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Badtux the Snarky PenguinIn a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin. Religious fundamentalists are motivated by the sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere, is having fun -- and that this must be stopped. |
Wednesday, March 21, 2007Iraq veto promised oh look! Shiny toys!President Bush is promising to veto funding for the Iraq war because it contains advisory deadlines for withdrawal of troops, and over 25% of Iraqi reconstruction money was embezzeled by war-profiteers like Halliburton and ... oh wait! Over there! It's a bald panti-less washed up teeny bopper mousketeer getting out of rehab!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin Posted by: BadTux / 3/21/2007 12:54:00 PM 7 commentsTuesday, February 27, 2007The state of right-wing punditryLet's see. Anne Coulter has called for the assassination of Justice Stevens, Bill Clinton (TWICE!), Senator John Murtha, and the entire editorial staff of the New York Times. Bill O'Reilly wanted Michael Kinsley beheaded and wants the entire staff of the United Nations dead. Rush Limbaugh wants all but two liberals to be killed (the two remaining liberals are to be placed in a museum as an example to the public). Pat Robertson and Sean Hannity are of course famous for calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, who, like him or not, was democratically elected as President of Venezuela (hmm, why do right-wingers hate democracy?!). John Derbyshire's column in National Review (2-15-01) said Chelsea Clinton should be killed to make sure she doesn't go into politics.About the only right wing media personality who has *not* called for the death of someone in that "oh shucks, you know, it'd be great if someone assassinated person X" manner that they use to call for assassinations is Michelle Malkin. She merely wants to intern opponents of Dear Leader as "enemies of the state", indeed, wrote an entire book defending the idea. I suppose that makes her the moral paragon of right-wing punditry. Which says something about right wing punditry, I suppose.... So why do these people still get a national voice in the media? Hmm, oh yeah, that's right. The people they want dead are the same people that Big Oil and Big Media want dead. Alrighty, then! -- Badtux the Media Penguin Labels: media, politics, wingnuts Posted by: BadTux / 2/27/2007 12:24:00 PM 4 commentsMonday, February 26, 2007Congratulations to Al Gore!He won an Oscar last night for his documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Well, technically the director and producers won the Oscar, but as the director said when handing the statue to Al, "It's his film."This was a big win for Al because the competition for best documentary was stiff this year. There was a *ton* of good documentaries in 2006. Also nominated this year for best documentary were "Deliver Us from Evil," about a pedophile priest, "Jesus Camp," about brainwashing children into being Jesus freaks, and two films about the war in Iraq — "My Country, My Country" and "Iraq in Fragments." All of these are smart and important films. So Al and his director and producers should feel really proud of themselves right now. I think Al would make a great President. He's smart, he's thoughtful, he's dedicated to public service, and he's already been elected President once (in 2000). He came out against the Iraq war early and has never backed off. Alas, it isn't to be. As Al himself has noted, he just isn't good at politics in the modern era of attack dog politics. He's just too nice a guy to be able to cope with the junkyard dogs of the reich wing noise machine. Of course, he did win once... - Badtux the Film Penguin Labels: culture, media, politics Posted by: BadTux / 2/26/2007 12:39:00 PM 2 commentsWednesday, February 21, 2007Call out the Waaahmbulance!So-called "journalists" whine about those bloggers who are, like, MEAN to them. The next bit, cleaned up a bit, goes to Richard Wollfe and his editors at Newsweek:Dear Richard Wollfe: I don't want journalists to be partisans. I want journalists to report the truth. A citizen of a democracy has to know what's true and what's not true, so we can contact our representatives and tell them how we want them to vote, or vote them out of office if they refuse to do the right thing. Somebody has to figure out what is true and what's not true and report it, and if you useless "reporters" (stenographers) refuse to do so and instead whine that it's not your job because that is "analysis" (huh? When is reporting the truth "analysis"? Truth simply *is*!), we bloggers have to do so. And if you're upset that we bloggers are mean to you because you're making us do your job for you... Oh WAAAHHH! Poor little babies! We call on you reporters to do your job, we call on you to dig through all the piles of reeking flying monkey shit raining down on our head and report the truth buried underneath all the lies and deceptions and misleading statements, and you stamp your little footies and throw down your little journalistic shovels like munchkins going on strike and whine "Not my job!" at the top of your pathetic little voices. And it's we BLOGGERS who are out of line? DO YOUR FUCKING JOB AND THEN WE WON'T PISS ON YOU. Got it? We bloggers already have full-time jobs making widgets or otherwise doing shit that makes the country's economy work. We don't have the resources of multi-billion-dollar corporations behind us. We don't have a team of researchers to dig up all the facts regarding a particular issue. Yet WE ARE MORE OFTEN RIGHT THAN YOU ARE because we do the job you refuse to do. We were right about Saddam's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. We were right about the lack of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection. We were right about the disaster that would be the Iraq occupation. We were right when we predicted civil war in Iraq. We were right, and we were right because we spent fucking HOURS AND HOURS of our own precious time away from our families and cats and livelihoods doing your fucking job for you and looking up the goddamned FACTS. The facts that you piss-poor excuses for "reporters" were too fucking stupid, lazy, or just plain bought to look up for yourself, instead just acting as stenographers for whatever vile political bullshit was being spewed by the goddamned Ministry of Truth as if it were God's own manna from the heavens instead of just a pile of reeking flying monkey shit. So don't give me that bullshit about how we bloggers are so "mean" to you. Do your fucking job, report the truth, and you'll never hear from us again. Shit, I'd quit blogging tomorrow if I had access to a free press that would report the truth to me. But I don't. And I won't, as long as you reporters refuse to do your job and refuse to report the truth because you're too busy stamping your widdle footsies and whining that it isn't your job... shit, if it isn't YOUR job, then whose it? A fucking PENGUIN'S?! -- Badtux the Truth-tellin' Penguin Labels: blogging, media, politics Posted by: BadTux / 2/21/2007 11:47:00 AM 7 commentsMonday, February 12, 2007New York Times Reveals "Reporter" Michael Gordon Actually Voice-Activated Tape RecorderGo read. Then come back and read the next paragraphs.Those of us in the Reality Based Community tend to have a lot of criticisms of newspapers. We see them as uncritically rote-reciting the words of politicians, whether said words are truth or lies. We see them as doing the job of tape recorders, not of reporters. And we flame them big time for it. The newspapermen, on the other hand, are unapologetic. Actual email from Michael Gordon defending his Iran article spreading the bullshit that Iran (majority Shiite) is arming the Iraqi insurgency (majority Sunni): "I spent some time talking to a range of officials on this issue and quoted the intel reports accurately." So why do citizens see a problem and newspapermen do not? I think the problem here is a disconnect between what newspapers see their job as being, and what citizens want and need in order to do their job as citizens of a free nation. Newspapers, and the reporters thereof, see their job as being accurate transcriptionists of people in power. See Michael Gordon's "defense" of his reporting above. As far as he is concerned, he did exactly what his job description says he's supposed to do -- accurately transcribe the words of people in power. But citizens of a democracy want newspapers to go beyond simply transcribing. Citizens want newspapers to find out what the truth is and report the truth. Newspapers today don't see that as part of their job. Thus evil and venal men of power, using the newspapers as uncritical transcriptionists of their words, find it easy to manipulate a public that cannot figure out what's true and what's not because the truth is literally buried beneath a sea of lies accurately transcribed by newspapers. So now, you ask, why do newspapers see their job as transcription? I'm not sure. I do know that indoctrinating reporters and editors into this mindset starts early, in "journalism" school, which could be more accurately described as "transcription schools". Future reporters are taught a style of "he said she said" transcription, and taught to never attempt to find out the truth because finding out the truth and reporting it is "analysis" rather than "reporting". Thus they give equal weight to lies and truth on their pages -- that's "fair and balanced", as far as they're concerned. But we as citizens of a democracy need more than equal helpings of lies and truth. We need to know who's telling the truth, so that we can properly execute our duties as citizens. Newspapers aren't giving us what we need, and thus newspapers bleed readership as we turn to other sources, such as the blogosphere. If we had newspapers interested in the truth, we could read newspapers. But we don't. We don't. And not only the newspapers are poorer as they bleed readership, but the nation is poorer for it. -- Badtux the Media Penguin Posted by: BadTux / 2/12/2007 12:20:00 PM 2 commentsSaturday, February 10, 2007Anna Nicole Smith is still deadThat is all.Badtux the "They're *still* talking about that?!" Penguin Posted by: BadTux / 2/10/2007 04:39:00 PM 4 comments |
About Me
I am a black and white and yellow multicolored penguin making his way as best he can in a world of monochromic monkeys. ArchivesApril 2004 / December 2004 / January 2005 / February 2005 / March 2005 / April 2005 / May 2005 / June 2005 / July 2005 / August 2005 / September 2005 / October 2005 / November 2005 / December 2005 / January 2006 / February 2006 / March 2006 / April 2006 / May 2006 / June 2006 / July 2006 / August 2006 / September 2006 / October 2006 / November 2006 / December 2006 / January 2007 / February 2007 / March 2007 / April 2007 / May 2007 / June 2007 / July 2007 / August 2007 /
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"Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce." -- Molly Ivins, 1944-2007
"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
-- Plato
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