'Best of TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Short Takes 2007 III
By Baron Dave Romm
Shockwave Radio Theater podcasts
Why "Journalists" needs to be in quotes
Here are a few Glenn Greenwald observations. Salon.com Premium is the easiest way, but you can usually click through the ads.
A new low of mindlessness for our media Greenwald from July 31, 2007:
It is difficult to remember a media spectacle to match yesterday's grand pageant where Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon were paraded across virtually every network and cable news show and radio program and heralded as "war opponents" and "Bush critics" who nonetheless returned from Iraq and were forced by The Truth to admit that we are Winning. For sheer deceit and propaganda, it is difficult to remember something quite this audacious and transparently false.
As was demonstrated yesterday, O'Hanlon and Pollack were among the most voracious cheerleaders for Bush's invasion and, as the war began to collapse, among its most deceitful defenders. But it goes so far beyond that.
Even through this year, they have remained loyal Bush supporters. They were not only advocates of the war, but cheerleaders for the Surge. They were, and continue to be, on the fringe of pro-war sentiment in this country. And yet all day yesterday, this country's media loudly hailed them as being exactly the opposite of what they really are. It was 24 hours of unadulterated, amazingly coordinated war propaganda that could not have been any further removed from the truth.
Greenwald comment on conventional wisdom v. polls, July 12, 2007:
The gap between (a) the core beliefs of the right-wing movement and their media allies and (b) the vast majority of American citizens is one that is vast and growing, and it now extends to virtually every issue of political significance. In virtually every area, the defining beliefs of the "conservative" movement (which are frequently synonymous with the conventional wisdom of our Beltway media) are now confined to a small fringe of the American citizenry.
Read the rest of the article for poll numbers.
The Tom Friedman of 2002 has not gone anywhere. Greenwald on ostensibly "left leaning" Tom Friedman of the NY Times continues to support the Iraq War and the insanity surrounding it. Nov. 18, 2007. Quick outtake:
[Tom Friedman's] column this morning argues that if Barack Obama becomes President, "he might want to consider keeping Dick Cheney on as his vice president," because Cheney's crazed warmongering is desperately needed to balance Obama's excessive love of negotiations.
Media Matters picked up a few examples.
On Good Morning America, Sawyer falsely claimed Reid "vows to filibuster" claims the exact opposite of the truth, that Reid is holding an all-night Senate session to protest Republican's filibusters. From July 17, 2007.
Libby, Bush and the Lapdog Press, Media Matters 7/10/07: "The Scooter Libby leak investigation has shamed the Beltway press corps for four years running." Greenwald column on the article.
Some "journalists" are outright nasty with no penalty; some publishers and editors refuse to admit their right-wing bias
Listening/watching Limbaugh/Coulter/Beck et al is sickening, and mainly guaranteed to tighten the sphincters of right-wingers. But they are not the only examples of hate radio. Hate has gone mainstream media
Fire Tucker Carlson. NOW. DailyKos diary from Louise, Aug. 29, 2007:
Tucker Carlson appeared with Joe Scarborough last night on Dan Abrams' MSNBC Live (click thru for video) to discuss Larry Craig's speech. Normally I rarely watch Tucker; he never fails to irritate. But Abrams' program is frequent evening viewing for us, as he directly follows Olbermann, and Olbermann is a must-see (my teenage son loves his show especially}.
Carlson finished the segment by bragging about gay-bashing someone when he was in high school. Tucker relates a story about how he was approached, as a high school student, by a gay guy in a mens' room in Georgetown. Carlson described how he left the room, got a friend, and they proceeded to return to the mens' room and beat the man up.
And then Abrams - MSNBC's feckin' News Director! - and Scarborough and Carlson all had a good chortle about it!
Republicans are always soft on crime... when it's theirs. Larry Craig is not even an important example. Meanwhile, with all the foofarah about his guilty plea for lewd behavior, the media missed Craig's True Crimes: A legacy of crimes against nature. A DailyKos diary from begreen, Aug. 31, 2007.
Media matters Black and White and Re(a)d All Over: The Conservative Advantage in Syndicated Op-Ed Columns "The results show that in paper after paper, state after state, and region after region, conservative syndicated columnists get more space than their progressive counterparts." This outright bias is one of the reasons newspapers have lost readership.
Conservative, gullible or both?
The press just rolled over on Iraq, as detailed above, and they're all set to pounce on any "evidence" to poke holes in Global Warming.
Gullible Conservatives: Fooled by global warming hoax, says writer. I wonder if Limbaugh and co. had the guts to apologize. Don't hold your breath.
NYT's Andy Revkin and E. O. Wilson get suckered by Newt Gingrich's phony techno-optimism. My brother's blog, ClimateProgress.org, has the details. Nov. 15, 2007:
Newt Gingrich is an anti-environmentalist who spreads disinformation and has done more than any politician in the last two decades to thwart a sensible climate policy that includes a major clean technology component, as I have explained. Absent serious regulations, no technology-only strategy can possibly avoid catastrophic global warming (as we should have learned in the 1990s).
Digression: Right wingers are so quick to expound the bad science of the roughly 10% of "scientists" who don't accept Global Warming. (This figure is somewhat suspicious, but I'll let it slide.) I don't mind pundits poking holes in any conventional wisdom, but this seems irresponsibly one sided. In fact, more than 10% of the scientists who have come to a consensus on climate change think that it's much, much worse than reported. Where are the pundits now? If you're going to shed light on one minority opinion, you should have the integrity to shed light on all serious minority opinions.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I'll be on vacation next week, visiting family in Washington DC. Have a happy Thanksgiving.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. More radio programs, interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
--////
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
BOB GEARY: Interview with "New York Times" columnist Paul Krugman (indyweek.com)
Paul Krugma: No other advanced country allows its citizens to go without necessary health care because they can't afford it, or be financially ruined because of health care expenses. It's almost the quintessential example of what the social safety net should take care of. And it turns out also that universal health care is cheaper than our system.
Jack Shafer: Big Media Octopuses, Cutting Off Tentacles (slate.com)
IS THE AGE OF MEDIA DECONSOLIDATION UPON US?
RICHARD ROEPER: Longer holiday season makes it less 'special' (suntimes.com)
Celebrating Christmas for one-sixth of year kills the fun
Marc D. Allan: Back to the 'Futurama'
Four years after Fox left it for dead, Matt Groening and David X. Cohen's Futurama has a new life.
Chuck Myers: No loose 'Canon': Ani DiFranco releases 2-CD retrospective (McClatchy-Tribune News Service; Posted on Popmatters.com)
Compressing 20 albums into a single representative collection can prove an overwhelming task for just about any solo artist, much less a band. Not so for singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco.
Colin Covert: 'Beowulf' screenwriter says don't expect `300' in Viking horns (Star Tribune; Posted on Popmatters.com)
Fantasy author Neil Gaiman automatically turns down offers to rewrite others' work for the screen, but in the case of "Beowulf," whose 8th-century author was long dead, he made an exception.
Roger Ebert: The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
Werner Herzog's films do not depend on "acting" in the conventional sense. He is most content when he finds an actor who embodies the essence of a character, and he studies that essence with a fascinated intensity. Consider the case of Bruno S., a street performer and forklift operator whose last name was long concealed. He is the center of two Herzog films "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" (1974) and "Stroszek" (1977).
No Wave Pioneer Lydia Lunch Talks About her Latest Book (curvemag.com)
One of the artists responsible for the No Wave movement in New York City at the end of the '70s, and beginning of the '80s, writer, singer, photographer, artist, Lydia Lunch has recently published a memoir chronicling her early years, . ...
A season of splendour (guardian.co.uk)
Some people find autumn a sad time of year. They couldn't possibly be more wrong, says naturalist Richard Mabey.
How do you live to 100? (guardian.co.uk)
The best way to reach that ripe old age, according to research by Drs Leonid and Natalia Gavrilov from the Centre for Ageing at the University of Chicago, is to be average-sized, above averagely fertile, and a farmer.
Commentoon: Abstinence Programs (womensenews.org)
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Lots of fog and quite cool.
International Emmys To Honor
Al Gore
Al Gore will be able to add another award to a collection that already includes an Oscar, an Emmy and the Nobel Peace Prize when Robert De Niro presents the former vice president with a special honor Monday night at the 35th annual International Emmy Awards.
British television productions garnered a leading eight International Emmy nominations, including two for the BBC1's "The Street," which follows the lives of residents of a Manchester street. It was nominated for best drama series and best actor, Oscar winner Jim Broadbent, who plays an embittered pensioner.
The International Emmys honor excellence in TV programming produced outside the U.S.
Gore will receive the International Emmy Founders Award not only in recognition of his role in raising the alarm about global warming, but also for his efforts in launching the interactive Current TV, said Bruce Paisner, president and CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
Al Gore
Campaigns For Edwards
Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne says that Democrat John Edwards is the most progressive candidate with a chance at winning the White House, and that he would do the most for working-class Americans.
"It's a challenge to hook yourself up to what a politician says he's going to do, and see if he's going to do it," the singer-songwriter said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "I think it's a really critical time in our country and our world, and I think that working people need a champion, and I think that John Edwards is that person."
Famous for hits including "Running on Empty" and "The Pretender," Browne will be joined by Grammy Award-winning colleague Bonnie Raitt next week at five of Edwards' campaign stops in Iowa.
The two are co-founders of Musicians United For Safe Energy, along with Graham Nash and John Hall. In 1979, the group played a series of "No-Nukes" concerts, drumming up activism to thwart the spread of nuclear power. The group now works through Nukefree.org and opposes a federal bailout of the nuclear energy industry.
Jackson Browne
Staged Amid Strike
`Saturday Night Live'
About 150 audience members in a tiny Manhattan theater were the only folks in the world to witness a totally new "Saturday Night Live" episode starring guest host Michael Cera and musical guest Yo La Tengo.
Anyone who tuned into NBC was subjected to a two-week-old rerun featuring Brian Williams and Feist, thanks to an ongoing Writers Guild of America labor strike.
The "SNL" cast and writers collaborated on staging the special "Saturday Night Live - On Strike!" event at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre to benefit the behind-the-scenes staff affected by the strike. The live performance was not officially sanctioned by NBC, but "SNL" executive producer Lorne Michaels, who celebrated his 63rd birthday, did attend.
The performance included all the trappings of a typical "SNL" episode, such as a host monologue, musical performance, "Weekend Update" news segment and several comedy sketches - all without any commercial interruption.
`Saturday Night Live'
Stagehands & Producers Return To Table
Broadway
Broadway stagehands and theater producers met again Sunday, the second day of intense negotiations to find a solution to a strike that has shut down 27 plays and musicals for more than a week.
The union, Local 1, and the League of American Theatres and Producers would not comment on the resumption of the talks.
They had met for more than 12 hours Saturday in a theater-district hotel.
Pressure has mounted for a solution to the work stoppage, which began Nov. 10, because Monday starts the lucrative Thanksgiving holiday week, one of Broadway's best weeks of the year.
Broadway
'Cannonball' Driver Sets Record
Alex Roy
Extreme sports fan Alex Roy said Friday he had smashed the record for the fastest "Cannonball run" across the United States, defying police and speed traps.
Alex Roy, 35, who waited a year to boast about his exploits and remains vague about the exact dates in a bid to avoid any prosecution, said he had blistered across 13 states in 31 hours and 4 minutes, breaking the old record by more than an hour.
Car enthusiast and rally driver Roy travelled the 4,496 kilometers (2,794 miles) from New York on the East Coast to Santa Monica, California, on the West Coast at an average 145 kilometers (95 miles) an hour.
At times though he reached top speeds of 257 kilometers (160 miles) an hour, breaking the previous record set in 1983 of 32 hours and 17 minutes.
Alex Roy
Ireland To Protect From Grey Peril
Red Squirrels
Ireland's red squirrels, which are threat from their more aggressive grey British cousins, are to be thrown a lifeline under a plan published Sunday by the environment ministry.
The red squirrel is one of the most threatened mammals in Ireland but the collaborative rescue plan involving the authorities in both the Republic and British-ruled Northern Ireland is an effort to reverse the decline.
Measures to conserve the reds will include rope bridges in their areas and forestry better suited to reds than greys.
Translocation projects will move reds to areas where there is less competition from greys and officials are reviewing international research on immuno-contraception as a means of controlling greys.
Red Squirrels
Gives Dire Warming Forecast
UN Panel
Global warming is "unequivocal" and carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere commits the world to sea levels rising an average of up to 4.6 feet, the world's top climate experts warned Saturday in their most authoritative report to date.
"Only urgent, global action will do," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, calling on the United States and China - the world's two biggest polluters - to do more to slow global climate change.
According to the U.N. panel of scientists, whose latest report is a synthesis of three previous ones, enough carbon dioxide already has built up that it imperils islands, coastlines and a fifth to two-thirds of the world's species.
As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, according to the report.
UN Panel
Hunting Humpbacks
Japan
A defiant Japan embarked on its largest whaling expedition in decades Sunday, targeting protected humpbacks for the first time since the 1960s despite international opposition. An anti-whaling protest boat awaited the fleet offshore.
Bid farewell in a festive ceremony in the southern port of Shimonoseki, four ships headed for the waters off Antarctica, resuming a hunt that was cut short by a deadly fire last February that crippled the fleet's mother ship.
The whalers plan to kill up to 50 humpbacks in what is believed to be the first large-scale hunt for the once nearly extinct species since a 1963 moratorium in the Southern Pacific put the giant marine mammals under international protection.
The mission also aims to take as many as 935 minke whales and up to 50 fin whales in what Japan's Fisheries Agency says is its largest-ever scientific whale hunt. The expedition lasts through April.
Japan
Gets 'Green' Roof
Clinton Library
Bill Clinton likes to brag about his presidential library being an eco-friendly building. Now even the roof is going green.
Over the past two weeks, workers have been hoisting 90 species of plants and more than four truckloads of soil atop the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum to create a garden on an area surrounding Clinton's penthouse apartment.
Instead of bare concrete, the glass and steel building will be topped with strawberries, ferns, switch grass, roses and other greenery.
However, it's not just for looks. That layer of soil and plants will provide insulation and capture rainwater that otherwise would just be wasted as runoff.
Clinton Library
Weekend Box Office
'Beowulf'
The animated telling of "Beowulf," who rids a Danish kingdom of the feared beast Grendel, slew the box office over the weekend, giving a huge boost to 3-D films in the process.
The Paramount Pictures release earned $28.1 million in its opening weekend - 40 percent of which came from special 3-D showings in regular theaters and on Imax screens.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "Beowulf," $28.1 million.
2. "Bee Movie," $14.3 million.
3. "American Gangster," $13.2 million.
4. "Fred Claus," $12 million.
5. "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium," $10 million.
6. "Dan in Real Life," $4.5 million.
7. "No Country for Old Men," $3 million.
8. "Lions for Lambs," $3 million.
9. "Saw IV," $2.3 million.
10. "Love in the Time of Cholera," $1.9 million.
'Beowulf'
In Memory
Jim Hawthorne
Jim Hawthorne, the wacky and wildly inventive Los Angeles radio and television personality who turned traditional post-World War II broadcasting on its ear, has died. He was 88.
The Colorado-born Hawthorne came to fame in 1947 on Pasadena radio station KXLA (now KRLA) when, as Time magazine reported a year later, he "suddenly turned his show into a carefree, wit-loose 'Hellzapoppin on the air.' "
The off-beat Hawthorne voiced a slew of characters that populated his show, including Skippy (a mischievous old man who made fun of him), Eggbert (his "engineer") and Scrappy (an aptly named piece of paper he'd carry on conversations with by crinkling it against the microphone).
Hawthorne created his own world with his own lingo that was quickly picked up by his fans. His biggest catchword was "hogan." As in "Pasadena-hogan" and "hoganburger."
Musically, Hawthorne served up an eclectic playlist that included records by Spike Jones, Homer and Jethro, Buddy Baker, Red Ingle and Slim Coates -- as well as antique records from the 1910s by pioneering recording artists Arthur Pryor, Billy Murray and Prince's Band, whose "So Long Letty" became Hawthorne's theme song.
From 1950 to 1952, he hosted "This Is Hawthorne," a late-evening TV talk show on KLAC-TV (now KCOP-TV Channel 13). He also did TV shows on Channels 5 and 2.
He proved to be as innovative on television as he had been on radio.
During the late '40s and '50s, Hawthorne turned out a number of records, including the hit "Serutan Yob," a 1948 hillbilly-style parody of Nat King Cole's popular song "Nature Boy."
In 1952, he launched "Hawthorne Looks at the Weather," a daily five-minute comedic weather segment on what is now KNBC-TV Channel 4. He later did a weather spot on KTTV-TV Channel 11.
Hawthorne was born in Victor, Colo., on Nov. 20, 1918. While attending Denver University, he got his first job in radio in 1940 at KMYR. After a brief stint in the Army, he moved to Los Angeles, where he landed a job as assistant director on the Range Busters westerns before joining KXLA in 1943. He later served as program director and show host at radio station KFWB.
In 1965, Hawthorne moved to Honolulu, where he created and briefly served as the original host of "Checkers and Pogo," a popular, long-running children's TV show. He also became involved with programming at Honolulu radio station KGMB.
After moving back to Denver in 1970, he served as promotion director and program director at radio station KOA, and he created, wrote and hosted a daily news magazine for KOA-TV. He retired in 1985 but continued to make appearances on radio over the years and also wrote a Web column for a Los Angeles radio page.
In addition to son Scott, Hawthorne is survived by his other son, Darr; and five grandchildren. His daughter, Deone, died in 1994.
Jim Hawthorne
In Memory
Ronnie Burns
Ronnie Burns, the son of George Burns and Gracie Allen who played himself on his parents' TV show in the 1950s, has died. He was 72.
Born in Evanston, Ill., he was adopted when he was three months old. Although he grew up among the elite of Hollywood and the privileged of Beverly Hills, friends and family say he preferred a more low-key life.
After the "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show," which aired from 1950 to 1958, Ronnie Burns appeared on "The George Burns Show," and a few other shows, including "Playhouse 90" and "The Honeymooners."
He quit acting in the early 1960s, although he worked behind the cameras with his father in 1964, producing the sitcom "Wendy and Me."
After leaving show business, he went into real estate investment, using money he made from acting. In later years, he raised Arabian horses and had a ranch in Santa Ynez, Calif.
Ronnie Burns
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