progressive involvement

Wonder if literal brain-cell destruction is involved

Watching Fox News actually makes you know less than if you watched no news programming at all.

Hot air and dumb mistakes

Ford's Theater, the place where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, is run by the National Park Service.  The Park Service won't be selling Bill O'Reilly's book about Lincoln's assassination because it doesn't cite sources and it's ridden with factual errors, not that that should come as a surprise to anyone.  For example, the book keeps referring to the Oval Office when the Oval Office didn't even exist until 1909.

The world doesn't lack for Lincoln books, many of which are excellent--David Herbert Donald's excellent biography comes to mind, as does Ron White's, Stephen Oates', and even George McGovern's slim volume for the American Presidents' series.  With these treasures available, why would anyone read Bill O'Reilly?

O'Reilly's book has received pretty favorable coverage from the mainstream media, including the New York Post and NPR.  Yet, the customers who have actually read it don't think much of it.  As Justin Elliott notes, the average customer rating at Amazon is only two stars out of five, which if you follow Amazon reviews, is pretty abysmal.

 

 

Best political video ever

 Ed Lee is running for Mayor of San Francisco.  Nice catch getting Brian Wilson, ace closer for the Giants, Wil.i.am, and the founder of Twitter to appear in the vid.

Our liberal media

At one time--the mid-60's, say--one could argue that the media were somewhat liberal.  This was not a nefarious plot of some kind, merely part of the liberal consensus that held through the late 50's to mid-60's.

Nowadays, things are different.  This chart, showing media coverage of the various candidates for president, shows, basically, that the more conservative you are, the better press you get.

President Obama gets the most negative coverage of all.  He's not much of a liberal, but he's more liberal than everybody whose name appears above his.

Not that it matters too much

Occupy Wall Street is twice as popular as the tea party.  A Time magazine poll puts Occupy Wall Street's approval rating at 54% while the tea party clocks in at an anemic 27%.

The tea party was mostly ginned up by the media in the first place.  Meanwhile, it took that same media two weeks to notice Occupy Wall Street.  Even "liberal" NPR didn't report anything for ten days.

 

Just wait 'til the rappers try this

Political ads may be evolving into something different.  Take this one from Poland, for example.  

Here's the translation:  End of stiff talks, End of stupid wars, Secular contrary, Appropriate life, Appropriate life, Freedom, Freedom, That's my aim, Vote smart, Jedrzej Wijas to join Parliment, Fair order, Fair man.

I'm not too familiar with Polish politics, but they have a problem with "stiff talks"?  On the other hand, "secular contrary" sounds intriguing.

 

Sign of the times

When you go to the Washington Post website, you get a pop-up encouraging you to join AARP.

Why are we talking about deficits when the people want jobs?

A college camp instructor at Whisky Fire asks his students to write about "the most serious problem facing the country right now."  The teacher doesn't care what problem they pick.  It could be complete fantasy.  It's a writing exercise, pure and simple.

Most students wrote on the economy.  The students who were most familiar with the arguments they heard through the media generally thought the deficit was the biggest issue.  The ones who relied less on the media to make their arguments, who relied more on their own observations, thought unemployment was the biggest problem.

This is becoming more common.  Many people, for example, seem to believe that Social Security is going to run out of money any day now--they heard it on Fox!--when, in fact, that is not remotely true.  Those who get their news from "the news" seem more likely to be misinformed than informed.

This is not surprising to anyone who knows much about the Bible.  It was the slave girl to Naaman's wife who knew about the healing prophet in Israel when the king of Israel didn't.  It was the flunkies helping at the wedding who knew Jesus had turned water into wine when the winestewards didn't.

People closest to the ground, who actually live in the world the media allegedly reports, are more likely to know what's really going on than the high-dollar news-readers on TV.  

Pastor's daughter named world's most powerful woman

Says Forbes magazine.  They judged Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, to be the most powerful woman in the world.  U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was second.

Rounding out the top ten were:  Dilma Roussef, President of Brazil, Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, Melinda Gates, Co-founder and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Sonya Gandhi, President of India, Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States, Christine Legarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, and Irene Rosenfeld, CEO of Kraft Foods.

They'll know we are Christians by our love

Unsettled Christianity:  The Fox News Facebook page got over 8,000 death threats posted on its wall after the Communications Director for the American Atheists, Blair Scott, appeared on the network’s “America Live” discussing the group’s lawsuit hoping to stop the erection of a crucifix at the World Trade Center Memorial.