Thursday, March 09, 2006
WOW
Two wows that have me mildly hot today:
1) U.S. losing to Canada in the World Baseball Classic. This is an absolute fucking disgrace. The U.S. team is not only made up of 100% major leaguers, but bascially 100% of the team are All-Stars if not future Hall of Famers. I'm not saying that the U.S. has to win the whole tournament -- because there are some real good teams -- Venezuela looks like a buzzsaw. They should win the tournament, but it obviously was no lock. BUT, there's a real chance now that the U.S. may not get out of the first round, which would be an unspeakable embarrassment. If Mexico beats Canada (likely) and the U.S. beats South Africa (I'm willing to bet that the U.S. wins this one by the mercy rule), then three teams in the pool will be 2-1. Only two teams from each pool advance, so the U.S.'s fate will be left up to the complicated tie-breaking system that takes into account earned runs, etc. etc.
2) The tagline on Anderson Cooper's 360 blog: "Be honest with what you see, get out of the way and let the story reveal itself." Who does this guy think he is? Remember when he left a gig on ABC News to host that lame-ass reality show "The Mole"? Well I do. It is amazing how easily fake integrity can pass for real integrity -- all you have to do is say that you have integrity and apparently people will buy it. Anderson Cooper is an asswipe. Maybe I'm just bitter because I actually liked Aaron Brown. At least Brown was honest about the fact that he basically just reads news for a living ... no "on location" nonsense for him!
P.S. I feel like, because I trash the media so often and so vehemently, I should say why. First of all, the media is tremendously important in shaping public opinion. The media could be a great tool to inform and enlighten our national discourse. For whatever reason, this is not the case. We get fed a lot of nonsense stories that are not very important. They are interesting, but only in the sense that they appeal to our more base appetites -- little girls getting kidnapped, murders, etc. etc. It's like how there's a fire on the local news every night. The fact that fires will happen is not novel or important, but it does make for good television. The TV people would say that they're just giving people what they want, and I'm sure that this is true to an extent. One, I am very sceptical of the very linear argument that business types like to make that they are merely meeting consumer demand. Producers also create a demand for their products, but this is the topic for another post. Second, if commercial competition is the problem, then we need publicly funded news organizations. I know this will never happen. It's too late in the game to create the American BBC. Conservatives would accuse it of being liberally biased, liberals would accuse it of being too conservative, and the thing wouldn't have enough prestige or institutional confidence to ignore the neysayers and do its own thing. Who do I like? Tim Russert, Jim Lehrer, I always felt that Dan Rather was a real journalist. I think the NYT and the Washington Post are still fighting the good fight. I'm sure there are many others, so it's not like all its lost. There's still a lot of good information out there if you have your eyes and ears open and can filter out the nonsense.
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1) U.S. losing to Canada in the World Baseball Classic. This is an absolute fucking disgrace. The U.S. team is not only made up of 100% major leaguers, but bascially 100% of the team are All-Stars if not future Hall of Famers. I'm not saying that the U.S. has to win the whole tournament -- because there are some real good teams -- Venezuela looks like a buzzsaw. They should win the tournament, but it obviously was no lock. BUT, there's a real chance now that the U.S. may not get out of the first round, which would be an unspeakable embarrassment. If Mexico beats Canada (likely) and the U.S. beats South Africa (I'm willing to bet that the U.S. wins this one by the mercy rule), then three teams in the pool will be 2-1. Only two teams from each pool advance, so the U.S.'s fate will be left up to the complicated tie-breaking system that takes into account earned runs, etc. etc.
2) The tagline on Anderson Cooper's 360 blog: "Be honest with what you see, get out of the way and let the story reveal itself." Who does this guy think he is? Remember when he left a gig on ABC News to host that lame-ass reality show "The Mole"? Well I do. It is amazing how easily fake integrity can pass for real integrity -- all you have to do is say that you have integrity and apparently people will buy it. Anderson Cooper is an asswipe. Maybe I'm just bitter because I actually liked Aaron Brown. At least Brown was honest about the fact that he basically just reads news for a living ... no "on location" nonsense for him!
P.S. I feel like, because I trash the media so often and so vehemently, I should say why. First of all, the media is tremendously important in shaping public opinion. The media could be a great tool to inform and enlighten our national discourse. For whatever reason, this is not the case. We get fed a lot of nonsense stories that are not very important. They are interesting, but only in the sense that they appeal to our more base appetites -- little girls getting kidnapped, murders, etc. etc. It's like how there's a fire on the local news every night. The fact that fires will happen is not novel or important, but it does make for good television. The TV people would say that they're just giving people what they want, and I'm sure that this is true to an extent. One, I am very sceptical of the very linear argument that business types like to make that they are merely meeting consumer demand. Producers also create a demand for their products, but this is the topic for another post. Second, if commercial competition is the problem, then we need publicly funded news organizations. I know this will never happen. It's too late in the game to create the American BBC. Conservatives would accuse it of being liberally biased, liberals would accuse it of being too conservative, and the thing wouldn't have enough prestige or institutional confidence to ignore the neysayers and do its own thing. Who do I like? Tim Russert, Jim Lehrer, I always felt that Dan Rather was a real journalist. I think the NYT and the Washington Post are still fighting the good fight. I'm sure there are many others, so it's not like all its lost. There's still a lot of good information out there if you have your eyes and ears open and can filter out the nonsense.
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