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Showing posts with label American News Media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American News Media. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

My Advice For Hillary Clinton

Hillary has been under fire a lot from the media over yet another "scandal." I say "scandal" because I liken this to movie casting. If you wanted to make a good Western (back when they still actually made them), you cast John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. If you want to tell a scandal story, nothing sells more like the Clintons.

The thing is...Hilz plays the part so well and the media knows this. She'll say and do all the things she always says and does and the media will foam at the mouth, engage in consistent fallacy, and predict a Clinton imminent demise. We've seen this film many times and everyone is pretty sick of it. But that's the point, right? The media have decided that they don't want a Hillary Clinton presidency. When she is found (once again) to have done nothing wrong, they won't report it and they will move on to something else. They are very firmly in the tank now for Donald Trump because he gets ratings. So, what should Hillary do? Here's my advice...

1. Embrace a Joe Biden run. When he announces his expected candidacy, welcome him with open arms and say you want the competition. Praise him for his experience, service and knowledge. You will be a better candidate with him in the race.

2. Lose your top advisers-YESTERDAY! Has anyone ever seen Huma Abedin smile? A google search does have a few images of her looking happy but they mostly look like this...


Always looking like she's at a funeral...really? 

And every time Jennifer Palmieri opens her mouth, she makes Hillary seem like DB fucking Cooper. With the exception of John Podesta, everyone on her campaign should be considered on the chopping block. What they are doing simply isn't working. Time for some new advisers. 

3. Call a press conference. In fact, call so many that the press get sick of you. Take away the talking point that you are being elusive to the press. Take away the Trump coverage. And have them be at a circular table. That way everyone is equal. When they ask you the inevitable "how long have you been beating your wife" questions, call them on it. Be an asshole like Donald Trump. Give them the facts. Reality is on your side. 

Don't prepare any statements. They make you sound guilty when you aren't. I'd also consider having some actual voters along with you who want to talk about the issues and not the email scandal. Have them chime in on what they want to hear. Show the press what is really on the mind of the American voters.

4. Be yourself. I hear all the time about how their is the Hillary that her friends love...honest, tough, compassionate, driven...and then the Hillary that the media says...controlled, evasive, prepared. Lose the second one forever and just be the first one. That's what will win you the White House.

Which is still yours to lose...

Monday, August 24, 2015

A Fair Shake?

With Hillary Clinton currently under fire for kicking a dog in Iowa and telling some kid that he wasn't good at sports in New Hampshire, the normally conservative Chicago Sun Times has an interesting piece about how she can't seem to get a fair shake in the media.

“Someone said the other day that Washington may now have reached the state-of-the-art point of having a cover-up without a crime,” pronounced the Washington Post. By failing to come clean, Hillary had managed “to make it appear as if the Clintons had something to hide.” “These clumsy efforts at suppression are feckless and self-defeating,” thundered The New York Times. Hillary’s actions, the newspaper continued, “are swiftly draining away public trust in (her) integrity.” 

OK, I’m teasing. Both editorials appeared 21 years ago, in January 1994. They expressed outrage at Hillary Clinton’s turning over Whitewater documents to federal investigators rather than the press, which had conjured a make-believe scandal out of bogus reporting of a kind that’s since grown all too familiar in American journalism.

Hilarious!

Even more amusing...

Bottom line: When they start talking about narratives and perceptions, these would-be insiders, they’re talking about themselves.

Exactly right.

Prediction...

This has to be at least the fourth time the same crowd has predicted her imminent demise, if not her indictment and conviction. All based upon partisan leaks — this Trey Gowdy joker is nothing compared to Kenneth Starr’s leak-o-matic prosecutors — and upon presumed evidence in documents nobody’s yet seen. From the Rose Law Firm billing records to Benghazi, it’s the same old story: When the evidence finally emerges, it turns out that Hillary has been diligently coloring inside the lines all along.

I doubt that uncomfortable feeling in their brains (cognitive dissonance) will allow them to admit this, though. Expect more dogs kicked and little kids feelings hurt.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

It's Cool Now

A year after the Sandy Hook massacre and we haven't progressed at all. In fact, we've gone backwards in some ways. School shootings happen about once a month now and I have to wonder just how much of this is the media's fault. Every time there is a shooting, it's instantaneous, wall to wall coverage as we saw yesterday with yet another shooting in Colorado. If there was less coverage, or none at all, would there be less school shootings?

Somewhere along the way in these last two decades, it became alright to walk into a school with a gun and start shooting. Heck, it's cool, right? Because it's on TV and everyone gets excited about it. For those mentally ill individuals, this is their chance to have people finally attention to them. And they think it's socially acceptable because of the regularity with which it happens. Worse, people seem to be OK with it and that is just terribly disturbing. The only good thing (if you can call it good) that has come out of Newtown is the gun community has shown what truly ugly people they are. Their response to this tragedy was so profoundly disgusting that, in many ways, they are going to deeply regret their words and actions. As I have stated previously, it's only a matter of time.

The Christian Science Monitor has a series of articles up that are very worthwhile reading. In addition to political analysis, they offer some great perspectives on where we are culturally that need attention. Here's an example...

• One in three people in the US knows someone who has been shot.

• On average, 32 Americans are murdered with guns every day, and 140 are treated for a gun assault in an emergency room. 

• Every day on average, 51 people kill themselves with a firearm, and 45 people are shot or killed in an accident with a gun. 

• The US firearm homicide rate is 20 times higher than the combined rates of 22 countries that are our peers in wealth and population. 

• Although guns can and have been used successfully in self-defense in the home, a gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to injure or kill in a domestic homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense.

For our country as great as ours, this is simply piss poor. And it obviously goes way beyond guns. Why are we such violent culture? It's not simply one reason and I think once we get a handle on the complexities of this answer, we can define the various reasons and implement solutions.

I think we should start with why it's cool now to shoot up schools.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Polarization and Condescension

I find very little with which to disagree in Syl Jones' latest piece in the Strib. He really hit the nail squarely on the head with this one. I've been a fan of his opinion pieces for awhile but this one should be put in the hall of fame.

Major Garrett, former national correspondent for Fox News and once with CNN, has now added an additional wrinkle. Garret told MSNBC viewers that Fox thrives on polarization: "Fox actually wants to keep that polarization. ... That is an embedded part of the marketing that surrounds what happens in the news division at Fox. It's been incredibly successful."

The fact that Fox both creates and exploits polarization says a lot about today's world and those who spin it. Across America, many seem to enjoy the trauma of loose cannons firing in every direction. The folks at Fox recognized this long ago and now, when it suits them to do so, they wrap themselves in the American flag,

It's not just Fox, though. It's all of the right wing information sources especially the blogsphere. Like all bullies, they are lost without an adversary to pick on. It's how they define themselves in the world.

Of course, we know all this. So, Jones takes it a step further by bringing in the Juan Williams incident from last fall and making a most excellent point.

Williams and other black journalists have long understood that a liberal is someone who thinks he or she knows your history better than you do. A conservative doesn't know your history and doesn't care to know it.

Both sides of the political spectrum have a galling habit of trying to exploit people of color to justify their rather narrow interests.

Indeed. As many of you can probably imagine, I've experienced the liberal side of this quite a bit in the various schools I have either worked in or my children have attended. The yearly battle regarding Huck Finn is one example of this. It's white liberals, not blacks, who want to ban the book because that word makes sick.

Too bad.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of the greatest American novels ever written. Being a big fan of Loewen, I have to say that the controversy surrounding this book smacks of that avoidance of laying blame that he talks about frequently. The same white liberals that want to ban Huck Finn also fall all over themselves like idiots during Black History Month. Every year, I receive astonished looks and (very fake) loud gasps when I suggest that we do away with Black History Month and integrate its content into the course of the entire year. I do it anyway and the new social studies standards for our state will as well but something tells me BHM will be around for quite some time. It actually is worse, as Jones aptly points out...

Conservative and liberal media outlets are too busy slinging mud to pause and listen to what we know so well. Privileged interests are depriving people of the right to know the truth, to earn a living wage and to make truly informed decisions about the world in which they live.

We can see that neither side is right and that both sides are wrong.

Yep.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Hillary=Correct

Recently, I have joined the ranks of the millions who own iPhones. I am not ashamed to admit it: I am addicted. There are so many cool apps that I can hardly control myself. The main ones I love are the music related apps (like iConcertCal, Concert Vault etc) but I also love the news ones, of course, being the current events junkie that I am. I think I have about a dozen or so apps that are news related. One is the Al Jazeera app and I have to honestly say that Hillary Clinton is 100 percent correct.

Ms. Clinton said last week that Al Jazeera "real news" and lambasted the American media for being distracted by the bright, shiny object of Charlie Sheen for an entire week. She's absolutely right. The app that I have on my iPhone lets me stream the live feed of the network, staffed mostly by ex-BBCers, which (gasp!) actually reports news of significance to the world. Ms. Clinton noted the United States is losing the information war in the world and it's due to the fact that our news...well...sucks.

"Viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it's real news," Clinton said. "You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners."

Media critics like Jeff Jarvis have also contrasted Al Jazeera with American news networks. "Vital, world-changing news is occurring in the Middle East and no one-not the xenophobic or celebrity-obsessed or cut-to-the-bone American media-can bring the perspective, insight, and on-the-scene reporting Al Jazeera English can," Jarvis wrote in January.

Exactly true. I will say, though, that CNN is at least attempting to provide real news with the less of the divisive WWE wrestling themed programming of Fox News and MSNBC. In what is sadly reflective of our culture, CNN's ratings are in the toilet.

Al Jazeera may, at times, be the Fox News of the Middle East but that's changing. There is a growing number of people (myself included) who want real, hard news and are tired of hearing Lawrence O'Donnell talk about his latest tiff with Glenn Beck  Now they can have it streamed right to their iPhones.