Here at Fit To Print we are all about the democratic process. We value your input. Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line. Anyway, we’re planning to do up another three-piece post extravaganza. We want you to tell us what to write about. Please vote for one of the topics listed below. If you have a touchtone phone, you can call us toll-free, or you can send us an email or post a comment in this thread. First topic to garner a thousand votes will be the winner. Also, feel free to say which ones you would least like to see, as I may do more than one.
Television: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (nicely broken up into three parts)
Think Tank Wars
Great Movies… and Good Movies You’ve Never Seen
Getting To Know (choose 3):
George Soros
Deval Patrick
Dave Chappelle
Hugo Chavez
Russ Feingold
Andrew Carnegie
Eric Alterman
Rush Limbaugh
Bob Woodward
George Stephanopoulos
David Brooks
Tony Snow
Morgan Spurlock
Paul Krugman
Stan Kubrick
Tim McCarver
Barney Frank
Beginner’s Guide To (choose 3):
Blogs that will get you laid (no, really)
Shiites and Sunnis
Muslims and Arabs
Saving the World
Establishment Politics
Grassroots Politics
School for Scandal
Statistics
Newspapers of the Country
Recent Books you should pretend to have read
Killing Time Online
The Ins and Outs of Netflix
What’s New in Science
Why’d they get the Nobel Again?
October 22nd, 2006
Over the past few days I have been tinkering around with a few ideas for posts: the history of the blog, your blog and you, whatever happened to the press and the 1st Amendment, etc.
Well I was having trouble with the media one, because as it turns out, I’m not a great writer and I have trouble explaining things. But I didn’t let that stop me, gentle reader. No sir, I did not. Fittingly enough, I took the route of the lazy journalist and stole from someone else. This is from a diary on Daily Kos:
“The job of the press is not to be neutral, it is to be objective. There is an enormous difference.
Here’s neutral: The Jedi rebels say the Death Star is a peril to the universe, but Darth Vader assures the universe that the empire is trying to protect us from the insurgent terrorists that seek to do us harm.
Here’s objective: It’s called the Death Star. Its objective is complete control. Darth Vader’s tactics are brutal and dictatorial.”
Psst, I think Darth Vader is supposed to be the Bush Administration. After such a promising start, the rest of the diary goes on to completely suck, but I thought this initial offering was the perfect analogy for what is wrong with today’s media. They simply supply some facts, and then provide a talking point from each side about the issue. Gee, thanks.
A good blog, much like a good editorial or the Daily Show, makes no cowardly and disingenuous claims of being completely neutral. It will give you the facts, put them in context, and provide you with an informed opinion on what they mean.
Of course, mainstream media is not all bad or all the same, so here are some quick congratulatory notes.
Congratulations to Anderson Cooper for going to Darfur and the Congo, but please stop acting like any second your mic could be cut and your throat slit. You are 39 and your hair is completely gray. Relax. Take a deep breath and realize that life goes on within you and without you.
To Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and everyone else comfortably residing at the NYT Op Ed Page, congratulations on joining the anti-war bandwagon, once it became safe and uncontroversial to do so. All the tepid dissent that’s fit to print. Glad you guys are there to play the Alan Colmes to George Bush’s Sean Hannity.
Congratulations to arrogant blowhard Tom Brokaw, along with imbecilic cohorts Dan Rather and Ted Koppel, for finally giving my god damn tv back. Straight faces and dramatic pauses are not the only keys to gravitas and credibility. They are the keys to a monotonous broadcast, however. When I’m trying to sleep at night, I play a tape of Ted Koppel asking Tom Brokaw what it was like to interview Dan Rather.
All kidding aside, a sad farewell to Peter Jennings. Why do the good always die young. As many can vividly recall Walter Cronkite’s touching coverage of JFK’s assassination, so too will I remember Mr. Jennings on 9/11.
October 22nd, 2006