Internet Fixes for Media Problems? A couple of curious things have happened lately.
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On February 19th, in this space, I attacked a bad practice at CNN:

Musical Harassment. CNN Headline News has a segment called "It's Your Money" in which the same few bars of music are played over and over and over and over again in the background, all the while the reporter speaks. Why? The music is not just annoying but also so loud that you have to strain to hear what the presenter is saying. Stupid.

Now background music in that segment is so soft as to be almost imperceptible, and it seems not even to be the same few bars of the same music played before. Moreover, the segment is now called only "Your Money", not "It's Your Money".
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A week ago (March 22nd) I attacked the idea that advisors to the President don't need confidentiality to speak freely:

Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's Daily Show minimized the importance of confidentiality of advice to the President by suggesting that the only thing that would be inhibited was advice to do disgraceful or illegal things. How naive, or dishonest. Would even the writers of the Daily Show want every single thing they considered to go out to everyone? Or might they find themselves in deep trouble if every word they uttered in private was suddenly broadcast to the world?

In last nite's Daily Show (March 28th), regular John Hodgman illustrated the importance of this confidentiality aspect of "executive privilege" by playing a (fake) private conversation between himself and Jon Stewart in which Stewart says a number of things that, if uttered seriously, would damage his reputation and which, therefore, he would not have said if he thought Hodgman would broadcast them to the world.
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I plainly can't take credit for these little changes in media behavior, but perhaps a lot of people complained via the Internet about the same things I complained about, and our cumulative voice was heard. Let me experiment to see if I'm aligned with wider public concerns on some other media matters.
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Fox News Channel's John Gibson denounced "leftist" bloggers for showing little sympathy for White House news secretary Tony Snow's recurrence of cancer. I didn't say anything at the time I heard the story, but was ticked off by Gibson's moronic indignation. Tony Snow is a liar. He speaks the lies the Bush Administration wants him to speak and makes excuses for the Administration's criminal behavior. He is part and parcel of the illegal occupation of Iraq that has killed literally-uncounted tens of thousands, and kills dozens more Iraqis every day. If Joseph Goebbels, Tony Snow's equivalent in the Nazi government of Germany, had suffered a recurrence of cancer, should the world have reacted with sadness and expressions of sympathy? I don't think so.
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Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto showed Karl Rove's dance to rap music at the Radio-Television Correspondents' Association Dinner as proof that Rove is a great guy! Oh? How about that little triumphal high-step and smile that Hitler did outside the railroad car where he had just forced France to sign a humiliating surrender — the same railcar in which Germany had been forced to sign a humiliating surrender in World War I? Various media manipulated that piece of film and repeated it to make it look as tho Hitler was doing a little jig. Are we to view that dance as a mark that Hitler was a fun guy too? How about his doggie, a German shepherd, beside him and his demure girlfriend Eva Braun on the patio of Berchtesgaden, looking out over the beautiful mountains and valleys of the German Alps? Are we to view that as proof that Hitler was a fine family man who loved animals?
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Jon Stewart on tonite's Daily Show would have none of Cavuto & Company's admiration for the jovial Mr. Rove, but did not compare Rove to Hitler. Instead, he suggested that if Jeffrey Dahmer showed up at a bar mitzvah and was a great dancer, we shouldn't forget that he's still Jeffrey Dahmer. Stewart then launched into his own rap in which he said that Rove spread the rumor that Senator John McCain had a secret black baby. The rap ended with "[Bleep] that guy!"
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Dahmer, Hitler & Rove. Sounds like a law firm, which is what the entire Bush Administration may need some day, at an international war-crimes tribunal.
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Moving on to another media issue, let's consider a major theme in television advertising today: Men Are Morons. Example: A wife asks what happened to the Lean Pockets that were in the freezer. Her husband looks at the pouch snack in his hand, puzzled. "Lean Pockets?" The moral of this little teleplay? Men can't read. Tho the package says plainly "Lean Pockets", the stupid, stupid man didn't know it was a low-calorie food, because it tastes so good. But how would he know it tastes good if he didn't look at the package to see that it was food? And if he looked at the package, did he see only the picture? Or did he see the letters that spelled out "Lean Pockets" but prove incapable of making words out of those letters because he is too damned stupid to have learned how to read? At the end of the commercial, one of the men the husband is playing poker with misinterprets the wife's remark that the guys at the table are 'four of a kind' (fools), by saying, "Four of a kind? I fold." So men are not just fools or morons. They are idiots (stupider than morons in IQ terms).
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Over and over we see commercials with the same theme: men are incompetent, stupid, contemptible fools who can't do anything right and are always embarrassing themselves and the (smart) women around them. Think here of the guy who gets so lost in his Campbell's microwaveable soup that he loses track of everything else in a business conference, and spins a revolving door past the exit and returns the way he came.
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Ad after ad, for product after product, portrays men as useless, worthless, stupid-stupid-stupid losers. Given that women control the bulk of consumer spending, it is vaguely comprehensible that advertisers would seek to flatter women at the expense of men — on the condescending assumption that women are so empty-headed that they will actually be flattered by such bull... cowsh*t.
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Even in media not supported by advertising, as for instance movies, where men presumably have more say about what film a (heterosexual) couple goes to or rents, men are all too often portrayed as weak, stupid creatures, hopelessly inferior to women. One woman is the superior of not one but ten men. Women are smarter than men, faster than men, stronger than men, more violent, more effectively, than men. Men can do nothing right; women can do nothing wrong; any contest between men and women has but one possible outcome, female triumph. What kind of self-despising, sado-masochistic male loser would sit still for such tripe, in a theater or living room? Why is such evil trash made?
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I have explained this in the past, but need to say it again: yes, it is sado-masochists that this stuff is produced for, but not necessarily in the audience. The creatures who create it are sado-masochists, and once you understand that, the vast quantity of violent, antihuman garbage produced by Hollywood finally makes sense. What doesn't make much sense is that such crap can make money. But remember that sado-masochism has two sides. The flip side of the masochism that may impel some men to watch such trash is sadism, and feeling themselves under attack from women justifies hatred of and violence against women. Hollywood scum who have been victimized by the divorce laws vent their hatred of women in hideous antimale films and television programs with the knowing intent of inciting violence against women. And women are too entertained by the insane flattery of viewing all-powerful women onscreen that they don't understand that such things make men homi... womanicidally furious.
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The antimale violence in some films alternates with antifemale violence in others, and just generally antihuman violence in graphic sado-masochistic depravity in still others. Even decent people who would never in a million years watch any such filmic vomit are subjected to grotesque trailers in TV commercials for Disturbia, The Hills Have Eyes, Vacancy, and the video version of Turistas 'too gruesome for theaters'. Seeing this, I can understand why Islamists hate the United States and don't want their own societies debauched by such vile, dehumanizing filth. If Al-Qaeda would limit itself to beheading the monsters who create such poison, Americans would be lining up to turn Hollywood producers over to Islamic saviors.
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One last negative mention of media before a positive mention. Have you seen the Right Guard Sport commercial in which a man and woman are walking in the woods when they spot a deer? The man starts to approach the presumably gentle creature, when it looks up, foam dangling from its chin like a beard and a wild look in its (red?) eyes, then attacks the man, with front hoofs flailing and its mouth at the man's neck? The man succeeds in pushing it away, shakes off the experience — merely checking to see if the struggle made him sweat so much that his deodorant failed (which, since it's Right Guard Sport, it hasn't) — then walks calmly, hand-in-hand with his girlfriend, off into the peaceful woods. Hm. What kind of fool would see a wild animal foaming at the mouth, that is ordinarily peaceful and timid but in this case attacks human beings violently, and not think "Rabies!", then get to a hospital as fast as humanly possible? Oh, that's right: a man, that's what kind of fool. Men are too damned stupid to have heard of rabies or to understand the significance of foaming at the mouth!
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Not all media are incredibly bad. Every now and then something good, sensible, and valuable appears. Unfortunately, it's not always available on U.S. media. I mentioned a British documentary in this space March 16th:

Meanwhile, the debate goes on as to whether people are responsible for such Global Warming as may actually be happening. This has become not an open-minded discussion but a heated debate, politically motivated and tainted by selectively presented data. My colleague in Northern England sent me email to say that Channel 4, a major TV network in Britain, recently broadcast a major documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, that challenges the new orthodoxy that it's all our fault. * * *

Skepticism is alive and well at Channel  4 .... Let's see if any [U.S. broadcaster] picks up that Channel  4 documentary....

To my knowledge, no American broadcaster has chosen to show that British documentary, even tho American public television usually adores all things British. Fortunately, my colleague found a place on the Internet where you can watch the entire 48-minute program:
http://www.archive.org/details/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle_Documentary. I have not yet had time to watch the whole thing, but I certainly shall. Will you?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,244 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:50 PM