The Weekly Poll
Results
The 'DanD cynically inspired Media Integrity' Edition...
Are there any Media-Types (TV, Radio, Print) that you believe have 'Integrity' enough that you respect them and their works? (Even in the morning, haha)... Name names, if'n ya please...
1.) Heck, yeah!...
2.) No way! They're all corporate dupes...
Hey there, Poll-fans... We've a half-dozen nice replies that I hope you'll enjoy.
Due to my not feeling up-to-par, I'm really not into the comment mode this day, so you'll have to take' em as is... Ah, well... Whadda ya gonna do, ya know?
DanD...
Wow Bob; I feel honored, my Laurel to your Hardy ;~)
(No prob-lem-o, 'Stan'... I name you to be henceforth and ever after...
Dan the 'Stan'... Hows 'bout that, eh?)
Have I ever admired TV/Radio/Print "media" types? Well, I uncommonly admire (and enjoyed) Novelists Robert A. Heinlein and also Frank Herbert; I admire comedian and social commentator Will Rogers; I even admire Rosanne Barr and Rosie O'Donnell for tastelessly (and publicly) acknowledging the truly war-criminal conduct of Zionland.
Hell, I even admire Jane Fonda IN SPITE of the fact that she had been played for a dupe. Her anti-war conduct yet transcended how she had been dupe-used by both North Vietnam AND War Party America.
While virtually all of them are beholden -- to some extent at least -- to a corporate paymaster, not all of them have been (completely) duped.
While I do enjoy the Daily and Colbert Shows, I also see them as limited hangouts for those who would "Poison-the-Well" in order to sustain certain War-Party agendas.
The Ole Vet...
This ole Vet likes to listen to Keith and Ms Maddow, but Chris pisses me off at times when he lauds some dinky repug. Why does he have two hours of the same ole same ole?
DC Madman...
1. Heck yeah. If they have any integrity you won't see them on mainstream media. Amy Goodman leads them all on the news show "Democracy Now". She (and Free Speech TV) turned me from a passive conservative into a vocal liberal.
2. If they work for a corporation they're slaves to their master (corporate dupes).
Richard McD...
Heck ya...There is Bob Herbert of the NYT. I also like Paul Krugman. Frank Rich also of NYT. But for the most part the other's are a big waste and dumb as a pallet board. But the best of all was the great MOLLY IVINS.
Joe S. from Manistee-by-the-Lake...
1.) Heck, yeah!... Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and Ed Schultz
Adam in NoHo...
My radio is welded to NPR whose reporting I trust a lot more than anyone else (some recent study I can't be bothered to look up) showed Fox at 25% accurate, CNN at 50% accurate, and NPR at 75% accurate).
NPR tries harder than just about any one else in the media landscape, even as I catch them in the occasional omission or odd interpretation of events. My local station recently changed out an hour of BBC programming, which was a nice addition to the American reporting.
Thanks to the responders... As before, Yer the Best (You, too, 'Stan', haha)...
~~~~~~~~~~~
As you read this, I'll either be on the way to, already at, or returning from the VAMC in Dee-troit (right on the Wayne State University campus) gettin' a pre-admission work up for my surgery next week. As such, there'll be a Poll hiatus whilst said procedure is done and recovery endured. I hope to have one up on the 26th asking yer predictions concerning the election on November 2nd. Those will be posted that morning (the 2nd) and we shall see later that evening who's got it right. At least that's the plan... Until then, TTFN...
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Hey, Small Spender (nytimes)
If government spending hasn't created jobs, it's not because it doesn't work; it's because it wasn't tried.
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF: Test Your Savvy on Religion (nytimes)
Time for a pop quiz.
Terry Savage: The Value of Money Has Lost Its Meaning (creators.com)
It all adds up. That was the point made by the legendary Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen, back in 1951 when he is said to have exclaimed, "A billion here, a billion there, it all adds up! Now, more than half a century later, we're talking equally casually about TRILLIONS of dollars.
Chuck Norris: The Norris Diet (creators.com)
Q: Straight up, Mr. Norris: What do you and your family eat? When it comes to the consumptive battles, are you really as good as they say?
A: I must admit that I make a pretty mean peanut butter and banana sandwich. …
Lauren Bans: The Era of Great Parents in Teen Movies Is Upon Us (doublex.com)
If the superb parents are the explanation behind the intelligent and witty leading-lady teens that have been popping up on-screen over the past few years, defying the boy-crazy, ditzy stereotype of teenage girls, then please, Hollywood, I'm begging you: Keep churning out the great parents.
Paul Constant: Review of "Waiting for Superman" (thestranger.com)
Waiting for Superman is a documentary about the failure of the American educational system, and it's an incredibly compelling experience. It's hard to watch the movie and not feel outraged-our children are failing! The rest of the world is smarter than us! We are facing a crisis of epic proportions! … It's a polemic! Get mad! Arrr! But once you leave the theater, you start to notice some discrepancies.
Lucy Mangan: RIP Golden Age of Hollywood (guardian.co.uk)
'Those innocent days have gone for ever. The genie is long out of the bottle.'
Roger Ebert: Review of "NIGHT MOVES" (4 stars)
Arthur Penn's "Night Moves" is about an old-fashioned private eye who says and does all the expected things while surrounded by a plot he completely fails to understand.
David Schmader: "'Let Me In': A Knockout Remake of a Vampire Classic" (thestranger.com)
Quietly unleashed on the American public in 2008, the Swedish vampire thriller "Let the Right One In" entered a marketplace saturated with sexy bloodsuckers and made them all look like clowns.
roger ebert's journal: Secretariat was not a Christian
Andrew O'Hehir of Salon is a critic I admire, but he has nevertheless written a review of "Secretariat" so bizarre I cannot allow it to pass unnoticed. I don't find anywhere in "Secretariat" the ideology he discovers there. In its reasoning, his review resembles a fevered conspiracy theory.
David Bruce has 39 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $39 you can buy 9,750 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," and "Maximum Cool."
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From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Suggestion
'The Teacoma Party'
This is a link to a recently posted episode of Tacoma Diaries titled "The Teacoma Party" that you may enjoy. Thanks. Spud
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny and a bit cooler.
The kid is home with another cold.
Opening By Banksy
'The Simpsons'
The always clever and often subversive opening sequence for "The Simpsons" took a darker-than-usual turn with Sunday's episode, depicting the animation process for the Fox cartoon series as sweatshop drudgery performed by an exploited Asian underclass.
Created by the street artist and activist Banksy, the sequence began with the sight of hometown Springfield covered with graffiti - and tagged by Banksy himself.
Then, when the Simpson family gathers on their living room couch, that image becomes a reference shot for legions of workers in the grim industrial complex where they paint cartoon cells and churn out Simpsons merchandise (including Bart dolls stuffed with the fur of kittens tossed into a wood chipper, and DVDs whose center holes are punched by a forlorn-looking unicorn's horn).
The entire enterprise is housed in a dreary-looking factory sprawl surrounded by barbed wire and identified by the looming 20th Century Fox logo and searchlights.
Sunday's self-inflicted jab was inspired by the fact that much of the rote production work for each "Simpsons" episode is indeed outsourced from the series' L.A. creative hub to studios in South Korea.
'The Simpsons'
American Film Institute To Honor
Morgan Freeman
The American Film Institute will honor Morgan Freeman with its Life Achievement Award.
AFI says the 73-year-old Oscar winner will receive the award in June.
AFI chair Sir Howard Stringer calls Freeman "an American treasure" who brings a calm authority to his roles, "whether playing a prisoner, a president or God."
He is the 39th recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award. Others include Alfred Hitchcock, Bette Davis, Jack Nicholson, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.
Morgan Freeman
Producers Guild To Honor
Tom Hanks
The Producers Guild of America will recognize Tom Hanks and his producing partner Gary Goetzman for their contributions to television at the 22nd annual Producers Guild Awards.
The duo will be the recipients of the PGA's 2011 Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television.
Through their Playtone Prods., which Hanks and Goetzman founded in 1998, they produced the Emmy-winning HBO miniseries "Band of Brothers," "John Adams" and "The Pacific."
The awards ceremony will take place January 22 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles.
Tom Hanks
Cartoon Makeover
"Napoleon Dynamite"
It's official: "Napoleon Dynamite" is coming to TV.
Fox is giving a series order to a project based on the indie hit, one of two new teen-friendly animated projects green-lighted by the network.
Fox has picked up six episodes of the show, with the original cast from the film on board as voice talent -- including Jon Heder as the title character.
The network also ordered seven episodes of another show, "Allen Gregory," from "Superbad" star Jonah Hill and "Yes Man" scribes Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul.
"Napoleon Dynamite"
Matron Acquitted
Oprah Winfrey
A woman accused of abusing teenagers at Oprah Winfrey's school for girls in South Africa was acquitted of the charges Monday, and Winfrey said she was "profoundly disappointed" by the trial's outcome.
Prosecutors had accused former school matron Tiny Virginia Makopo of trying to kiss and fondle girls at the school soon after it opened in 2007 outside Johannesburg.
Makopo also had been accused of assaulting one of the teens as well as a fellow supervisor.
Mthunzi Mhaga, a spokesman for South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority, said Monday that Makopo had been acquitted of the charges.
Oprah Winfrey
Released From Jail
George Michael
George Michael has regained his freedom. The wayward singer was released from jail Monday after serving almost four weeks for driving under the influence of drugs.
Michael thanked those who had supported him while he was jailed and said outside his north London home: "I just want to start again."
The former Wham! singer received an eight-week sentence on Sept. 14 for crashing his car into a London photo shop in July while high on prescription drugs and marijuana.
The judge ordered Michael to serve four weeks of the sentence in prison and the rest on parole.
George Michael
Lawyer Enters Not Guilty Pleas
Vince Neil
A lawyer for rocker Vince Neil entered not guilty pleas for the Motley Crue singer on misdemeanor drunken driving and speeding charges.
Attorney Richard Schonfeld said Monday his 49-year-old client didn't have to appear in person for the pleas in Las Vegas Justice Court. Trial was set for Jan. 6.
Neil is accused of having a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 percent and driving his Lamborghini sports car 60 mph in a 45 mph zone before he was stopped by police on June 27 near the Las Vegas Strip.
The state's legal limit for drivers is 0.08 percent.
Vince Neil
Stick A Fork In It
"Outlaw"
NBC's gradual cancellation of "Outlaw" continues.
After announcing last week that production on the legal drama has ceased but that the show would still air on Friday nights, the network has moved the series from Fridays to Saturdays.
NBC will expand its ever-flexible "Dateline" franchise to two hours on Fridays to cover the 10 p.m. slot.
The remaining four episodes of the show, which stars Jimmy Smits, will still air.
"Outlaw"
Congo Atrocities
U.N.
The United Nations released a report on Friday documenting hundreds of atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo and suggesting ways to end the climate of impunity for the violence.
The report is an attempt to cover rights abuses in the former Zaire between 1993 and 2003 in which tens of thousands of people were killed and many others raped, mutilated or otherwise victimized.
The period of the report was marked by a string of political crises, wars and conflicts in the region that led to the deaths of millions of people.
"No report can adequately describe the horrors experienced by the civilian population ... where almost every single individual has an experience to narrate of suffering and loss," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a foreword.
U.N.
Russian Caucasus
Bronze Age
Traces of a previously unknown Bronze Age civilisation have been discovered in the peaks of Russia's Caucasus Mountains thanks to aerial photographs taken 40 years ago, researchers said Monday.
"We have discovered a civilisation dating from the 16th to the 14th centuries BC, high in the mountains south of Kislovodsk," in Russia's North Caucasus region, Andrei Belinsky, the head of a joint Russian-German expedition that has been investigating the region for five years, told AFP.
He said researchers had discovered stone foundations, some up to a metre (3.3 feet) high, at nearly 200 sites, all "visibly constructed according to the same architectural plan, with an oval courtyard in the centre, and connected by roads."
The sites are spread over about 100 kilometres (60 miles) between the Kuban river in the west and the city of Nalchik in the east.
Bronze Age
Hibbing Synagogue For Sale
Bob Dylan
The former Minnesota synagogue where singer Bob Dylan had his bar mizvah when he was 13-year-old Bobby Zimmerman is for sale.
The owners of the building in Hibbing are hoping the connection to Dylan helps sell it. The building is No. 8 on the Bob Dylan Walk tour.
It hasn't been a synagogue since the 1980s, when the congregation disbanded and the building was turned into apartments.
Brenda Shafer-Pellinen, who owns the building with her husband, told the Duluth News Tribune she has reached out to Dylan fans on websites. The asking price is $119,000.
Bob Dylan
In Memory
Joan Sutherland
Soprano Joan Sutherland, whose purity of tone and brilliant vocal display made her one of the most celebrated opera singers of all time, has died at 83 after a four-decade career that won her praise as the successor to legend Maria Callas.
Called "La Stupenda" by her Italian fans, Sutherland was acclaimed from her native Australia to North America and Europe for her wide range of roles. But she was particularly praised for her singing of operas by Handel and 19th-century Italian composers.
Tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who joined with Marilyn Horne in Sutherland's farewell gala recital at Covent Garden on Dec. 31, 1990, called her "the greatest coloratura soprano of all time."
Sutherland started singing as a small child, crouching under the piano and copying her mother, Muriel Alston Sutherland, "a talented singer with a glorious mezzo-soprano voice," according to Sutherland's biographer Norma Major, wife of former British Prime Minister John Major.
When she began performing in Australia, Sutherland thought she was a mezzo-soprano like her mother, and it took the insight of subsequent coaches to make her realize that she should develop her higher range.
The family statement said Sutherland is survived by her husband, conductor Richard Bonynge, their son, Adam, daughter-in-law Helen, and two grandchildren.
Joan Sutherland
In Memory
Carla Cohen
Carla Cohen, co-owner of a Washington bookstore that became a city institution and a key stop for writers ranging from Bill Clinton to J.K. Rowling, has died.
Cohen died Monday of cancer of the bile ducts, the Politics and Prose bookstore announced on its website. She was 74 and died at her home in Washington.
A former city planner and Congressional aide, Cohen founded the store in 1984 and had run it with co-owner Barbara Meade.
In the past quarter century, Politics and Prose has become a key stop for political and literary figures promoting books, from Clinton and Jimmy Carter to Rowling and John Updike. Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are among those expected to stop there this fall.
After Cohen was diagnosed with cancer last November, she and Meade agreed to sell Politics and Prose. Meade said Monday that they received around 50 proposals, had narrowed them to about half a dozen and expected a decision within a few months.
Regular customers at Politics and Prose included such conservatives as George Will and Paul Wolfowitz, but Cohen was a lifelong liberal who didn't hesitate to question a customer's choice.
A Baltimore native, Cohen was the eldest of six siblings in a "a robustly noisy Jewish family" where she appreciated the silence of books, according to the store's website. She graduated from Amherst College and worked for years in Philadelphia and Washington as an advocate for community control of housing and neighborhood planning. In the late 1970s, she was an aide to Robert Embry, Jr., assistant secretary during the Carter administration for the Department of Housing and Urban Development for Community Planning and Development.
After Ronald Reagan, a Republican, defeated Carter in 1980, Cohen was out of a job and settled on becoming a bookseller, meeting Meade through a classified ad in which Cohen sought a store manager.
Survivors include David Cohen, Cohen's husband of 52 years; two children; two grandchildren; and her mother, 100-year-old Edith Furstenberg.
Carla Cohen
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