Prop 8: The Musical...Brilliant

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... from Jack Black

Jumpstart your Career in Journalism: Become a Prostitute...Er... Hero?

FOX is having a field day... they've finally found their up and coming star investigative reporter. If I have to see one more interview on that station where one correspondent or another is telling Hannah Giles she is a hero and a true American, I think I might barf. Here my fellow classmates and I are at the Annenberg school for Communication, one of the best journalism schools in the country, working our butts off to complete a very academically rigorous program while also paying our dues through countless unpaid internships, when really all along there was a much easier way to go about this whole process...

Step One: Contact a "political activist" through facebook, tell him you want to legitimize your dreams of becoming a prostitute and put those old Halloween costumes to good use.

Step Two: Go jogging...get lost in an underprivileged neighborhood and while you're there think about a great way to make the life of that homeless woman you just ran past more miserable than it already is while simultaneously taking down one of those evil liberal grass-roots organizations...the good they've been doing lately must stop!

Step Three: Try out your sting. If they threaten to arrest you, just find another city whose branch has dumber employees...success!

Step Four: Give your investigative masterpiece to the most credible news organization you can think of, bonus points if they might also agree with your plan to single-handedly expose the liberals of America for who they really are...those grimy people-loving, kind-hearted, do gooders...

Step Five: Yayyy, mission accomplished, bask in your glory! Schedule regular appearances on the FOX network to receive praise and accolade from everyone. The world is a better place because of how easily you passed as a prostitute. You are a HERO and represent everything this country stands for.

If you got a good laugh out of this and are as frustrated as I am with the 24-hour news networks' affinity for sensationalizing stories without fact-checking them, then I encourage you to check out this Rachel Maddow clip as she attempts to straighten out some of the facts of the ACORN sting.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

OR if you were very upset by my post and are currently writing your own "thank you" letter to Hannah for righting the wrongs of the world, you might enjoy this fun interview of Hannah's partner in crime, or rather crime-fighting, the esteemed filmaker and pimp daddy extraordinaire, James O'Keefe...in one of several interviews FOX did with him in his pimp suit.

Am I the only one who thinks this interview seems like something straight from the Onion News Network?

Not a Good Week For FOX News

The 9/12 protest /Tea Party (whatever you want to call it) has been garnering as always a lot of media attention and public debate. The event itself fosters a whole slew of descriptive adjectives in my mind but that is not what this post it about...I wanted to bring your attention to the media feud that began as a result of several networks' coverage of this event...and wow it is not pretty.

So the play by play is this: FOX news takes out an ad in two newspapers Friday that falsely accuses its competitors of not covering the protests.

CNN then fires back with an ad that they are now currently running on their station with the tag line, "FOX news Distorting not Reporting" (See below)

And just to clear their name and point out the absurdity of the whole situation Rick Sanchez takes FOX to task for the ad in his show, pointing out that not only did CNN cover the event very thoroughly, but the image FOX used in the ad claiming CNN did not cover the event, was in fact stolen from CNN. Who at FOX approved that ad before it ran in the papers?!? (check out Rick Sanchez below).


Rick Sanchez sums up his point by saying that indeed CNN did cover the event but they did not promote the event like FOX did. And as if FOX was trying to back this claim up themselves, a video surfaced on the web that caught a FOX producer rallying the crowds behind their cameras. Look for the girl in the green on her phone make hand gestures to the crowd...

Many blogs and media analysts have been saying that this producer, Heidi Noonan, crossed a journalistic line by trying to alter the scene of the protest..well I'd have to agree.

In order to report unbiased news coverage, the journalist’s job is not to create the news but to simply document it. If the crowd was not that enthusiastic, then it should have been covered that way. Trying to alter the scene in a manner that portrays a different mood to the viewer than was actually the reality that day is not the job of the journalist. In fact, in my book that would be inaccurate reporting. This is the kind of thing that happens for tapings of live television reality shows and game shows when the producer tries to rile up the crowd right before they go back on air from a commercial break. If FOX wants to do this then they cannot call themselves a news organization…they might as well also hold up cue cards that say “applaud” and “louder”. Would it be any less appropriate for a producer to arrive at the scene of a shooting or murder and tell the onlookers that they needed to be crying more or appear more somber? It’s simply not appropriate for anyone involved in honest journalism to play the puppeteer of the news and try to create false emotions for the purpose of proving a point (especially a highly controversial political point), or to try and create more dramatic and compelling video

FOX you screwed up big time. CNN you're not great either so don't get too cocky.

Newsom Gets the Thumbs Up from Bill

I highly doubt anyone is currently following the early horse race of the 2010 California Gubernatorial race as closely as I am...

For those of you who are not, the only current democratic candidate for Governor is San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom who has been campaigning now for over a year. However, it's widely understood by everyone in the political and media world that current California Attorney General Jerry Brown will also be putting his name into the running sometime between now and the primaries. And although he has not yet declared his candidacy, Brown has been ahead of Newsom in every major poll and fundraising count to date.

Today's news is that Good ol' Bill Clinton decided to endorse Newsom...let the media speculation of his motives ensue.

This Wall Street Journal Blog does a pretty good job of laying out the most likely possibilities of why the ex-leader of the free country has decided to get involved in a state-level gubernatorial campaign in the early primary season. The San Francisco Chronicle is just one of many who seem to think that Clinton's early endorsement has little to do with Newsom and everything to do with Brown. After a heated 1992 presidential primary race in which Brown took some personal stabs at Clinton's wife, many media sources are thinking the endorsement is a result of some "residual bad blood"...or maybe Clinton really is just trying to "return a favor" after Newsom endorsed Hillary in the Presidential Primary.

In any case...I doubt Newsom's campaign cares. Bring on the Bill!

Al Gore and the future of Public Intellectuals like him...

When you hear the name Al Gore, you are more inclined to think of a man making power point presentations of polar bears on melting ice caps then of a politician sitting in legislative meetings. After two Vice Presidential terms and his own closely contested, historically controversial Presidential race, one could argue that Gore will be best remembered for bringing the issue of climate change to the people of America. His documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, made the term “global warming” a household phrase. Though some still dispute the scientific legitimacy of climate change and the manner in which Gore presented the concept in his film, no one can argue that Gore ushered in an era of environmentalism by initiating the most serious environmental policy debate to date. As with any political issue, Gore’s social criticism of America’s lack of environmental concern roused strong support and strong opposition, but more importantly it initiated conversation...the kind of conversation most easily catalyzed by an effective public intellectual.

As Jean Bethke Elshtain and Stephen Mack both point out in their commentaries on the public intellectual, its purpose above all else is criticism. Gore’s environmental critique of society in An Inconvenient Truth painted a bleak picture in which figuratively no one’s hands were left unstained with the blood of careless actions.

Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, "What were our parents thinking? Why didn't they wake up when they had a chance?" We have to hear that question from them, now….And that is what is at stake, our ability to live on planet Earth, to have a future as a civilization. I believe this is a moral issue, it is your time to seize this issue, it is our time to rise again to secure our future.

This passionate call to arms may not have ignited a war or caused one to end, but it did start a movement that was arguably significant and powerful enough to have altered our course in history. Three years later, Gore has yet to give up. In his own blog, Al’s Journal, he posts almost daily with continued hopes of getting out his message of climate change to anyone who’s willing to hear it, and offering those who are listening advice on how to best affect the environmental political agenda. In a recent post, he even acknowledges the fact that “building a grass roots movement is difficult,” but also assures his readers that, “Our movement has been building towards this moment. Together we will not fail.”

Though it’s hard to gauge what Gore would consider a “failure” in the realm of climate change politics, one thing is certain…as long as he cares enough to make such promises, and as long as others care enough to either passionately agree or disagree with him, the future of the “public intellectual” will not fail.

To make the supposition that the “public intellectual” as a collective group is in its decline, in my mind also suggests that we as a society no longer value intelligent conversation. There are no doubt a billion negations to both of those assertions happening right now as you read this statement. The blogosphere as well as other new forms of digital media have opened up the floodgates for academics and minimum-wage earners alike to become a member of the public intellectual with just the click of a button. As one intellectual put it, “Our notions of the public intellectual need to focus less on who or what a public intellectual is—and by extension, the qualifications for getting and keeping the title. Instead, we need to be more concerned with the work public intellectuals must do, irrespective of who happens to be doing it.” (Stephen Mack, The “Decline” of Public Intellectuals?) In many ways the Internet is pushing this statement closer to a reality each day. If a popular blog begins to stir up political and social debate, does it matter if the author is Al Gore or a college student? In my book, if either of the two can start intelligent debate within the public, then either can be an effectual public intellectual.

Dear GOP: You are NOT holier than thou...

Today's news of Assemblyman Mike Duvall's (R-Yorba Linda) resignation after a tape of a sexually explicit conversation accidentally wound up in the hands of KCAL, is what we might call the last straw that broke the "socially conservative" camel's back.

Let us now think back to just this summer... Who remembers South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and his mistress from Argentina? And don't forget Senator John Ensign's messy affair with a campaign staffer, and subsequent monetary compensation to her family.

Now I'm not saying that Democratic politicians don't sin. They do. The difference is they don't go campaign on a platform of moral righteousness and "conservative family values". The point I am trying to make is this: If you absolutely can not keep it in your pants then please...

A. Don't be a hypocrite! Don't tell your constituents that you're going to return them to "traditional" family values if you are planning on cheating on your wife multiple times/running away to another country to have a secret love affair/pay off your scorned lover's husband and son and try to bury the evidence.

B. Don't Incriminate Yourself! If you are cheating on your wife with two other women, for the love of God do not brag about it during a legislative hearing while there may or may not be a microphone on in front of you. Also if you are cheating on your wife, don't write your mistress's husband a letter telling him you are in love with his wife. Stop creating evidence for the news media to have a field day with when they find it (and they will find it).

A Big Week for Campaign Finance Reform

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission...sounds like just another bureaucratic supreme court hearing right? Wrong. The outcome of this case, which opens up for discussion tomorrow (Wednesday), could drastically alter the American electoral system as we know it. And that's not all, many media sources like the LA Times are crying out that this ruling could change the American Republic as we know it, "turning us from a government of 'we the people' to 'we the corporations'." So why all the big fuss?

In its second supreme court hearing this year, Citizens United, a conservative non-profit advocacy group, is once again challenging the congress's ability to regulate corporate campaign expenditures. Meaning that large corporations with millions and billions of dollars to throw away, can toss that cash over to any electoral party, candidate, or cause they so choose and the FEC will NOT be able to regulate said donation. When you step back and think about what kind of impact a change to the electoral system like this could make, you start to think more LA Times big picture American democratic process change.

If you're wondering what the meat and potatoes of this exact hearing will be, well it all boils down to a movie. A very politically bias and potentially influential movie that is, produced by non-other than the Citizens United. It's called "Hillary: The Movie". The movie was a source of great debate, and was never actually allowed to be aired during the 2008 presidential primary. Citizens United is arguing that it was free speech, but the FEC ruled that during a campaign, it fell under their regulatory guidelines of spending caps. But Hillary lost right? So in essence that's all that they would have accomplished had the FEC not shot down their movie? It's not like it was called "Hillary AND Obama: The Movie". Retrospectively Citizens United can't complain that their movie could have altered the election results any differently than they turned out on their own.

So why all the Supreme Court fuss? Well like usual in the supreme court, it's a tiny issue being debated with much larger stakes at hand. As the Wall Street Journal article says, "the case has far broader implications". So basically the court will need to decide if they want to stand by previous rulings that permit the FEC to regulate corporate campaign spending or do they want to overturn those rulings and let all the big guys come put their grimy hands in the electoral pot with the rest of us individual citizens. Forget your newly found sense of political efficacy, that five dollar donation you made to your candidate online won't mean diddly-squat when Exxon Mobile is tossing in a million times that donation to the other candidate...Haven't we learned anything about big corporations in the last few months? They aren't too great at controlling their spending habits.

As a side note, this will be Judge Sonia Sotomayor's first big hearing. No pressure Sonia...

Guns in Colleges....Are You Kidding Me?

Every once in a while a broadcast news package will come along that reminds me how powerful journalism can be with the right topic, right journalist and a carefully crafted story. This story by 60 Minutes, Gun Sales: "Will the "Loophole" Close?, is definitely one of those stories. If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend taking the few minutes out of your life to do so, especially if you were intrigued by the topic of this post and inclined to disagree with my position.

It's no secret that the issue of gun control is definitively controversial...even in my household (my Dad and I argue often), and it's surely as equally clear which side of the line my beliefs lie on, based upon the name of this blog. In any case, I just wanted to address one aspect of the news story that especially caught my attention: concealed weapons on college campuses. For anyone who is in favor of this concept I have but one thing to say to you: Have you ever been to college? The idea of allowing college students to carry guns in my mind is akin to the sentiment of holding an AA meeting that serves alcohol. It's not because I believe college students are untrustworthy; I personally feel that my friends and I are a whole lot more trustworthy than the rest of the adult world. I simply believe that the nature of college life is not adequate for such a freedom. In other words it's not the people, it's the circumstances they're in.

I attend a very prestigious university, full of highly intellectual young adults who will in a few years time no doubt be the next business leaders, politicians, doctors, and lawyers of our society. But for now I'd like to think of us as one of those temporarily unstable atoms missing a proton or electron, just waiting to combust should the factors of its current surroundings alter whatsoever. Please forgive my very crude scientific analogy, it's been a few years since I've taken a science class but I think something like that exists. In any case, WE as college students ARE that highly combustible, slightly unstable molecule just waiting to explode...add in a hard week at school, a little bit of alcohol, and a gun? Yes, you get the point.

Everyone knows about the Virginia Tech massacre, University of Texas shootings, and the other historically devastating situations that have occurred on college campuses as a result of handguns and assault weapons falling into the wrong hands, but if college students were strolling around with guns all the time, surely their use wouldn't be limited to classrooms.

I could make argument after argument for nation-wide gun control and stricter gun laws, but I think if you watch the 60 minutes video, you will get the gist of my concerns. I just want everyone to step back and think about a series of children's books I used to love as a kid, called things like If you give a Mouse a Cookie and If you give a Moose a Muffin....Well I'm thinking of one called, If you give a College Student a Gun... I have a feeling there isn't such a happy ending to this one.