Let’s take Mr. Peabody’s WABAC (Wayback) Machine to the not-too-distant past of September 2006, when George Bush II and John Kerry were just entering the final sprint of the presidential campaign. Dan Rather, the most well-known and well-respected television anchor in America, fronted a report prepared by experienced and well-respected TV news producer Mary Mapes […]
Remember Joe Isuzu. For those not watching TV in the late 80’s, Joe Isuzu was the insincere, slimy, greasy-haired, double-talking fictional spokesperson for the Isuzu line of cars and trucks. Played to obsequious perfection by David Leisure, Joe Isuzu used the oiliest and most transparently hypocritical of demeanors to state such outrageous lies as “It […]
Read More… from The evolution of villains into good guys in television commercials.
Over the weekend, Yahoo’s home page linked to an article titled “The Middle Class in America is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove It.” on Yahoo! Finance. The article originally appeared in “The Business Insider,” and was written by Michael Snyder, editor of a website called theeconomiccollapseblog.com, which builds a case for a […]
Read More… from Again a writer uses accurate facts to propose something that isn’t true.
I’m guessing that most house dogs allowed to lollygag around the living rooms of middle class households have been neutered or spayed. Left without sex, the highest sensual pleasure of house dogs would likely be when someone rubs them on their belly. What are we then to think about the TV commercial, now around for […]
Read More… from Advertiser tells us that the highest sensual pleasure is eating sugar-coated cereal.
Here’s one day in the life of this observer of mass media: Yesterday afternoon: Read the latest issue of Nation magazine to find a wonderful article in which Christian Parenti proposes that the Obama Administration kickstart the move to cleaner energy sources by orienting government purchases towards the clean and green. Parenti lists electrical vehicles, […]
In a blog entry of February 28, I said that the mainstream media was paying too much attention to the Tea Party movement. I stated rather bluntly that at that point, the impact of the Tea Party was zero. This statement came before the primaries in which Tea Party candidates have tended to do ill […]
In his opinion piece in yesterday’s New York Times, Ross Douthat blames the racist and anti-immigrant views of some rural whites on the admissions policies of eight elite colleges. In a masterpiece of specious reasoning and selective fact reporting, Harvard-educated Douthat declares that Pat Buchanan was right when he said that the American elite discriminate […]
Most book review sections approach summer as if it were a time to turn off the brain and wallow in escapist plots and fantasy characters. Summer reading, we are told again and again, should focus on light, easy-to-digest genre fiction like mystery, sci-fi, gothic and romance. The assumption, I guess, is that when sitting on […]
Read More… from Chill out your sun-fevered brain with some interesting contemporary poetry.
Here’s a multiple choice question that would fit into any SAT or GRE test: Which one of these verbal miscues does not belong? Sarah Palin confuses the California city of Eureka with Eureka College in Illinois. David Vitter, Senator from Louisiana running for reelection, suggests that an appropriate group should go to court over the […]
Read More… from Tea’d-up Republicans spout falsehoods and absurdities through mouths full of shoe.
I know I’m not the first to point out the proclivity of the mass media to turn discussions of important issues into fights between people. Instead of discussing the issues in a rational way or seeking to sift the truth from the obfuscation, the media prefers to focus attention on polls, slips-of-the-tongue, gotcha’s, false accusations […]