Weiner tweets his wanger

[rubato]

Is the distortion of perspective due to push, the media fill up too much time with lurid crap, or pull, the audience wants lurid crap?

I guess that depends on whether the operators of the media see themselves as sentient beings who can choose what is a more valuable use of their time to present and our time to see and hear like The Atlantic magazine and NPR or amoral pigs like Fox news and the whole Rupert Murdoch empire who say "Its not what WE want its what THEY want".

Media which caters to people's higher or lower selves creates more of the same.

yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

Andrew,


Do your news stations not differentiate then between, hard news (scuse pun) and softer stuff, national and international?

With our rolling 24 hour news channels I know I'm going to get a mix of important (latest NZ earthquake) and silly (dead donkey stuff).

WE also have specialist news services like SBS on our terrestrial channels; http://www.sbs.com.au/news/

Surely the US is the same and anyone who wants serious news, stuff from other countries even, must be able to access it if that is their wish.

[oldr_n_wsr]

I get my news from the newspaper (hardcopy not over the net) and it's easy to skip the stories about Weiner(s).

[Lord Jim]

Do your news stations not differentiate then between, hard news (scuse pun) and softer stuff, national and international?

With our rolling 24 hour news channels I know I'm going to get a mix of important (latest NZ earthquake) and silly (dead donkey stuff).

Ours cover both too, Strop....

They do a lot of coverage on the turmoil in the mid-east, natural disasters around the world, the state of the economy, the battles in Congress over the budget, taxes, debt reduction, etc....

A story like what is going on in the Congo, however, really doesn't get a lot of coverage, for a number of reasons...

First of all with the US military engaged in active military operations in a number of countries, those countries are going to get more coverage here than what's going on in a country where we have no involvement...

And a probably even larger reason for the lack of coverage is the logistical inability to report the story...

Places where the government does an effective job of excluding journalists, or where it's too dangerous to go aren't going to get as much coverage simply because they can't be covered in an effective way...

The Syrian government has made it nearly impossible for Western reporters to get into the country, but we're still able to get some coverage because Syria is a relatively modern country where a lot of people have video capable cell phones and internet access....

There aren't a whole lot of people with cell phones in the remote regions of the Congo where the bulk of the atrocities have taken place....

[Gob]

Pretty much the same here as here then.

So the fact that sensationalist news will always pull bigger viewing figures (which is the prime aim of news broadcasting, (unfortunately) does not mean that the more selective cannot choose to get the real news they desire.

While I have sympathy for Andrew's perspective on the dumbing down of our news, I think the larger availability of news sources of today somewhat mitigate that.

[Lord Jim]

And when you think about it, the press's (and the public's) interest in the lurid, or the soap opera type stories, (especially when they involve public figures) is really nothing new...

I'm sure that if I checked, I'd find that there was a lot more coverage in 1932 in newspapers, on the radio, and in the movie news reels about the Lindbergh kidnapping then there was about the massive atrocities being committed by the Japanese in Manchuria during the same time frame...

[Andrew D]

But there is reporting available about the holocaust in the Congo. The big TV media are just not imparting it to us.

The New York Times has reported on it. High-level officials, including the US Secretary of State and numerous European officials, have been there and reported their findings. The UN has reported its findings again and again and again. There are many, many first-hand accounts of everything from mass murders to mass gang rapes -- Congo has been called "the rape capital of the world" -- to mass dismemberments and on and on and on.

These things are no secret. Yes, it is true that in the Congolese jungles, one can't just grab a cell phone and call it in. But the facts -- the horrific facts -- are reported, and they are out there for anyone to pick up.

So why are the big TV media not picking up the stories? Screw the politics; whether it's FOX or MSNBC or CNN or ABC or CBS or NBC or whatever, millions of people have died. And more are dying every day. And even people who have not been have been the victims of the most hideous atrocities: One reporter says "I have met a little girl whose lips were sawed off by lunatic rebels; you could see her teeth when her mouth was closed." And that is just one of hundreds of readily accessible reports.

And those are just the reports accessible to someone like me -- someone who still can't figure out how to scan a photo and post it here. How many thousands of such reports must be accessible to people whose expertise is finding them?

A little girl. Her lips were sawed off. Not sliced off in two quick moves; sawed off. Can you even begin to imagine the pain?

You can see her teeth even when her mouth is closed. That would not be a moving, compelling visual image? (Which could be captured on a cell-phone camera, even if it could not be broadcast in real time.)

And this is haulocaust-level slaughter. This is not a few hundred here and a few hundred there. Add up all the people who have been killed in the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia and Libya and Syria and Yemen. Put them all together.

More people than that have been slaughtered in the Congo in one day. One single day in Sub-Saharan Africa.

And it is not stopping. It is not even slowing down.

Even Darfur can't hold a candle to the Congo. To find analogies to the Congo, you have to resort to Stalin and Hitler and Pol Pot.

And all the while, the big TV media -- which are where most people get their news; newspapers are dying -- tell us, well, what? Now and then, one gets a little bit. "There are reports of the discovery of hundreds of bodies of people who were hacked to death with machetes. [emotive pause] And now, here's Fred Jones to explain exactly what the scandal in international soccer is all about."

Okay, we (the US) are involved up to our eyeballs in Afghanistan and Iraq. So it makes sense that the big TV media will put stories about what's happening there front and center. And there's al-Qaeda in the Middle East and Pakistan. Same again.

But a scandal in international soccer?

The head of the World Bank allegedly assaulting a housekeeping employee?

What some basketball guy said about the television audience that watches basketball?

Salacious photos sent by some Congressman?

All that crap takes center stage while millions of people are slaughtered and millions more are dismembered, disfigured, raped, driven from their homes ... all the terrors that afflict our benighted era?

What the fuck is wrong with us?

[Gob]

The fact that you are aware, and take the time and trouble to be informed about it shows that there is nothing "wrong" with you Andrew. Bread and circuses for the masses is not "wrong" per se, just the way of the world since time immemorial.

[Andrew D]

The fact that you are aware, and take the time and trouble to be informed about it shows that there is nothing "wrong" with you Andrew.

Thanks, Gob. I read about these things and I weep. I shake my fists at the heavens; I rage; I scream. Really. I had to take regain-my-composure breaks just typing the previous posting.

Maybe it's from having to catalogue the torture when I was doing the Tibet work. Hanging people by their arms tied behind their backs until, and after, their shoulders are dislocated: sources 4, 9, 17, 28, and 32. Shoving electric cattle prods into women's vaginas: sources 3, 7, 8, 12, 19, 22, and 36. Running the electrical current from car batteries through men's testes: sources 2,3,4, 11, 14, 16, 19, 25, and 31. Siccing starving dogs on children before their parents' eyes: sources 5, 18, 35, and 43. Pulling out people's fingernails ...

Maybe I've just used up my allotment of "you can get through this; just sort them and array them". Maybe I've lost the detachment that used to make me exceptionally good at that sort of work. (The people who needed it done didn't choose me by flipping coins.)

Maybe I'm just old and tired.

I don't know about old, but I am definitely tired.

How long can one keep at it? How long can one push back and push back and push back until one comes to grips with the fact that the forces pushing the other way are huge, and their resources are endless, and I'm just a guy sitting in my little home office hoping that someday someone with some real power will throw that power behind trying to stop it?

And hoping. And hoping. And hoping.

Still, old as I am (I just had a birthday yesterday -- another unsubtle reminder that I don't have forever to try to get something, at least a little something done that will make the world I leave my godchildren and my nephews, etc., perceptibly better than the world I was born into) and tired as I am, I cannot go along with this:

Bread and circuses for the masses is not "wrong" per se, just the way of the world since time immemorial.

No.

It is wrong. It has always been wrong. It will always be wrong. And "since time immemorial" can go fuck itself.

Every day that we -- and by we, I emphatically mean including me -- don't do something to stop the slaughters we see around us (of which what is happening in the Congo is probably the worst at the moment, but it is far from alone), we are bathing in the blood of the innocent.

Yeah, I don't have very many pleasant dreams.

[Gob]

Hubba hubba hubba....

[oldr_n_wsr]

shakes head

[Gob]

A former porn actress who said she exchanged emails and messages over Twitter with New York congressman Anthony Weiner says that he asked her to lie about their online communications.

Ginger Lee said she and Weiner exchanged about 100 emails between March and June, beginning after Lee posted a supportive statement about the congressman on her blog.

She said they mostly discussed politics, but he would often turn the conversation to sex.



"'I have wardrobe demands too. I need to highlight my package,"' Weiner wrote Lee, in an email read aloud at the news conference by Lee's lawyer, Gloria Allred.

Weiner acknowledged last week that he had sent lewd photos and texts to women after a photo of his crotch was posted on Twitter. In an interview two weeks ago, he acknowledged that he had exchanged messages with Lee but didn't elaborate.

Lee said she did not send sexually suggestive messages to Weiner.
video on page

Any one know what movies she's done? She's damn cute for a porn star.

[Lord Jim]

I was just about to post about this...

More footwear falling...

Nothing like a porno actress holding a press conference with Gloria Allred to bring an end to a media circus...

My understanding is that what's going on behind the scenes is that now that his wife is back in town, her Washington friends, (of which, unlike Weiner, she has many) are trying to convince her that she should tell him it's time to throw in the towel....(apparently she had told him that she didn't want him to quit)

The hope is that by the end of the week, Weiner will announce that for the good of his family and his "recovery" he has decided to resign. (there are folks trying to convince him that if he does this, he can try a comeback later; and there are also quiet efforts going on to find him a well paying position of some sort if he'll go)

If he doesn't do this, there's a plan to gradually ratchet up the pressure on Weiner until he resigns. Nancy Pelosi, (who joined Wasserman-Schultz in calling for his resignation...something very unusual for Pelosi...she didn't even call for James Trafficant to quit) has put stripping him of his committee assignments on the table as the next step, which would bring an end to his argument that he can continue to be an effective representative for his district.

[Lord Jim]

Looks like the pressure finally got him to cave:

WASHINGTON (AP) — New York Rep. Anthony Weiner has decided to resign his seat in Congress after a two-week scandal spawned by lewd and even X-rated photos the New York lawmaker took of himself and sent online to numerous women, relieved Democratic officials said Thursday.

A formal announcement was expected later in the day.

Weiner, 46, has been at a treatment facility at an undisclosed location since last weekend, and has not been seen in public since telling reporters last Saturday he intended to return to work.

One official said Weiner telephoned House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Steve Israel of New York, the head of the party campaign committee, on Wednesday evening to tell them of his plans to quit. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the private nature of the conversations.

http://beta.news.yahoo.com/ap-sources-w ... 12150.html

[Sue U]

Can I write the headline?

"Weiner pulls out."

Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal!

[Lord Jim]

Clearly the case of a man who was hoisted on his own petard....

He had no choice but to fall on his sword....

[Lord Jim]

Of course it's not entirely Weiner's fault...

He was betrayed by his staff....

[Lord Jim]

He's going to have a press conference any minute...

I don't understand why he isn't just releasing a statement; why bring so much attention to this?

Unless the purpose is to trot out his poor wife to show that she's still with him....

[Lord Jim]

He was supposed to start ten minutes ago...

I wish he'd stop dickin' around....

[liberty]

But there is
A little girl. Her lips were sawed off. Not sliced off in two quick moves; sawed off. Can you even begin to imagine the pain?

You can see her teeth even when her mouth is closed. That would not be a moving, compelling visual image? (Which could be captured on a cell-phone camera, even if it could not be broadcast in real time.)

What kind of demented shit eating son of a bitch could do something like that. That is almost as disturbing as a story I heard of a Indian father that was going to sell his baby daughter to a couple that were going to cut the baby’s feet off and use her as beggar. It makes me want to kill the bastards with napalm.