Reflections From a Murky Pond

Politicians speak a great deal, especially to the press, and they say as little as they can possibly get away with while doing so. The ability to spew or drool an incessant stream of bullshit is a core job skill for the average politician and the one most required in order to keep their jobs.

From The Politician’s Mouth To The Press’ Ears

When comes right down to it, in the absence of statesmen, the only benefit that politicians provide to the people is a source of fertilizer and, even then, they spew it so profligately and indiscriminately that they poison far more than they stimulate.

Tags: Humor | Journalism | Lies | Media | Politics

This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2011 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Humor, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Perhaps it’s just me and the odd way my mind works, but the dichotomy in both legal and societal reaction to blackmail and “investigative journalism” seems quite odd to me. The difference between how we as a society view the two enterprises doesn’t seem to have any real, fact-based reasoning.

Why is Blackmail a crime, a felony in most or all cases, and “investigative journalism,” which is often better described as “muckraking” and does greater perceived harm to the victim an oft-lauded and protected activity?

The Shamed – Might They Have Preferred Blackmail?

Both blackmail and “investigative journalism” are based upon finding damaging and/or embarrassing details about a victim. The only difference is that a blackmailer gives the victim an alternative to being exposed.

So why is the blackmailer vilified and the reporter oft-times lauded?

It can’t be because blackmail causes greater harm to the victim than the muckraker does. Simple economics require that the price asked of the the victim by the blackmailer be less painful than exposure would be. Blackmail, after all, is a consumer driven industry where the victim sets the price based upon his or perceived pain points.

It can’t be because the blackmailer profits from his activities. Journalists, paparazzi, and random individuals with access to “sensitive” information regularly profit from exposing influential or famous people’s various faults, flaws, failings, and peccadilloes.

Nor can I see where or how it could be that blackmail is a crime against the People or State as opposed to being a crime against a Person. Not all, or even most cases of blackmail have involved politicians or businessmen in the context of their jobs and few of those that we know of have involved extorting them to act in certain manners. In point of fact, the exposées much touted by the media have seemingly had far more impact upon corporations and politics, yet they are legal and societally approved of.

It just doesn’t some to make any logical sense, yet I and all who I know are firm in our convictions that blackmail is wrong and must be a crime, whereas “investigative journalism” – or even “tell all,” unapproved biographies – are to be protected as basic rights necessary to our society.

Tags: Blackmail | Crime | Irony | Journalism | Law | Media | Musings | Politics | Shame | Society | WTF

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 11th, 2011 at 8:54 am and is filed under Musings, Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

CNN, along with the rest of the Mainstream Media (MSM) have little value and are more interested profiting off of death, destruction, and misery than aiding the world in any fashion whatsoever.

As these creatures profit from all forms of human misery and have repeatedly shown that when there is not enough of it to pad to their wallets they will actively strive to create that misery by willfully escalating conflicts they have become a force for abject Evil.

I truly do not believe that any man or woman who actively or tacitly supports them in any way, even by the merely failing to strike against them when and as possible, can expect anything other than disapprobation and/or damnation from their God(s).

This is especially true when the solution to the problem of these disgusting scavengers is two-fold yet simple in execution:

1. No government, military, or aid agency should allow the operatives of CNN or any other media outlet access to any situation or theater where people are endangered in any manner until after all needed efforts have been completed. If these filth complain, they should be given one warning. If they ignore this warning or complain a second time, their entire field team should be executed on the spot.
2. No person should ever lend any form of aid or comfort to these media vultures. They should never be provided with food, shelter, transport, or information of any sort. If and when the vermin complain, their equipment should be taken from them or destroyed and they should be driven off, using whatever level of force is required to accomplish this.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men and women do nothing and the God(s) will surely judge each of us by our both are actions and when we chose not to act.

Tags: CNN | Death | Evil | Journalism | Media | MSM | Scavengers | Vermin

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 at 6:27 am and is filed under Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

There’s a fair amount of discussion lately about how the internet has supplanted printed media as a news medium and how this is affecting newspapers across America.

There’s also been discussion about these newspapers moving to “paywall models” for their digital content. Whether or not such schemes will allow any individual newspaper to survive is, I believe, more upon who their target audience is than upon any other factor or or factors.

So who reads which newspapers?

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country, and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a poor job of it, thank you very much.
6. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
7. The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who is running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
8. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.
9. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
10. The Seattle Times is read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something to wrap it in.
11. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, if they could find the time from indoor tanning, teeth whitening, and botox – and if they didn’t have to leave Southern California to do it.
12. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure if there is a country or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped people-of-color feminist gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy — provided of course, that they are not Republicans.

NOTE: Variants of this list / joke have been circulating since at least 2005 but this version came from Fellowship of the Minds.

So which group, if any, do you think will find paying for a digital subscription to their newspaper to be of value? The movers and shakers,the would-be movers and shakers, the Frustrati, or the prurient masses seeking enjoyment through Schadenfreude?

Personally I think the newspaper, such as it is, with by far the best chance of having a salable digital market is The National Enquirer. It has a large consumer base, none of which want to be seen purchasing it! 😉

Tags: Blogging | Humor | Internet | Jokes | Journalism | Marketing | Media | Newspapers | Society | Technology

This entry was posted on Friday, March 18th, 2011 at 8:17 am and is filed under Humor, Society, Technology. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

I’m fairly sure that most people in the Civilized World have heard that CBS reporter Lara Logan was brutally beaten and gang raped by 200 or so of the insurrectionists in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday February 11, 2011.

That’s in the Civilized World. The Muslim World knows little, if anything, about it because they don’t consider such events to be newsworthy.

If one goes to the Liberals’ new darling “news outlet,” Al-Jazeera English and search for any mention of “Lara Logan“, the non-results are stark proof that her vicious attack was not considered something that should be reported upon even to their growing Western audience.  Completely unsurprisingly, their original, Arabic site also has no mention of Lara Logan.

In point of fact, if one searches for “rape” on Al-Jazeera English’s website, one will find many articles about the crime but none of them involve rape committed by Arabs. Their their original, Arabic site seems to be similar, though it includes articles about rapes of female political prisoners within Iran which are tellingly not found on Al-Jazeera English.

The attack upon and brutalization, defilement, and pollution of an attractive, blond-haired, blue-eyed, Western, female reporter by a reeking mob of slavering Muslim apes isn’t news within the Muslim World unless it’s such that they can gloat and crow about it.

Additionally, since the gang rape couldn’t be pinned on Mubarek’s agents or supporters, it didn’t fit the “message” that Al Jazeera’s anti-American propaganda machine, Al-Jazeera English seeks to poison the Civilized World with, they were never going to comment upon it.

So we in the Civilized World should not be shocked by Al-Jazeera’s refusal to cover Lara Logan’s beating and gang rape. Her’s was reportedly not the only sexual assault upon a Western woman by Egyptian males in Tahrir Square that day and such gang rapes, nor are such attacks unusual during larger, emotional gatherings of Muslims in Egypt.

Rape, pedophilia, and disgustingly barbaric levels of abuse of women and girls are all part and parcel of Islam and the Muslim World, hence they’re no more newsworthy there than going to the local market is within the Civilized World so there’s no rational or sane reason to expect any media outlet that caters to Muslims to report upon it.

This holds true for the original, Arabic version of Al-Jazeera which caters to an Arab Muslim audience. Al-Jazeera English is another story and they should be dealt with differently.

Tags: Al-Jazeera | CBS | Crime | Egypt | Islam | Journalism | Lara Logan | Media | Media Bias | Muslims | Politics | Propaganda | Society | Vermin

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 20th, 2011 at 8:36 am and is filed under Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.