Flashback: It’s Your Duty to Vote
This rant from Craig Ferguson is as relevant now as it was in 2008 (unfortunately).
Tag: Popular Culture
‘Assume David Duke Had to Wash His Sheets’
Pensito Review publisher, managing editor, and all-around senior person Jon Ponder took up my call to email David Ford, ABC News spokesperson, who is defending the network’s decision to include disgraced blogger Andrew Breitbart in their election night coverage. In a missive with the subject line, “Assume David Duke had to wash his sheets Tuesday night,” Jon emailed:
It is simply appalling that ABC News is giving a platform to Andrew Breitbart on election night. By his words and deeds, this man is a racist provocateur and should be shunned by decent people. Elevating him this way says more about ABC News — it frankly reeks of desperation — than it does about him.
If ABC News was hoping for a boycott on Tuesday night, and all the publicity that comes with it, I hope you get your wish.
Hopefully, this will inspire you to send Ford a piece of your own mind.
Update It worked! See update here.
Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear Live
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear is set to live stream at noon on Saturday, Oct. 30. If you don’t have a TV (I feel ya, I don’t either) don’t despair. Just go to the Daily Show’s site and viola!
And speaking of spreading insanity and fear, if you’re up for multitasking while you watch I have an assignment for you. Send an email to David Ford, spokesperson for ABC News. Ford is the guy who’s being quoted justifying the network’s plan to include discredited blogger Andrew Breitbart in their election night coverage.
Asked about Breitbart’s history of unethical behavior and misinformation, ABC News’ David Ford told Media Matters: “He will be one of many voices on our air, including Bill Adair of Politifact. If Andrew Breitbart says something that is incorrect, we have other voices to call him on it.”
It’s not a matter of if Breitbart will say something incorrect, so for ABC to hide behind the fair and balanced trope by including people who don’t plan elaborate media lies isn’t exactly the same thing as providing the best reporting available.
Here’s what Ford lists as his email address on LinkedIn:
Update: Apparently there was an outpouring of criticism. Media Matters reports that the Breitbart has been shunted onto ABC’s online coverage on election night:
Maybe the Recession Really Is Over
$2.8 – $3 million
The amount advertisers will pay for a 30-second spot on the 2011 Super Bowl on Fox. The figure is up from this year’s game, when the same ad went for $2.5 to $2.9 million. The 2011 spots are sold out.
Verbatim
The T-U website needs to hold a convention for all of their regular posters, then they need to bar the doors and set the building on fire.
Comment referring to the Jacksonville Times-Union as quoted by Folio Weekly from the blog, Whacksonville.com. The comment, however, could well be applied to regular posters on any mainstream news outlet web site.
Verbatim
They say it is easier to get people to dislike a politician than to like him or her, but I wonder if automobile makers spent all their time accusing each other of making lousy and dangerous cars, whether anybody would buy one at all. Which maybe is one reason more people don’t vote.
–St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler, commenting on advertising for the midterm election.
Read a Banned Book This Week
If you need a suggestion for what book to read to celebrate National Banned Books Week, this site has them.
Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. It was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. More than a thousand books have been challenged since 1982.
Oddly, according to a map posted at the site, most of the clusters of censorship have been along the Northeastern corridor and in the more “civilized” areas of the Midwest.
While some new books joined the Top Ten list of challenged books in 2009 (And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, which acknowledges homosexuality, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, which includes drug use, violence, and yes, homosexuality), plenty of old standards continue to irk…someone. These include the highly regarded classics To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and The Color Purple by Alice Walker.
Of course, we actually don’t mind that one book series made the list. That would be Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. Don’t tell my 12-year-old niece, but it’s O.K. with me if you don’t read those.
Sanity and Fear Will Collide in Washington Events
Watchers of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report know about the “competing” rallies planned in Washington on Halloween weekend, a couple of days before the midterm elections. Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity seems to be beating out Stephen Colbert’s March to Keep Fear Alive in the Facebook fans department.
On the Rally to Restore Sanity Facebook page, there is an open challenge to come up with 25 things that would not help restore sanity at the event. Among the suggestions:
- Talking about the miracle of the size of the crowd
- Wearing a McCain/Palin 2008 campaign button
- Wearing the American flag as an article of clothing or an accessory
- Bringing small rugs, turning toward FOX “News” and praying six times during the rally
- Safety pinning copies of our birth certificates to our chests
- Starting a movement to change the National Anthem to “The Thong Song” because “The Star Spangled Banner” is anti-colonialist
- Inviting a local coven to provide insight on the Delaware Senate race
- Have speeches fact-checked by Andrew Breitbart
There’s also a call for slogans for hand-painted signs but so far, the results are more earnest than funny. Among the better submissions are, “FOX–the only network where you are dumber after you watch it,” and “Sarah Palin is proof you’ll never go poor appealing to the lowest common denominator.”
Can you do better? Share your suggestion for either category in the comments.
Republican Senators Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and Don’t Answer the Phone for Lady Ga Ga
Ga Ga: “I am here to be a voice for my generation, not the generation of the senators who are voting, but for the youth of this country, the generation that is affected by this law, and whose children will be affected. We are not asking you to agree with, or approve of the moral implications of homosexuality.”
There is so much wrong with these assumptions that it’s hard to know where to start (many Guard members are in their 30s, 40s, and even 50s, and why NOT ask the senators to stop declaring homosexuality is immoral?) but as the aunt of a 12-year-old, I know that Ga Ga is correct that she speaks for youth, and her heart is definitely in the right place on this one.
