Random Media Notes

I do not often follow television news; I am a newspaper and internet reader. But I got totally fed up with newspapers when day after day they just parroted the words of Our President. I thought news people were supposed to do something besides read press releases, but those days seem gone forever. (I'm still too angry to formulate a sentence about Our President.)

• So I watched CNN (and the others) for a while. CNN is supposed to be the 'liberal' network. So why did they spend all their time talking about 'looting'? Looting was not defined as taking televisions, but as taking bread and water from a store where there was not clerk to take their money. I can't imagine any human being who would watch their child die of dehydration instead of taking a bottle of water off of a shop shelf. But the Right, for whom money is all, are predominately concerned about maintaining the mercantile system.


• Rush's girlfriend Daryn Kagan occupies much of the middle of the day on CNN which seems to select their women newsreaders based on appearance. Unfortunately during this crisis these women are called on to do a bit more than read. So she tried to interview people. But she incessantly interrupted them with stunningly stupid questions. She would be interviewing someone from -- oh anywhere -- and all she wanted to know was who is to blame, what should we do to them, and who else might be angry. It was shameful.


• More shameful was their (CNNs) supposed coverage of the Congressional Black Caucus' press conference on Friday. The members began discussing the failure of the administration. Elijah Cummings eloquently said "We cannot allow it to be said that the difference between those who lived and died in this great storm and flood of 2005 was nothing more than poverty, age or skin color." After several members spoke someone -- I don't remember who but I'm guessing it was Jesse Jackson Jr. -- began to talk about the role of the media in spending more time showing looting than the misery of folks in the area and they blatently cut away in the middle of a sentence. Ms. Kagan claimed that they had to go to an interview with Jesse Jackson Sr. at that very moment. I suspect he would have waited until his son finished speaking.


• Today CNN seems to have discovered a dark skinned African-American correspondent. With an accent. Good discovery. I wonder what took so long.


• Today they have Soledad O'Brien in a perky ponytail asking starving homeless people how they 'feel'. I wish one of them would just slap her. Oh, and she is interviewing them at a place she calls LouiS Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. Apparently she is too obtuse to notice that everyone else in the universe pronounces it "Louie," or perhaps she thinks she knows better. She just enlightened me by pointing out that these are "less than ideal conditions."