full range of "different".

...And Leave A Good-Looking Comment

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:53:17 -0500

The News, 7 April 2008

Memo to Matt Richtel: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

It is, unfortunately, a classic journalism formula. Take a statistical anomaly, add in heaps of rampant speculation, willful ignorance, and just a dash of ass-covering caveats before plowing ahead in service of a conclusion that, upon closer examination, makes no goddamned sense whatsoever. We've seen it before, we'll see it again, and we're seeing it now thanks to Matt Richtel of the New York Times and this amazing headline:

"In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop"

First the statistical anomaly: dead bloggers! Russell Shaw, age 60, heart attack. Marc Orchant, age 50, coronary. Om Malik, age 41,"survived a heart attack". Two deaths of middle-aged men, all suffered from circulatory failure, and all within a span of... um, five months, actually. I would sarcastically implore the news media to stop the presses, but it looks like the New York Times actually did.

Please. There are a shitload of blogs, and a shitload of 40- to 60-year-olds with clogged arteries. To justify an "is blogging deadly" premise, you'd have to engage in some shockingly wild speculation and leaps of logic, especially if you want to fill up a few dozen column-inches. Matt Richtel does not disappoint. Well, he disappoints, but not in that way. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion, and other maladies, born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always on as the Internet."

I can understand why Richtel would be concerned. He gets to produce for a news and information cycle once, maybe twice a week, and has to answer to editors who apparently think "that is as always on as the Internet" is a perfectly dandy way to end a fucking sentence. Compared to that, what I do here must seem as tough as coal mining, and commenting on Dell press releases at 2:00 a.m. on a Saturday? That's backflipping through a ring of fire on your pet unicorn.

Obligatory "My premise is bullshit but..." paragraph? Check. "To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic." It's very odd that sentences like this are not immediately followed by "...so clearly, I have no idea what I'm talking about, and should probably write about something else." But no. Instead, they're immediately followed by lots of circumstantial bullshit and padding. Like the lists of symptoms apparently suffered by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington:

"Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. 'At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.'"

I will admit, I'm a spoiled, pampered, first-worlder. But even I would feel embarrassed about bitching over some keyboard pudge, disrupted sleep, and arranging for office space for my business. How about this for a headline? "Bloggers, Mildly Inconvenienced, Still Would Not Work An Eight-Hour Factory Shift If One Could Be Found In America". My lack of sympathy, already so great that light could not escape, went on to swallow several small galaxies when I read about Matt Buchanan, at Gawker, who sleeps five hours a night and pours protein shakes into his coffee to get paid presumably a buck or two per post and gets to take part in "a global conversation about the latest and greatest products. And why does he put himself through that? ACTUAL QUOTE TIME REDUX!

"The fact I have a few thousand people a day reading what I write — that’s kind of cool... [sometimes] I just want to lie down." To steal a page from another well-known Internet product with a rapid information cycle, UR DOIN IT WRONG.

A thousand people a day read what I write too. But I don't lose sleep over it, I'm not pounding protein shakes, and if my heart explodes when I turn 40, it certainly won't be because I write shit on the Internet. And most importantly, I'm not part of any goddamned global conversation. Thank fuck. That shit'll kill you.

*Equally stupid Star-Tribune headline: "Work Fast, Die Young: The Blogger Lifestyle?"

A Topical Example

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:19:42 -0500

Video Games, 25 March 2008

Memo to Tom Keenan: REALLY?

That's how you're going to play it? Honestly? You want to go with that argument? You want to expose your shocking lack of knowledge, and by extension, assume the same of the readership of the Calgary Herald? I mean, being humans, I assume the residents of Calgary are, on average, pretty stupid. But not as stupid as you seem to think they are.

Tom Keenan is a professor, and the author of an op-ed in the Calgary Herald entitled "Teaching Kids To Kill". And with a title like that, it can only be about one topic. The horrible violent world of video games. And no op-ed about the horrible violent world of video games would be complete without outdated references to games nobody's played in years.

Keenan starts out with a game I could almost agree with him on: "America's Army". There's a part of my liberal knee-jerk soul that gets cranky at the idea of the Army using video games to sling propaganda at the youth of America. On the other hand, the Darwinist in me thinks that anyone suckered into joining the Army because of a computer game deserves, at the very least, to learn the hard way what the real thing is like.

But then Keenan tries to damn America's Army with faint praise, comparing it to the rest of the even more depraved video game world. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"It's better than many of those sleazy "first-person shooter" (FPS) games. You won't see strippers suddenly appear, or be encouraged to rape a virtual character, as happens in the hideous Custer's Revenge game. Still, the ultimate objective of AA is to teach and motivate people to kill other people, at least in the virtual universe."

Yeah! At least the Army game doesn't have strippers, like, um, the 12-year-old game Duke Nukem 3D! And at least it doesn't have rape, like, um, that 26-year-old Atari 2600 game in which a blocky, naked General Custer avatar tried to dodge arrows and get to the right side of the screen, where, if he did, a two-frame animation that, if you squint, you realize is him thrusting his two-pixel penis into a pink blob that is supposed to be a tied-up Native American female. Wait, what?

Seriously, folks. If today's rapists had all learned their stock in trade from Custer's Revenge, the world would be a much safer place. All women would have worry about would be naked guys in cowboy hats, charging at them fully erect, popping Viagra the entire time because if they played Custer's Revenge at an impressionable age, they're IN THEIR GODDAMNED FORTIES NOW.

Is there any other art form on the planet which can honestly and proudly display a "No Rape Imagery Since 1982" sign? There is not. But Keenan's gotta pick on the video games. His article proceeds in the prescribed manner, quoting two or three other anti-game sources, before praising Nintendo's positive, non-violent Brain Training games:

"Dr. Kawashima's Brain Age, for the Nintendo platform, has even attracted a celebrity endorsement from Australian actress Nicole Kidman, who has gushed that it's 'a great way to keep my mind feeling young.'" - Tom Keenan has a... KEEN grasp of science, apparently believing that because Nicole Kidman was paid to say that it works, IT WORKS. I guess all the Psychic Friends were really psychic, too, because Dionne Warwick wouldn't lie to us.

The funny thing is, good old science actually says that brain games don't improve brain function. They're fun, they're challenging, but they don't affect you once you shut the game off. And violent games are the same way. Clearly, Keenan has been playing a LOT of brain training games, because he thinks he's smarter than he actually is, as evidenced by his closer:

"Unless of course, you're busy playing America's Army or, even worse, Custer's Revenge. In that case, you're on your own to manage your stress." You know, back in 1982, assuming you could find a copy of the game (not easy) and had an Atari 2600 to play it on, nobody was ever BUSY playing Custer's Revenge. The game, both literally and figuratively, shows you everything it has to offer within 30 seconds. It makes Air Sea Battle look like War And Peace. It makes the E.T. game look like the E.T. movie. Twenty six years ago, the game was a retarded novelty. In 2008, it's a retarded historical curiosity. Using it as an example of moral deficiency in the video game industry? That's just plain retarded.

If You Haven't Sinned It, It's New To You

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:16:05 -0500

Catholics, 18 March 2008

Memo to the Catholic Church and the news media: YOU ARE DUMB.

I'm telling you, you hear the phrase "seven new deadly sins" and the comedy mind starts kicking into overdrive. Especially when you hear intimations in the media that Seven Deadly Sins Classic are getting a makeover for modern times.

Right out of the gate I assumed that the Pope and his Cardinals, all with their quavering, Vatican fingers straining toward the pulse of modern culture, would be condemning hip new sins like skateboarding, grunge music, Mortal Kombat, and raves. Oh, how my hopes got up. Oh, how quickly those hopes were dashed.

I understand the media's confusion. Really, I do. It's difficult to hear that there are new sins, they're deadly sins, and there are seven of them, and not draw the conclusion that there are seven new deadly sins. On the other hand, I have the theological training of an atheist and the journalism training of a very lazy college student, and it took me about five minutes of reading other people's shitty stories to realize that the Seven New Deadly Sins were, at best, additions and clarifications, not replacements for sloth, gluttony, lust, and the other four bad guys from Fullmetal Alchemist.

This is not to say that the list doesn't have comedy value. These are in fact additions to the mortal sins, the felonies of Catholic law. The ones you have to go to confession to be absolved of. Sure, the cynic in you might think that they're just trying to increase foot traffic to the confessionals, and the subsequent donations. You know, the way cities increase the fines on parking violations to help balance the budget. But let's pretend we're not cynics, and the Catholic Church has decided that these really are modern-day ills what need a good Papal cracking down on. What did they go with?

POLLUTING: Fair enough. Won't do any good, really. I could play the game the right plays with Al Gore and question whether the Popemobile is a hybrid, but that would be intellectually dishonest. I will point out, though, that if the fine people at Exxon were actually worried for a moment about going to Catholic Hell, they wouldn't STILL be fighting the court damages from the Exxon Valdez spill. I'm guessing the final disposition of their incorporeal soul is not on their priority list.

GENETIC ENGINEERING: I'm convinced that the main reason the Catholic Church is anti-science is because science makes people live longer. And if people live longer, then Popes live longer. And if Popes live longer, then the changeover rate of Popes goes down. And when that happens, the odds that any of these bastards making these rules might get to wear the Big Hat someday drops like a rock. Ergo, genetic engineering gets fucked.

HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION: Depending on which sloppy-ass media account you read, this is also phrased as "morally debatable scientific experiments", which I think makes for an interesting contradiction - if the Church has decreed "morally debatable scientific experiments" to be a mortal sin, then that effectively ends the moral debate. Which means the experiments are no longer morally debatable, which means they're no longer mortal sins, at which point they BECOME morally debatable again, and so on, and so forth, until the Pope's head explodes and his hat achieves low earth orbit and generations of children point to it in the sky as evidence of a miracle.

SOCIAL INJUSTICE, CAUSING POVERTY, EXCESSIVE ACCUMULATION OF WEALTH: Just because the Catholic Church felt the apparent need to pad its list out to seven by saying the same damn thing three times doesn't mean I have to follow suit. Anyway, it's nice of them to say it, even though it does strike my cold, atheist heart as a cynical ploy to beef up their "Jesus cared about the poor!" street cred while still supporting the kind of reactionary politics that leads to social injustice, causing poverty, and excessive accumulation of wealth.

Plus, you know, I'd love to let 'em off the hook for their own hefty global coffers, but it turns out massive payouts to the victims of sexual abuse is not actually a form of wealth redistribution that lets you claim any kind of moral high ground.

THE TAKING OF AND DEALING OF DRUGS: I can only assume they mean recreational drugs. And by recreational drugs, I can only assume they mean those substances which are traditionally illegal and considered morally objectionable. Marijuana, not Oxycontin. Ecstasy, not Cialis. Dude on the street corner, and not Glaxo. Again, not sure the people this is aimed at are going to give a shit about the Pope's newfound disapproval, but what the hell. Nice to see the Catholic Church step up on an issue and, at long last, take the position of a South Park character circa 1997.

Spare Ribs

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:43:01 -0600

Republicans, 6 March 2008

Memo to Ana Marie Cox: FLEE FROM HYPNOTOAD!

I don't really want to do a second day on John McCain's fucking awful barbecue rib performance. But for one thing, all the stories reported his dry rub as one third salt, one third pepper, and one third garlic powder. That's nasty. And boring. But mostly nasty. If McCain is going to get a free media ride for his barbecue, is it too much to ask that it be good barbecue? This just goes to further my new theory.

John McCain is Hypnotoad.

Think about it. Jon Stewart, on Monday, lets slip that he thinks Obama, Clinton, and McCain will all be healing, uniting forces no matter which of them is elected President. Jon Stewart is not usually stupid. Reporters think that a spice rub McDonalds wouldn't use on the McRib is tasty and comforting. Reporters are not usually... OK, reporters usually have tongues. And Ana Marie Cox seems to actually believe her defense of attending the Great McCain Cookoff is a defense. And Cox isn't normally... THAT stupid.

Cox is the woman who parlayed her early political blog work as Wonkette into a gig at Time Magazine, or at least Time Magazine online, where, at the Swampland group blog, she's known nationally as The One Who's Not As Dumb As Joe Klein. Anyway, she spent a lot of time on Tuesday defending it. And while the "he's not the nominee yet" excuse from yesterday still takes top prize in the bullshitoff, Cox's rationalization gymnastics earn her a solid silver. She starts off with an assurance:

"First of all, neither Time nor McCain paid my way to Sedona or for my stay while I was there." - I don't think anyone really thought McCain was paying for reporters to attend his shindig, but that's good to know, I guess. Whether Time paid or not is completely irrelevant. In fact, I'd be more comfortable if Time HAD paid. If it had been a mandatory assignment. At least then you couldn't blame a reporter for showing up, just for what they did afterwards.

"I'd been avoiding posting on this because I know that a certain segment of our readership will use it as an opportunity to decry coziness, McCain personally, me personally, the MSM generally or maybe even barbecue for that matter." Um, Ana? Those are what we call WARNING SIGNS. It WAS cozy, McCain did throw the party, you and the mainstream media DID show up, and the barbecue sounded like shit. The event provided the opportunity for criticism, because the event was worthy of criticism. Which you clearly knew at least on a subconscious level.

"I'll spare you a write-up of the event because most of those that did write pieces covered it as if they all got the same pool report, hitting all the same items...". Which anyone presumably qualified to be a political reporter should have known, and therefore not played along with to the greatest extent possible. Which is not what happened.

"I think of socializing as part of the larger project: I get to know people and then can then write about them with more depth, and it means that when I do write something critical about them, I take EXTRA care to get it right... I'm willing to lose a friend over something I write but I'd like to know it was worth it." The implication here is that she's taking John McCain, Republican candidate for president, at his word when he says he's holding a barbecue at his ranch so he and the press can just get to know each other better. And, extrapolating, that the sweatshirt with the picture of his family was chosen because, oh, it was at the top of the pile when he got there. And that his motorcade swung by the Costco on the way to the house to pick up the ribs. I'm not sure if there's a MAXIMUM cynicism political reporters can have to be effective, but I sure as fuck know there's a minimum, and I know how far below the minimum this falls.

In a similar vein: "This is not a great analogy, but think of this way: If someone was writing a profile of Steve Jobs, and he invited you over for dinner, a smart reporter would jump at the chance to see their subject in a relaxed atmosphere, in an environment completely unlike where he's typically interviewed."

Yeah, um, look. I took journalism in college too. So I'm familiar with this strategy in principle. But you're right about one thing. It's not a great analogy, because a stage-managed fake barbecue with a gaggle of your fellow reporters is so far from the one-on-one "relaxed atmosphere" you're alluding to it's fucking ridiculous. So when you reassure us that:

"I promise you, if McCain had bitten the head off of a live chicken, or done anything else notable or stupid or controversial. I'd report it. EVERYONE WOULD." Really? Is that the journalistic standard we're shooting for? "We'll eat his food and smile and joke around with him, but the instant he performs a disgusting sideshow trick, well, the gloves will be coming off!" The American political press, constantly on alert in case something completely beyond the pale happens to take place while they're having lunch.

I shouldn't even have to say this, but politics is a never-ending game of image management. Doubly so for John McCain, who relies on his image the way Dorian Gray relied on a painting in the attic. Anything you "learn" about John McCain at a three-hour barbecue on his ranch will be things John McCain wants, nay, NEEDS you to learn. And if you think being a willing participant in that is acceptable journalism, you're either stupid, lying, or in thrall to the power of Hypnotoad.

Special Sauce

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:36:08 -0600

Republicans, 5 March 2008

Memo to the Fourth Estate: YOU ARE A CHEAP DATE.

This, by the way, is why I wake up screaming when I think about the presidential election. And the ways that the Democrats can dance through a field of flowers and still come out smelling like shit.

Look at how the candidates handle press relations. Hillary Clinton deduces, correctly, that the press is treating her less than fairly. So she calls them on it, sometimes seriously, and sometimes in this weird, passive-aggressive jokey way. Then she goes onto Saturday Night Live for three minutes of safe, self-deprecating pseudo-comedy. Net result? At best, an awkward, uncomfortable silence.

John McCain deduces, also correctly, that if the bad press continues about his secret love of lobbyists and his endorsement from a guy so crazy stupid he deserves his own column, it might hurt him. So he throws a FUCKING BARBECUE for the press. And they go! And he cooks for them! Net result? disgusting, fawning stories about it! Check this shit out, from Reuters. ACTUAL HEADLINE TIME!

"McCain turns tables and grills (for) reporters"

Um, Reuters? Grilling isn't turning the tables. If he'd gotten out a leaf blower and pointed the business end at the press corps, that might be turning the tables. Because you lot have been blowing him since 2000, and his latest hot beef injection* should keep that action coming until November. Don't believe me? Well here's how Jeff Mason's Reuters piece ended:

"So how did they taste? Objectivity prohibits a good reporter from passing judgement [sic; sick], but let’s put it this way: everyone wants to come back."

Oh, I bet they do. How the fuck can political reporters go to something like this, and still somehow maintain their credibility, jobs, or self-respect? Check out how the Washington Post's Michael Shear described it:

"Dressed in jeans, an L.L. Bean baseball cap, sunglasses and a sweat shirt featuring a picture of his family, McCain held court the way he does almost daily aboard his "Straight Talk Express" bus. While the afternoon barbecue for the media was technically on the record, tape recorders were prohibited, as was taking pictures for publication, and McCain aides repeatedly urged reporters to put away the notebooks."

That is some serious Dubya-circa-2000 level bullshit there, and the only way it can work is if reporters willingly line up, take what they're being fed, and spray the resulting mudbutt all over their readership. A.K.A. post-millenial political reportage in a nutshell.

That's the McCain black magic, though. Somehow taking a warmed-over turd nobody with Google should believe for more than ten seconds, smothering it with Maverick Brand Barbecue Sauce And Grilling Marinade, and suddenly, there aren't any Charlton Hestons to tell us that Soylent Straight Talk is made of poople.

It's infinitely disappointing and infinitely predictable. Well, except for the way Shear lies to himself in one of the shiniest exhibits in the Rationalization Hall Of Fame:

"The lighthearted mood is likely to fade quickly if he gets enough delegates to lay claim to his party's nomination in contests in Texas and Ohio on Tuesday. As the nominee, he will almost certainly be on, rather than overseeing, the grill."

Yeah, Mike. That's what held you back. Now that you're finally positive Mike Huckabee isn't going to get that miracle he says he majored in, you're really going to dig in and do your fucking job. There's no way, now that McCain has gotten those last few delegates to officially put him over the top, that you'll want to keep sucking that juicy meat off the bone. We'll just sit back and wait for you to kick it into high. Pardon us for not holding our breath, but we really like oxygen.

* It may have been a long, slow porking. The news coverage only mentioned baby back ribs. There was also chicken involved, unless McCain just told them there was chicken, and they believed him even though they didn't eat any, or see anyone else eating it.

Plenty To Go Around

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:20:31 -0600

The News, 24 January 2008

Memo to the media: YOU GET A PASS.

Just for today, you get a pass. I'm not going to slam you for being the 24-hour, fact-free engines of rampant baseless speculation that we both know you are. Because today, I'm going to take that awful "three fingers pointing back at you" aphorism, no matter how much I despise it, to heart.

Because you really are giving people what they want, aren't you? Sure, I could argue that the job of journalists is to give people what they need, and if what they need doesn't sell well enough, the answer is to hire better marketers, not Glenn Motherfucking Beck. That maybe it's a bad idea to use the news to turn a profit in the first place.

But there's no denying it's what we want. And nothing drives that home like the death of Heath Ledger.

Looking at it objectively, rationally, and in retrospect, the impact of Ledger's death and the cause thereof on my life is nonexistent. I wasn't a fan. I don't own Roar on DVD. He didn't have some upcoming project I was looking forward to. Obviously, I didn't know him personally. Heath Ledger's continued existence, or not, is a complete non-issue.

Yet there I was, 30 seconds after hearing that he'd died, hitting the major news websites to see if they had any information. When they didn't, I moved on to the next one. And when they did, it was hearsay, speculation, and mostly wrong. Which is nothing new for them, and nothing I didn't know on an intellectual level. But I still kept looking, even though I should have known better.

And I bet a lot of you looked too.

Even assuming I had a reason to care about how Ledger died, which I don't, it's not exactly time-sensitive information, is it? If I find out today or this weekend or next month, it's all the same to me. Even if he was killed by some new species of sewer gator, I'll probably find that out long before the gators make it from New York City to the outskirts of Minneapolis. There's no rush.

But I still looked. Despite being unconcerned about sewer gators. Despite not being worried in the slightest about a serial killer working in reverse alphabetical order. I don't know if it's human nature, or conditioning from living in the Information Age, or some mix of the two, but the irrational need to know, and know NOW, is there even in the most high-minded of us.

And that is what the news exists to feed. They have to shove something into our mindholes, because if they don't, we'll just change the channel or hit the net until we find someone that will. Sure, they could be more responsible in the face of our madness, but there's no profit in that.

At least they're getting paid to lie, spin, speculate wildly, or just sit there and tell us over and over again that they don't know anything. We're getting lied to, told wrong things, and wasting our time trying to find stuff out we don't need, and nobody's paying us squat. So what's our excuse?

De Bland, De Bland!

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 08:02:36 -0500

The News, 1 November 2007

Memo to Craig Wilson: YOU ARE DUMB.

After a brief sabbatical to deal with that exceptionally crazy motherfucker from yesterday, we return to the warm, smothering embrace of The Purple. Because a two-day break isn't enough to prepare me for supposed "moderate" Republicans objecting to the potential Attorney General's first torture dodge for being too vague, but accepting his second vague dodge because he padded it out to four pages. In other words, FUCK POLITICS.

And fuck Craig Wilson, while we're at it. I know The Purple* is a bastion of banality, but I'd always thought of it as a very focused, specific banality. Celebrity-obsessed, full of minutia that you don't care about but that is at the very least concerned with current and existing trivialities.

Which is why I was a bit staggered by Wildon's front-page column, The Final Word. I can only assume it's called that because it deals with topics months or years after every other columnist has weighed in, because yesterday, we learned how Wilson feels about... tattoos.

From his writing, it's impossible to tell how old Wilson is, but my best guess would be 41 going on 90. Young enough to use the term "TMI", but old enough to feel the need to explain it. Young enough to worry about "where tattoos are on the hip parade", and old enough to use the phrase "the hip parade". Old enough to have a niece of marriageable age, but close enough to mid-life crisis for an unrecognizable tattoos on her bare shoulder to trigger a mild paroxysm of introspection.

For fuck's sake, it's 2007. If you're gonna pull an Andy Rooney kids-today curmudgeon-fest over tattoos, at least have the self respect to have it be caused by something out of the ordinary, like a full-back tableau of the cast of Friends, or a white power logo on your barista's forehead. Don't let it be this. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I turned around to see a series of parallel lines, some longer than others, some dotted with little round marks. He said it was his family and then pointed out his father, mother, sister. I think there were a couple of brothers, too. A family tree of sorts, right there on the underside of his arm between his wrist and his elbow. A tattoo."

If Wilson is waiting for our collective gasp of shock, I hope he brought a book. A clerk! At a clothing store! Had a tattoo! Alert the media! Oh, wait. Wilson IS the media. I'm so happy he jumped on this "tattoos are more commonplace than ever" story less than a decade after it broke. And that the editors of The Purple thought this was important enough for front-page status.

Here's a tip for all prospective authors, no matter who you write for. Please, please, please don't pad your piece with two paragraphs about an obviously apocryphal story you "read online". The few remaining people on earth for whom stories of "foreign language tattoo/T-shirt turns out to have inappropriate translation, much to naive American's chagrin" are still entertaining already have their lifetime subscriptions to Readers Digest. And kind, professional care workers to read to them. If only Wilson had gotten this advice before it was too late.

His entire column boils down to this: "I saw a tattoo. Are tattoos still cool? I'm not cool. My niece had a tattoo, but I couldn't make out what it was. It didn't have writing. Will tattoos look stupid when people get older? I don't know." It's so mind-numbing I actually tried to figure out how it got past even the admittedly lax editing standards of The Purple, until I went back and spotted this sentence:

"Britney Spears is said to have nine." Craig Wilson is boring... LIKE A FOX. He must know by now that any article that mentions Britney Spears will get automatically published in The Purple through Pavlovian reflex. No matter how dumb it otherwise is.

*I suppose I should be putting in regular reminders that The Purple is my nickname for the Life section of the USA Today, but really, it's your own damn fault for coming in mid-week and not backtracking.

More Purple Prose

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:07:44 -0500

The News, 30 October 2007

Memo to The Purple: YOU ARE STILL DUMB.

And I'm still sick to death of the political landscape. Obama's "ex-gay" gospel singer used the platform Obama provided to spew more of his "Jesus will take away your cock cravings" bullshit. And Obama's fine with that, because bigots vote too. Obama! More hope, less fucking audacity! FUCK POLITICS. In both senses of the phrase.

Thank goodness for the soothing, succulent balm of The Purple in these trying times! Finally, a news organization willing to take on the tough topics, like, oh, an entire page-and-a-quarter on how lead is bad for you. If you still don't know lead is bad for you in 2007, it's too late. A page and a half in USA Today will not help you. You've already licked one windowsill too many.

I'm much more fascinated by the coveted upper right hand corner ad, to be honest. If my eyes are to be believed, the fine people at Mastercard have decided to counter Visa's hate campaign against American currency* with a positive message of personal improvement. Which would be commendable, except for the unfortunate fact that said message takes the form of a series of web-based "pep talks" from football's Peyton Manning.

What's worse is, the ad says you can send these pep talks to a friend. I have an almost infinite supply of nouns I could use to describe someone who thought that a pre-recorded message from a goddamned quarterback shilling for a multinational credit card company is just what I need to get through the fucking day. "Friend" ain't one of them. And on that note, if you think it'd be a cracking joke to send one of them, send me the golf one. I've already decided that would be the least least funny one to send me.

Because segues are for losers, I'd also like to point out that The Purple has developed a unique brand of context-specific mathematics. As part of their non-stop coverage of Stars In Trouble (24 column inches yesterday alone, by my rough estimate), they had a chart showing singers with personal foibles and their subsequent album sales. Now, I understand that what the entertainment industry considers success is a capricious and incomprehensible thing, but it's still painfully obvious that author Brandon Weigel tied his interpretations of sales figures to the stars' narrative arcs.

Paul McCartney sells 539,000 records after his messy divorce, and that's "solid numbers", because, well, he's the "nice" Beatle who everyone sided with over that amputee from the dancing show. Yet his sales were actually LOWER than everyone else in the article.

Kelly Clarkson sells 683,000 albums, but disputes with her managers and the record label earns her total an "only" from Weigel. And she should consider herself LUCKY. Janet Jackson showed her titty to the world by accident, and her near-million-selling album gets "panned by critics" and "well below [her] peak". I will not posit an explanation for the trend, over three datapoints, that the sales go up but the description gets worse as you move farther away from White Male. I will only mention it, as it holds true, especially if you throw in R. Kelly, who managed to get a "started strong" and "almost reached platinum" despite selling about 65,000 fewer records than Janet. Oh, and the whole "charged with fucking a teenager on tape" thing.

And then there's poor Whitney Houston. Three quarters of a million records. Two hundred thousand more than McCartney. And Whitney gets "slammed by critics", "worst-selling album to date", and the dread modifier "just". I think that's unfair. At least Whitney's tenuous grasp on reality came from all the alleged crack smoking. Which is, the last time I checked, slightly less debasing than an interior page byline in The Purple.

*Seriously, Visa. Paying for shit with cash money will not throw a monkey wrench into our incredibly efficient capitalist paradise and earn you the universal scorn of your fellow cash-free citizens. Give it a rest already.

The Future Of Entertainment

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:29:39 -0500

Video Games, 28 September 2007

Memo to Randy Salas: YOU ARE DUMB.

I know that there's a perception out there that the newspaper is a dying breed. That they only appeal to an increasingly aging population. People who think that information is best produced overnight, squirted on a pile of dead trees, then hurled at a stoop by a preadolescent entrepreneur. And there's some truth to that. Some motherfucker is still reading Hagar The Horrible, and if he's not sixty, he's six.

For a while, newspapers tried to fight the trend - they put things in boxes, cut way down on the amount of text, and printed links to websites that a few sad, unfortunate souls are still hitting with PS/2 mice they bought at the Goodwill, hoping to be taken down the information superhighway. And that was a mistake. But it's a mistake to go too far in the other direction, too, which brings us to Randy Salas of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and his startling analysis of the future of videogames. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"All three are part of a hot genre that has energized the already-booming video-game industry -- 'first-person shooters,' games that make players feel as though they're actually experiencing on-screen events through the eyes of an unseen main character, shooting away at assailants through level after level."

I believe Mr. Holmes has brilliantly deduced the complete lack of feces in the immediate vicinity. I was going to say that the target audience for Randy Salas' video game columny must be grandmas and unfrozen cavemen, but it's late 2007, and grandma's got a Wii and thinks Randy Salas is a condescending tool.

What's actually happening is that Salas wants an excuse to write about Bioshock, Halo 3, and Metroid Prime: Corruption. They're three of the biggest games out right now, and since they have something vaguely in common, Salas saw the Holy Grail of column writing, the INSTANT PREMISE. The first-person shooter! It's new! It's hip! It's what's happening!

Unfortunately, even Salas is forced, by dint of not being an unfrozen caveman himself, to acknowledge some of the prior art in this field. His premise requires him to do so dismissively, however, and he comes through in spades. "Although such games were popularized in the early '90s through groundbreaking PC titles such as 'Wolfenstein 3-D' and "Doom," they're attacking in greater numbers now on home consoles thanks to technology that makes the games feel more realistic."

In other words, they're shinier and have motion controls. Halo 3 is shiny. Bioshock is really REALLY shiny. And Metroid lets you pull switches by pulling. ALERT THE MEDIA! Oh, wait. The media will just fuck it up.

The biggest, most gaping flaw in Salas' premise is that Halo 3 is a sequel to Halo and Halo 2. Metroid Prime: Corruption is a sequel to Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime: Echoes. And Bioshock is a spiritual sequel to System Shock and System Shock II. All first-person shooters*, all of which have, in one way or the other, energized the video game industry in the past half dozen years. And while all three of these threes are very good games, they're not signifiers of anything except that video game companies release their biggest titles in the fall.

The rest of the article is padded out by quotes about these games from what I have to assume are either Salas' own gaming buddies, or whatever dudes happened to be loitering in the Gamestop on a Saturday afternoon. He painstakingly explains online play, in which your on-screen opponents are actual other people from actual other places playing at the same time. WHAT A COUNTRY! Surprisingly, he never once mentions, oh, Quake, the PC, or the fact that your actual on-screen opponents are actual sixteen-year-olds who will teabag you and call you a faggot. Nor does he mention that two of the three games he's tying together don't actually have online play.

There wasn't room, you see, because he had to segue back into another bit describing what was, at the time, the fever pitch of anticipation that awaited Tuesday's release of Halo 3. Which, we found out AFTER Tuesday, could be finished faster than the sixteen-year-old from the previous paragraph in a room full of gay porn. Good thing it's got multiplayer, huh?

The moral of the story is, "Three Good Things That Exist" is not a premise. Nor does it need one. Nor should you manufacture a flimsy one out of the fact that these are the four thousand and first, four thousand and fourth, and four thousand and seventh games in the history of mankind to be viewed from the players eyes and have guns. Unless you're a lazy columnist and want to make easy work for another lazy columnist. Then, by all means, go right ahead. There's one of these Fridays every single fucking week, you know.

*This is neither the time, nor the place, to have the argument about the Metroid Prime series. If you're looking at this footnote and know exactly what I'm talking about, and were hovering over the link to send me an e-mail before you thought to check what the asterisk was about, know that if it ever comes down to a nerd slapfight, I'll stand beside you with my devastating windmill attack readied.

10-W-4E(state)

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:11:11 -0500

The News, 13 September 2007

Memo to Michael Ruane and, by extension, Claudette Mabe: YOU ARE DUMB.

Ah, journalism. The noble process by which dogged individuals take a series of events, dig into the details, and provide us with facts. Man, I sure do fucking miss that. But missing it won't bring it back, and more importantly, missing it won't fill the column inches and television hours that journalism used to fill.

Sensing a need for words to wrap around Macy's ads, newspapers like the Washington Post turn to "staff writers" like Michael Ruane to help maintain the illusion that newspapers are more than a vehicle for Best Buy circulars and Beetle Motherfucking Bailey. And when something vaguely odd but innocuous happens in our nation's capital, Ruane is right there to tell us that it happened, reveal that neither he, nor anyone else, knows what the fuck it was, and provide commentary in the form of a passerby who has even less of a clue.

The incident in question involved the Vietnam War Memorial, aka "The Wall", which, as far as I know, is widely regarded by all and sundry as an appropriate, and surprisingly non-jingoistic, tribute to those who fought and died during what is now the second-greatest military clusterfuck in US history.

Apparently, the National Park Service discovered an oily substance on a section of the wall. When you find an oily substance on a national landmark, you understandably have some questions. What was the substance? Why was it on the wall? Did it harm the wall? And was it able to be removed from the wall?

Thanks to the intrepid work of Mr. Ruane, we now know the answer to ONE of those questions. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"The material, which appeared to be gone yesterday, was noticed along the paving stones and the bottom of some of the panels... A roughly 10-foot area of the Wall's western side was cordoned off yesterday with orange traffic cones, and a plastic bucket containing water and a small scrub brush was nearby."

They had to use water... AND A SCRUB BRUSH? If it was vandalism, a possibility Ruane raises at various points in his article, they would have to be the worst vandals ever. I mean, the wall is already black and shiny. What possible gain could be made for making the wall MORE SLIPPERY? Is the vandal hiding in the bushes, snickering as people find the name of their fallen relative, reach out to touch it tenderly, only to have their fingers slide closer to the next person alphabetically? OH THE HUMANITY.

The investigation, we learn, is ongoing. I presume the "does it taste like salad dressing" experts have been notified. But here's the best part. Knowing instinctively that his shitty little story lacked punch, Ruane got the opinion of at least one passerby. And here is the reaction he decided to add to his article about, lest we forget, a small amount of an unidentified oil on the bottom and paving stones near the Vietnam War Memorial:

"Claudette Mabe of Swords Creek, Va., was visiting the memorial with her sisters and mother, looking for the name of a teenage neighbor who died in the war. 'It's very sad that somebody would do anything, whether you support the war or not,' she said."

Let's all say it together. WHAT THE FUCK? Support what war? Vietnam doesn't make any sense. Even Oliver Stone has stopped making statements about the Vietnam War, and he doesn't work in oils. The Iraq war? I've heard a lot of shit slung about the current anti-war movement over the last few years, but "willing to spread a small amount of an oily substance at the base of a completely uncontroversial memorial to an entirely different war" wasn't one of them, until now. That's just fucking ridiculous.

Not as fucking ridiculous as the headline in the LA Times: "Bush plans to back Petraeus' report", of course, but maybe, just maybe, if Ruane works really hard, and pays his dues, maybe someday he can get a job on the coveted NO SHIT, SHERLOCK beat at the Times.

Snark Is Not Cheese

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 07:54:59 -0500

The News, 20 August 2007

Memo to Camille Paglia: SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Lest you think I'm some heartless cad seeking to silence an important Women's Voice, allow me to clarify. Paglia can keep writing books and appearing on talk shows if she likes. Just so long as she puts a mercy bullet in the empty brain pan of her monthly Salon column.

Whenever I find myself - for one reason or another - reading the thing, I can't help but think that someone, somewhere, has drastically misinterpreted the value of being provocative. Art should be provocative. Especially in the glory days of passive consumption, art should provoke a reaction in the audience. But an air horn, set off five inches behind the right ear, will also provoke a reaction, and that doesn't mean the air horn has something to say.

Paglia's Salon columns contain two basic types of writing: Shit We Already Know, and Stupid Shit. And despite the stated raison d'etre of this column, it's the first that's actually the most irritating.

See, Paglia writes her column once a month. Which is nice work, if you can get it. She's writing a monthly column, for a publication devoted to politics and current events. On the Internet. Where a month is, for all practical intents and purposes, an eternity. Snark does not age well. It's like she's been saving up Styrofoam boxes of Cheesecake Factory leftovers in her fridge for a month, microwaving them until they're warm, and serving up a bunch of moldy insights that weren't that fucking great when they were fresh.

For example, did you know that Elizabeth Edwards and Ann Coulter got into a verbal tussle on cable news? SO DID I. It was one of those things that we all sort of gave a vague shit about for a day or two while it was happening, but has proven, with the passage of time, utterly irrelevant. Thank fuck Camille Paglia was there to breezily recap it for us so that she could tell us how terribly bored she is with primary season!

Other things you may not have known, if Paglia had not come along to type it: The Iraq war is bad, terrorists are scary, and Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni are dead. I'm not sure what the fuck she accomplishes by telling us this, other than making my bridge-collapse column seem topical, but the dead directors thing does allow her to segue into her second section, cultural snobbery.

Now, I would love elitism as much as the next guy, if the next guy weren't some brain-dead moose-fucker unfit to carry my metaphorical mental jockstrap. BUT. Nobody could love elitism enough to stop this from being easily the most punchable sentence I've read in months. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"When Antonioni's plotless "L'Avventura" was shown at Harpur, the entire theater emptied within a half-hour -- except for the front row of me and my friends, transfixed by the aquiline profile of a very anxious Monica Vitti, her blond locks tossed this way and that, as she searched a desolate Italian island for her capriciously absent friend."

Oh, you Antonioni-respecting iconoclastic scamp! Paglia goes on to bemoan the death of the art film, thanks to the kids today with their CGI Optimi Prime and the liberal rejection of religion. No, really.

"As a professed atheist, I detest the current crop of snide manifestos against religion written by professional cynics, flâneurs and imaginatively crimped and culturally challenged scientists. The narrow mental world they project is very grim indeed -- and fatal to future art. My pagan brand of atheism is predicated on worship of both nature and art. I want the great world religions taught in every school. Secular humanism has reached a dead end -- and any liberals who don't recognize that are simply enabling the worldwide conservative reaction of fundamentalism in both Christianity and Islam."

You see, Paglia has to be a professed atheist in much the same way that George W. Bush has to be a professed good president. She has to profess it because otherwise, we might be fooled by all her worshipping, paganity, and support of the New Age movement (mentioned just prior to this quote) that she was instead a randomly-spiritualistic bundle of fashionable beliefs circa 1987.

This, I shit you not, leads directly to the conclusion that rock and roll is dead except for the Rolling Stones, who still kick ass, before finishing with praise for both Kelly Clarkson and a hip new techno-tool we all need to be made aware of ASAP, something called "YouTube".

The air horn is looking more appealing by the minute.

Jolly Old Dumbasses

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 22:27:32 -0500

The News, 16 July 2007

Memo to the BBC Magazine: FECK OFF, ARSEHOLES.

Of all the comedy in the world, no comedy is more irritating than your basic, standard-issue gender stereotype comedy. The instant the phrase "What are you thinking, honey" leaves a comedian's lips, you know you are in the presence of Hackery Supreme, and should remove yourself from the premises posthaste. And it's your own goddamned fault for tuning in to the Bill Engvall Show in the first place.

Which was why it was so goddamned maddening to see all the news stories that seized on some stupid study that analyzed how much women and men talked. Turns out they talk about the same amount, which came as a surprise to anyone who's never watched Bill O'Reilly. But that didn't stop the BBC from taking the 546-word difference per day and, using that dry British wit of theirs, suggest what some of those 500 words were that birds used while blokes eschewed. It's an awful premise, made ineffably worse by the execution, which featured such entries as:

"Accessorise: If men were ever to use this word it would only be in the context of cars." Here's an important comedy tip. I cannot stress this enough. I don't care which side of the Atlantic you're on, if your comedy premise is a list of words women use and men don't, it's a BAD IDEA to start your list with a word that you have to make an exception for.

Burlesque. Well, first of all, NOBODY uses "burlesque" anymore outside of its specific cultural context. But back when burlesque was a going concern, you know, in olden days when you had to leave your house to see nipples, it was a form of entertainment aimed squarely at men. So I'm not even sure why it's in this list at all, unless it has something to do with that goddamned "Moulin Rouge" movie.

Pomegranate. What the fuck? The BBC uses the excuse that real men can't grasp the concept of "superfoods", which is just sad. I mean, assuming you made the awful choice to go with "pomegranate" to begin with, for fuck's sake, it's a reddish-pink sack full of seeds that exists solely to be PULPED AND JUICED. If you can't find a way to make a male insecurity joke out of that, you have no business trying to be funny in print.

Conventionally attractive HA HA AVERAGE WOMEN ARE JEALOUS OF AND THEREFORE HATE PRETTY WOMEN HA HA.

What are you thinking? I mention this not to knock down the pin I set up in the second paragraph. No, I mention this because, well, this is four words. And thanks to the magic of counting, I have determined that the author of the piece does in fact count this as four of the 46 words women use that men don't. Which is another epic failure of premise. I can suspend my disbelief long enough to see how men might use neither "conventionally" or "attractive", for example, as separate words OR as a phrase. Applying that same logic to the words "what", "are", and "you"? Not so much. And certainly not for a joke that's as saggy and worn out as the Queen's panties.

"Afghanistan: A place where the debate is rather starker". Um, I hate to use up my "what the fuck" quota this early in the week, but what the fuck? This doesn't parse as comedy, so all I can figure is it's a horribly injected bit of social commentary. A sort of "hey, we're all having a bit of a laugh about gender differences, but let's all take a moment to remember that things are really bad for women in some parts of the world, and that's why women mention those parts of the world and men never do. All right. HEY, MEN HATE BABIES! HA HA HA!"

Ms. and feminism. Because, you know. It may not be 1972 right now, but it's 1972 somewhere, right?

I was THIS close to giving the BBC credit for avoiding one of the most trite, bullshit tropes of gender stereotype comedy. I even did a search to make sure the word didn't appear ANYWHERE in the article. But then, in mid-kudo, I noticed the illustration that accompanied the piece. If a picture is worth a thousand words, all 1,000 of those words were "shoes". Congratulations, BBC-Magazine-writers-too-ashamed-to-attach- your-names-to-this-piece. You left no lame, sad-ass, moronic stone unturned.

Journalism McNuggets

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:01:09 -0500

Main Column, 11 July 2007

Memo to the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board: YOU ARE DUMB.

I know you know what the game of "chicken" is. I know this because you padded out the intro of your ridiculous editorial yesterday with it. As you say, the game is "a contest in which two motorists speed toward each other to see who will yield -- or 'chicken out' -- first."

It's a game you don't actually see much of in real life, but that you do see a lot of in bad movies, especially bad movies about teens and cars. Especially bad movies about teens and cars from the 1960's.

Since you've managed to conveniently avoid linguistic, taxonomical, or ontological excuses in your very first paragraph, then, I have to ask. What the fuck were you thinking applying the game of "chicken" to the various Congressional subpoenas for the US Attorney investigations?

I don't really have to ask. I know the answer. The first thing you were thinking was, "fuck, we need an editorial for Tuesday". A sentiment to which I share no small degree of sympathy. But I'm pretty sure the second thing you thought, after surveying the topical landscape for fodder on which to opine, was that here was a situation in which one side, the side you traditionally support, was clearly and unequivocally in the wrong.

And the traditional journalistic response to one side being clearly and unequivocally wrong is to find a way to frame things so that the side that is unequivocally NOT wrong is in fact also wrong. In the Chicago Tribune's case, this is done by declaring, right off the bat, that a game of "chicken" is taking place, and then completely failing to demonstrate that two cars are in fact rushing toward each other. Or that one of the participants is even driving a car in the first place.

The thing about the "chicken" metaphor is that the implication is that BOTH SIDES are being deliberately reckless over a misplaced sense of pride. The editorial goes into a bit of detail about the Bush administration's recklessness, albeit in milquetoast terms. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"The issue Congress is investigating is an important one -- why did so many prosecutors get the ax, well into a president's second term? The administration says it was dissatisfied with their performance, which is a legitimate reason. But there is reason to wonder."

OK. They've placed Bush in one car, and sent it, if not careening, at least cruising, down the road toward oncoming headlights. So now, the Tribune will show how the Democrats are also being reckless, right?

Well, sort of. All the Tribune is willing to accuse the Democrats of is considering going to court over the matter, where they might lose. Those crazy bastards and their painstakingly tentative exploration of options! They'll bring ruin on us all!

And that's the other thing about the "chicken" metaphor. It demands that, if neither side flinches, something horrible will happen. Of course, what that horrible thing IS isn't actually mentioned. This is the best they can muster:

"The Supreme Court has said that executive privilege sometimes may be overruled -- but it has given little indication if a congressional investigation of this sort would prevail over the president's need for confidentiality in internal deliberations. If the administration goes to the mat, however, it could provoke a ruling that would permanently limit the president's power. It might also alienate many Americans who will suspect it of having something unsavory to hide.

Shit, if those are the consequences of chicken, then gentlemen, START YOUR FUCKING ENGINES. Heaven forbid the president alienate many Americans. Imagine what kind of shape we'd be if, oh, 72% of the country didn't like the job he was doing. Why, the Chicago Tribune might have to take the bold step of writing another retarded editorial, and we can't have that, can we?

The editorial ends with a predictable call for "compromise", as if the last six years had happened to some other fucking universe. I defy the Tribune editorial board to present one single bonafide instance of the Bush administration actually compromising on any issue. And by "compromise", I mean actually changing its position and moving toward the opposition because it has to in order to accomplish something. Starting out with a vaguely moderate position and pissing off the base doesn't count, so no cheating and trying to pass off the immigration bill. I'm watching.

It's just the latest in a never-ending series of pundit escapades which ignores history and reality in favor of a plastic plant, wax fruit, Schoolhouse Rock version of government, where high-minded public servants with honest differences of opinion can meet and find common ground on solving the issues facing America.

Muggers don't compromise. When they've got a gun in your face, they're not going to agree to take half your money and only one of your credit cards if you agree to... let them take half your money and only one of your credit cards. And if they DID agree to that, the event wouldn't be some sort of triumph for both parties. You still end up mugged.

I suspect the Chicago Tribune knows this. But they're basically acting as a lookout, distracting the other passersby in exchange for their cut of the loot, and if the mugger actually gets busted, their cut disappears. So, you know, fuck them, fuck their game of "chicken", and fuck their half-assed, unsupported, bullshit metaphor masquerading as intelligent, moderate discourse.