Slouching Towards Oblivion

Monday, May 09, 2016

John Oliver


Again - why's all the journalism happening on half-hour comedy shows?

And y'know, something just kinda popped into my brain: people ask why there's so much crap on TV news, and the TV news gurus always tell us it's because there's just too darn much time to fill - they can't help it - they just gotta find lotsa stuff to put on the air.  

Well, TV gurus, maybe what ya need to consider is filling some of that vast expanse of time with greater efforts to check out the potentially bullshit claims of your guests(?)  Can you imagine what happens when you call for a short pause to check out the statements made by whatever talking head is holding forth at the moment?  

Maybe you could do it during the commercial breaks. Or maybe you could watch Pardon The Interruption on ESPN once or twice and see how Tony and Mike do it.

I don't have all the answers here btw, but please don't gimme that usual crap about how you have to play nice with these jokers because if you don't you'll "lose access" to them.  

Here's the logical response to that: Yeah, so fucking what?  What exactly do we lose if the parade of fuckwits is suddenly devoid of fuckwits?  

I think it's a pretty safe bet that the vacuum won't be empty for long.

Another btw - stop cowering in response to the "Gotcha Journalism" slam.  That's your job, Skeezix.  Should we piss and moan about how the cops are always playing "Gotcha Law Enforcement"?   And when you're overdrawn at the bank, are they just trying to fuck you over with their "Gotcha Accounting"? 

C'mon - do your fuckin' job.


He Knew


July 1968 - six months after The Tet Offensive put the lie to Vietnam, and 3 months after MLK was killed, and about 40 days after RFK was killed, and kinda in the middle of another whole year of some big bad shit going down in USAmerica Inc. 

LBJ's son-in-law, Chuck Robb, was serving as commander of a combat rifle company in Vietnam. Johnson had asked him to send tape-recorded messages describing what was happening on the ground in what a lot of us came to call "Johnson's War".  This picture is said to convey the anguish of a president as he learns the truth about how political policies play out in the lives of real people.

It's always about more than anybody wants to tell us it's about.  So included in the mix is Johnson's anguish over being remembered as the Accidental President needing to ride the coattails of two dead Kennedys, while struggling to come out of their shadows; the guy who lost Southeast Asia, built concentration camps for black people, and made it almost impossible for Dick Nixon to lose in November of that year.

That's not to ignore some truly big-fuckin'-deal things like Medicare and Civil Rights and Public Education and other good things as well.  I'm just trying to remind myself to see the whole thing - or as much of it as possible; to go back and look at it again once in a while, because there's probably something I missed - like not remembering ever hearing about what was playing on the tape recorder in that picture.

Today's Deep Think

Today's Tweet

What The Donald Says

Sunday, May 08, 2016

Weirdly Ironic

A Twitter pal pointed out:


This fall, we'll probably elect the first woman POTUS.  
And I promise it's all good and I'm down with that -
 but I'm still pullin' for the old white guy.

 

Today's What If

What if no women voted for Trump?



Happy Day, You Muhthuh







Today's Quote

"America is a complicated, conflicted country founded by Puritans, constituted by libertarians and built by salesmen."
– Mark Simpson