A clever idiot. But not intelligent in the Socratic definition of the term, which is to say, long-term intelligence, to live a long and contented life. Wisdom, damn it.
I mean, he made his fortune by targeting and flooding our homes and offices, via our inboxes, with something everybody detests, and he was real good at it, too. This man made a conscious decision to become a lifelong pariah. Clever, yes, intelligent, no.
So it shouldn't be too surprising that he continues this pattern by not paying his dues in minimum security, choosing to become a much more serious target for the law for the rest of his life.
There is not a particle of common sense in this man's mind. The asshole acts like an identity thief.
Plain old "musicians" rarely recieve royalties; royalties are generally paid to songwriters and publishers.
I distinctly remember Steve Jones, guitarist for The Sex Pistols, commenting years ago - "I'm waiting on the next royalty cheque (for Never Mind The Bollocks), 'cause I've only got half a bottle of vodka left".
You probably haven't noticed all the restrictions in place to travel to Cuba, have you?
There's a bit of wisdom that's been passed around, all over Latin America, for the last thirty years: Visit Cuba before the North Americans can get back in, 'cause they're gonna drag along McDonald's, Hard Rock Hotel & Casinos, Starbucks and shopping malls.
Can you imagine a fucking Cinnabon in Havana? You have no idea just how many people, non-US citizens by and large, consider that image to represent a Faustian Pact, because it represents Washington's economic doctrine of neo-liberalism that's screwed over every other country in the continent, as well as Africa, over the last several decades.
You can pontificate about how Cuba's living standards are lower than so-and-so, but just compare to El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay, etc, all of whom toed the Washington (which is to say, Exxon and DuPont) line, and whose dictators were mostly alumni of the US-sponsored School Of The Americas.
Furthermore, if Cuba had not been embargoed, it would be quite prosperous today. Within the limited means that the embargo created, the Cuban population is managing better than most countries victimized by Washington's neo-liberalism.
So yes, visit Cuba before it's too late, while the population is still relatively innocent, crime levels are extraordinarily low, and an extended vacation can be had for a song (or two).
No offense intended, just food for thought about an absurd situation: Curious that the only people restricted from traveling to Cuba are the citizens of The Land Of The Free. So how Free (as in speech, not beer) are you, really? Think about it, I believe it's really an important question.
Considering the Bay of Pigs, the attempts to assassinate Castro, and all the other plots, maybe it's time for the US to formally renounce such stupid behaviour.
You got that right.
Whenever I hear or read about the Cuba embargo, I am instantly reminded of a story Pierre Salinger (Press Secretary to John F Kennedy) used to tell:
One day, Salinger is summoned to the Oval Office, where JFK tells him "Pierre, I want you to go out and buy as many Petite Upmanns as you can" - "Yes, Mr President".
Next day, Salinger goes back into the Oval Office. "Well, Pierre?" JFK asked. "We rounded up (several hundred, can't remember the exact number) through our contacts all over the country, Mr President". JFK let out a reluctant sigh, opened the top drawer of his desk, pulled out the Cuban embargo document, and signed it right there and then.
That's the executive branch in action for you, hoarding the last legal stash before making it a crime to buy it. And that's how much they believe in the laws they enact in our name. My guess is that the embargo still exists if only to politically pacify the noisy Batista Cubans that make up a large chunk of the Florida electorate. Remember the Elian Gonzalez incident? I'm pretty damn sure that incident cost Gore the election, made the margin narrow enough to allow Jeb Bush to steal the election. We've all heard about thousands of African-Americans purged from the voting lists. How many Cuban-Americans were? I'd guess the number is disproportionately low.
As for the effectiveness of the embargo where cigars are concerned, I live in Mexico, where tourists from north of the border puff away at heart's content. Then buy them to take home, change the paper rings and boxes, and presto!, a Cuban Cohiba has been transformed into a Mexican Te Amo.
There's a cartoon that made the rounds a few years ago, with Bush Jr jumping up and down in the tip of Florida, yelling "I'm going to bury you, Fidel!" Meanwhile, Fidel quietly stands on Cuban ground, beside a blackboard with a bunch of crossed out names: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr and Clinton.
Inter-generational, institutionalized stupidity is what I call it.
I was in the public library on Thurmond Street just now, skimming through Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole, when I suddenly came over all peckish.
And I thought to myself "A little fermented curd would do the trick", so I curtailed my Walpoling activities, sallied forth and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles!
Apple makes diddly on their software... compared to the ~$2.5 billion they make per quarter on sales of hardware.
Great post, which explains a thing or two: Around this time last year, significant resources had been diverted from the Leopard development team to the high-priority gadget iPhone project. The result? Leopard came out behind schedule yet almost in alpha stage, leaving a lot of Apple customers in dire straits as they installed "the latest and greatest" and found out the hard way what is a rule of thumb for me - "Never install an OSX, until it's gone through at least five or six updates".
I'm still running Tiger and will continue to do so until further notice, so this debacle didn't personally affect me, but I've slowly grown disillusioned from witnessing Apple pull this mediocre corporate crap, another case in point being the bricking of iPhones, discussed at great length in many other thread here in/.
Just today, I noticed the idle section, guessing that reverse psychology worked for me in this instance (waste of time, don't go there, etc).
By some weird coincidence, just today I asked myself where in Slashdot would be an appropriate place to have a thread along the lines of "What, in YHO (Your Humble Opinion), keeps Monty Python fresh and relevant after forty years?", you know, just philosophically shooting the sh*t about dead parrots, silly walks, the dead unjugged rabbit fish and a slice of strawberry tart without so much rat in it. It seems that here's the answer.
Halfway back on topic, did you read recently that New Zealand is the second most toking nation on Earth, after the United States? Which might explain a Kiwi here and there having the noise of washing machines jump out as sonic texture. Or maybe Locke got his cue from Jodie Foster's character in Contact.
Don't forget the steel and oil embargo to Japan, as well as the Lend-Lease Act on the European side, the sum of which is a declaration of war in all but name.
As for WWI, sending supplies to the Allies across the U-Boat infested Atlantic, made the US quite a bit more than mere Allied sympathizers, I would think.
I'm not knocking which side was taken by the US in both wars, I'm just saying that in WWII or WWI our shit done got blown up sounds like a black-and-white sales pitch, as opposed to what really happened.
The question of why the US has the right to possess the world's largest arsenal yet tell other people they must remain unarmed, is a separate issue, of course.
Separate issue, yes, but "bingo!" nevertheless. Coupling your point with the current US policy of unilateral preemptive strikes, as well as lukewarm interest into humanitarian catastrophes like Palestine, Burma and Darfur (an argument can also be made for New Orleans), let's hope that come January 2009, the previous eight years of doctrine will be discarded and given its' rightful place in history's Hall Of Shame, quite likely this pedestal will be erected in Paraguay.
Ah yes, Fritz Lang's Metropolis - the banned Director's Cut!
Ever heard of Eveready Harton? You have been warned, it links to YouTube and the cartoon is Extremely Unsuitable For Work, albeit a fascinating artifact of the same era. The Roaring Twenties were weirder than we can suppose.
Airwolf! Holy cow, you're bringing up titles I haven't heard of in decades.
You're absolutely right about The Rockford Files, I'd completely forgotten about that one. A factoid you probably already know, the show's creator was none other than David Chase, who later shot into the stratosphere with The Sopranos. I never actually saw any episodes of The Rockford Files, so this post-Sopranos empty period in life sounds like a great time to start.
But hey, this is Slashdot, not the Nick At Nite forums, so signing off... (pfffft)
Believe it or not, I've never heard of it, and the moment I read your reply (thanks for the tip), my curiosity level immediately went up around nine notches. (sigh) The State is not out on DVD... yet.
Or Susan Anton? I don't know who she was boning but they seemed to give her a craptastic new show every other week.
Susan Anton! Now that's a blast from the pre-historic past. BTW, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm 90% sure on this one, she was boning (wait for it...) Dudley Moore.
6 Million Dollar man,The Bionic Woman,and Battlestar Galactica before they jumped the shark.
Yeah, but what about Buck Rogers In The 25th Century? It did have that craptastic R2D2/C3PO ripoff in Twikki ("iri bidi bidi bidi bidi - hey Buck!") and his wise sidekick toted around like a Flava Flav accessory, but that Erin Gray chick was smoking hot.
Then there was The Incredible Hulk, simultaneously thrilling and poignant, always walking away at the end of the episode, with those haunting piano chords.
As you mentioned Robert Conrad, but only in association with TBOTNS, I'd like to think something slipped your mind here, besides daring you to knock this Duracell battery off my shoulder - what about Baa Baa Black Sheep? Take that concept, transport it from WWII South Pacific into outer space, and there you have Apollo and Starbuck, with Cylon fighters filling in for Japanese Zeros.
Finally, for the grownup crowd, Columbo was the cream of seventies television. Peter Falk molded one of television's truly great characters right there.
It WAS cool, in the 80's, but that is dating myself
True story from a friend of mine:
"So my nephew came over to the house, and my mother suggested him and me pass that Saturday afternoon skateboarding. I thought it was a no-brainer, but then my nephew protested - "But all my uncle knows are eighties moves!" And that hit me like a ton of bricks, the moment I truly realized, for the first time, that I was getting old and wasn't cool anymore." Endquote.
However, life has a way of balancing things out, that bratty little nephew's all grown up now, and all he knows in 2008 are nineties moves. So how does it feel, huh? How are you coping with your post-adolescence obsolescence? You little prick. Now get off my lawn!!!
Then came the Dark Times, when the DJs became bigger celebrities than the musicians (at least in their own minds).
Jesus H Christ, the original fuckin' VeeJays! Martha Quinn Nina Blackwood JJ Jackson A Puerto Rican guy with the ever-cool latino afro Some white guy somethingorother
Curious that the music was segregated, while the hosts were not. Just about the only elements missing from that roster are a Soviet Russian and an old Korean guy.
I only remember the stuff I liked and thus watched -- Aeon Flux, MTV's Oddities...
Don't forget Liquid Television, 120 Minutes, and the fact that on weekdays they showed episodes of Monty Python as well as The Young Ones, back when non-music shows were the exception and not the rule.
Many people I've spoken to don't even understand that there's an actual application that you launch when you browse the internet. They just see it as "the internet".
Right there, you just blew my mind. So basically, ten years ago we were provincial creatures behind the wheel of shiny metal boxes that go "Vroom vroom vroom!", but now we're provincial creatures in front of machines that go "Ping!". I gladly understand people who've never switched on a computer in their lives with a "what's an app?" stance, but people who actually log-on, either at home or work, on a daily (or even weekly) basis?
No wonder there are so many vulnerable machines out there ripe for the taking by exploiters.
I'm reminded of what the character SRT says in THX-1138 - "I don't know, it's a strange life. Cybernetics, genetics, lasers and all those things. I guess I'll never understand any of that stuff".
With me, it's a case of - "Lack of intellectual curiosity and all those things. I guess I'll never understand my own human race or any of that stuff".
And they aren't entertainment either. Just propaganda with a bullhorn, 24/7.
I'm surprised that so far in this thread, nobody's mentioned the "Outfoxed" documentary: - In round table discussions or "debates", keeping the regressive to progressive pundit ratio 2-1. - Using the phrase "Some people say..." to inject outlandish, regressive statements into a so-called serious discussion. - During the 2004 election cycle, showing flattering footage of the republican candidate, while the democratic candidate is shown slouching in a windbreaker, over and over again. - Through sheer, mind-numbing repetition, akin to a DOS attack, injecting the nonsensical term "flip-flopper" into the political discussion. - As for the Iraq invasion, minimizing the blunders and spiraling chaos, while broadcasting "Happy Iraq" footage (for example, some kindergarden reopened in a northern Iraqi town), as if it was the rule and not the exception. - And of course, anybody who criticizes the administration's policy is, by default, criticizing the troops, therefore the nation, and is by all standards a traitor, at the very least unpatriotic. And never mind the fact that republicans savaged Bill Clinton (therefore the troops) for joining NATO in response to the Milosevic brutalities in the former Yugoslavia, "because that was different".
Damn, did they take a page from Joseph Goebbels' book, or what? What I can't believe is how transparent it all is, yet millions fall for it (many others fell, later recanted). Those that Colbert called "the backwash" will latch on to anything to keep their jingoistic, xenophobic point of view. And bullies have their bullhorn. But the fact that the United States public was steamrolled into a sense of almost unanimous support for an Iraq invasion, evens while millions took to the streets in protest, the world over, speaks volumes on how information is squashed and distorted by the mass media, the largest turd in the lot being that cyst in the colon of humanity, Rupert Murdoch, an Australian, of all things.
Slashdot Mirror
A clever idiot. But not intelligent in the Socratic definition of the term, which is to say, long-term intelligence, to live a long and contented life. Wisdom, damn it.
I mean, he made his fortune by targeting and flooding our homes and offices, via our inboxes, with something everybody detests, and he was real good at it, too.
This man made a conscious decision to become a lifelong pariah. Clever, yes, intelligent, no.
So it shouldn't be too surprising that he continues this pattern by not paying his dues in minimum security, choosing to become a much more serious target for the law for the rest of his life.
There is not a particle of common sense in this man's mind. The asshole acts like an identity thief.
I use an ad-blocker and script blocker these days so I rarely see ads (I've maybe seen two in the several months that I've used it).
Reading the above sentence, The Buggles instantly popped into my thoughts:
"Firefox killed the internet ad"
Plain old "musicians" rarely recieve royalties; royalties are generally paid to songwriters and publishers.
I distinctly remember Steve Jones, guitarist for The Sex Pistols, commenting years ago - "I'm waiting on the next royalty cheque (for Never Mind The Bollocks), 'cause I've only got half a bottle of vodka left".
You probably haven't noticed all the restrictions in place to travel to Cuba, have you?
There's a bit of wisdom that's been passed around, all over Latin America, for the last thirty years: Visit Cuba before the North Americans can get back in, 'cause they're gonna drag along McDonald's, Hard Rock Hotel & Casinos, Starbucks and shopping malls.
Can you imagine a fucking Cinnabon in Havana? You have no idea just how many people, non-US citizens by and large, consider that image to represent a Faustian Pact, because it represents Washington's economic doctrine of neo-liberalism that's screwed over every other country in the continent, as well as Africa, over the last several decades.
You can pontificate about how Cuba's living standards are lower than so-and-so, but just compare to El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay, etc, all of whom toed the Washington (which is to say, Exxon and DuPont) line, and whose dictators were mostly alumni of the US-sponsored School Of The Americas.
Furthermore, if Cuba had not been embargoed, it would be quite prosperous today. Within the limited means that the embargo created, the Cuban population is managing better than most countries victimized by Washington's neo-liberalism.
So yes, visit Cuba before it's too late, while the population is still relatively innocent, crime levels are extraordinarily low, and an extended vacation can be had for a song (or two).
No offense intended, just food for thought about an absurd situation: Curious that the only people restricted from traveling to Cuba are the citizens of The Land Of The Free. So how Free (as in speech, not beer) are you, really? Think about it, I believe it's really an important question.
Considering the Bay of Pigs, the attempts to assassinate Castro, and all the other plots, maybe it's time for the US to formally renounce such stupid behaviour.
You got that right.
Whenever I hear or read about the Cuba embargo, I am instantly reminded of a story Pierre Salinger (Press Secretary to John F Kennedy) used to tell:
One day, Salinger is summoned to the Oval Office, where JFK tells him "Pierre, I want you to go out and buy as many Petite Upmanns as you can" - "Yes, Mr President".
Next day, Salinger goes back into the Oval Office. "Well, Pierre?" JFK asked. "We rounded up (several hundred, can't remember the exact number) through our contacts all over the country, Mr President".
JFK let out a reluctant sigh, opened the top drawer of his desk, pulled out the Cuban embargo document, and signed it right there and then.
That's the executive branch in action for you, hoarding the last legal stash before making it a crime to buy it. And that's how much they believe in the laws they enact in our name.
My guess is that the embargo still exists if only to politically pacify the noisy Batista Cubans that make up a large chunk of the Florida electorate. Remember the Elian Gonzalez incident? I'm pretty damn sure that incident cost Gore the election, made the margin narrow enough to allow Jeb Bush to steal the election. We've all heard about thousands of African-Americans purged from the voting lists. How many Cuban-Americans were? I'd guess the number is disproportionately low.
As for the effectiveness of the embargo where cigars are concerned, I live in Mexico, where tourists from north of the border puff away at heart's content. Then buy them to take home, change the paper rings and boxes, and presto!, a Cuban Cohiba has been transformed into a Mexican Te Amo.
There's a cartoon that made the rounds a few years ago, with Bush Jr jumping up and down in the tip of Florida, yelling "I'm going to bury you, Fidel!" Meanwhile, Fidel quietly stands on Cuban ground, beside a blackboard with a bunch of crossed out names: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr and Clinton.
Inter-generational, institutionalized stupidity is what I call it.
I was in the public library on Thurmond Street just now, skimming through Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole, when I suddenly came over all peckish.
And I thought to myself "A little fermented curd would do the trick", so I curtailed my Walpoling activities, sallied forth and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles!
Must... resist... urge...
Microcthulhu?
Damn!
Apple makes diddly on their software... compared to the ~$2.5 billion they make per quarter on sales of hardware.
Great post, which explains a thing or two:
Around this time last year, significant resources had been diverted from the Leopard development team to the high-priority gadget iPhone project. The result? Leopard came out behind schedule yet almost in alpha stage, leaving a lot of Apple customers in dire straits as they installed "the latest and greatest" and found out the hard way what is a rule of thumb for me - "Never install an OSX, until it's gone through at least five or six updates".
I'm still running Tiger and will continue to do so until further notice, so this debacle didn't personally affect me, but I've slowly grown disillusioned from witnessing Apple pull this mediocre corporate crap, another case in point being the bricking of iPhones, discussed at great length in many other thread here in /.
American Prudism came later.
Yep, but not much later. The official name was The Hays Code, and was enacted in 1930.
Just today, I noticed the idle section, guessing that reverse psychology worked for me in this instance (waste of time, don't go there, etc).
By some weird coincidence, just today I asked myself where in Slashdot would be an appropriate place to have a thread along the lines of "What, in YHO (Your Humble Opinion), keeps Monty Python fresh and relevant after forty years?", you know, just philosophically shooting the sh*t about dead parrots, silly walks, the dead unjugged rabbit fish and a slice of strawberry tart without so much rat in it. It seems that here's the answer.
Halfway back on topic, did you read recently that New Zealand is the second most toking nation on Earth, after the United States? Which might explain a Kiwi here and there having the noise of washing machines jump out as sonic texture. Or maybe Locke got his cue from Jodie Foster's character in Contact.
Don't forget the steel and oil embargo to Japan, as well as the Lend-Lease Act on the European side, the sum of which is a declaration of war in all but name.
As for WWI, sending supplies to the Allies across the U-Boat infested Atlantic, made the US quite a bit more than mere Allied sympathizers, I would think.
I'm not knocking which side was taken by the US in both wars, I'm just saying that in WWII or WWI our shit done got blown up sounds like a black-and-white sales pitch, as opposed to what really happened.
The question of why the US has the right to possess the world's largest arsenal yet tell other people they must remain unarmed, is a separate issue, of course.
Separate issue, yes, but "bingo!" nevertheless.
Coupling your point with the current US policy of unilateral preemptive strikes, as well as lukewarm interest into humanitarian catastrophes like Palestine, Burma and Darfur (an argument can also be made for New Orleans), let's hope that come January 2009, the previous eight years of doctrine will be discarded and given its' rightful place in history's Hall Of Shame, quite likely this pedestal will be erected in Paraguay.
For some reason, this reminds me of the three things that a cowboy never lends:
1. His horse
2. His gun
3. His Stetson hat
Also, there's a fourth classic lie: One last beer and let's call it quits.
Ah yes, Fritz Lang's Metropolis - the banned Director's Cut!
Ever heard of Eveready Harton?
You have been warned, it links to YouTube and the cartoon is Extremely Unsuitable For Work, albeit a fascinating artifact of the same era.
The Roaring Twenties were weirder than we can suppose.
Airwolf! Holy cow, you're bringing up titles I haven't heard of in decades.
You're absolutely right about The Rockford Files, I'd completely forgotten about that one. A factoid you probably already know, the show's creator was none other than David Chase, who later shot into the stratosphere with The Sopranos. I never actually saw any episodes of The Rockford Files, so this post-Sopranos empty period in life sounds like a great time to start.
But hey, this is Slashdot, not the Nick At Nite forums, so signing off... (pfffft)
Believe it or not, I've never heard of it, and the moment I read your reply (thanks for the tip), my curiosity level immediately went up around nine notches. (sigh) The State is not out on DVD... yet.
Or Susan Anton? I don't know who she was boning but they seemed to give her a craptastic new show every other week.
Susan Anton! Now that's a blast from the pre-historic past. BTW, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm 90% sure on this one, she was boning (wait for it...) Dudley Moore.
6 Million Dollar man,The Bionic Woman,and Battlestar Galactica before they jumped the shark.
Yeah, but what about Buck Rogers In The 25th Century? It did have that craptastic R2D2/C3PO ripoff in Twikki ("iri bidi bidi bidi bidi - hey Buck!") and his wise sidekick toted around like a Flava Flav accessory, but that Erin Gray chick was smoking hot.
Then there was The Incredible Hulk, simultaneously thrilling and poignant, always walking away at the end of the episode, with those haunting piano chords.
As you mentioned Robert Conrad, but only in association with TBOTNS, I'd like to think something slipped your mind here, besides daring you to knock this Duracell battery off my shoulder - what about Baa Baa Black Sheep? Take that concept, transport it from WWII South Pacific into outer space, and there you have Apollo and Starbuck, with Cylon fighters filling in for Japanese Zeros.
Finally, for the grownup crowd, Columbo was the cream of seventies television. Peter Falk molded one of television's truly great characters right there.
As someone who was into Good Disco (Brothers Johnson/Slave/The Jacksons/McFadden Whitehead)...
Dude, how can you possibly say this and neglect to mention Chic in the same breath?
Blasphemy, I say. Call in the Spanish Inquisition!
It WAS cool, in the 80's, but that is dating myself
True story from a friend of mine:
"So my nephew came over to the house, and my mother suggested him and me pass that Saturday afternoon skateboarding. I thought it was a no-brainer, but then my nephew protested - "But all my uncle knows are eighties moves!" And that hit me like a ton of bricks, the moment I truly realized, for the first time, that I was getting old and wasn't cool anymore." Endquote.
However, life has a way of balancing things out, that bratty little nephew's all grown up now, and all he knows in 2008 are nineties moves. So how does it feel, huh? How are you coping with your post-adolescence obsolescence? You little prick. Now get off my lawn!!!
Then came the Dark Times, when the DJs became bigger celebrities than the musicians (at least in their own minds).
Jesus H Christ, the original fuckin' VeeJays!
Martha Quinn
Nina Blackwood
JJ Jackson
A Puerto Rican guy with the ever-cool latino afro
Some white guy somethingorother
Curious that the music was segregated, while the hosts were not.
Just about the only elements missing from that roster are a Soviet Russian and an old Korean guy.
I only remember the stuff I liked and thus watched -- Aeon Flux, MTV's Oddities...
Don't forget Liquid Television, 120 Minutes, and the fact that on weekdays they showed episodes of Monty Python as well as The Young Ones, back when non-music shows were the exception and not the rule.
Hey, what did the Seattle guy say to the Pillsbury Dough Boy?
"Nice tan, dude".
Many people I've spoken to don't even understand that there's an actual application that you launch when you browse the internet. They just see it as "the internet".
Right there, you just blew my mind.
So basically, ten years ago we were provincial creatures behind the wheel of shiny metal boxes that go "Vroom vroom vroom!", but now we're provincial creatures in front of machines that go "Ping!". I gladly understand people who've never switched on a computer in their lives with a "what's an app?" stance, but people who actually log-on, either at home or work, on a daily (or even weekly) basis?
No wonder there are so many vulnerable machines out there ripe for the taking by exploiters.
I'm reminded of what the character SRT says in THX-1138 - "I don't know, it's a strange life. Cybernetics, genetics, lasers and all those things. I guess I'll never understand any of that stuff".
With me, it's a case of - "Lack of intellectual curiosity and all those things. I guess I'll never understand my own human race or any of that stuff".
Willy burrowing speckle-Throated Five-toed yak.
They just aren't news.
And they aren't entertainment either. Just propaganda with a bullhorn, 24/7.
I'm surprised that so far in this thread, nobody's mentioned the "Outfoxed" documentary:
- In round table discussions or "debates", keeping the regressive to progressive pundit ratio 2-1.
- Using the phrase "Some people say..." to inject outlandish, regressive statements into a so-called serious discussion.
- During the 2004 election cycle, showing flattering footage of the republican candidate, while the democratic candidate is shown slouching in a windbreaker, over and over again.
- Through sheer, mind-numbing repetition, akin to a DOS attack, injecting the nonsensical term "flip-flopper" into the political discussion.
- As for the Iraq invasion, minimizing the blunders and spiraling chaos, while broadcasting "Happy Iraq" footage (for example, some kindergarden reopened in a northern Iraqi town), as if it was the rule and not the exception.
- And of course, anybody who criticizes the administration's policy is, by default, criticizing the troops, therefore the nation, and is by all standards a traitor, at the very least unpatriotic. And never mind the fact that republicans savaged Bill Clinton (therefore the troops) for joining NATO in response to the Milosevic brutalities in the former Yugoslavia, "because that was different".
Damn, did they take a page from Joseph Goebbels' book, or what?
What I can't believe is how transparent it all is, yet millions fall for it (many others fell, later recanted). Those that Colbert called "the backwash" will latch on to anything to keep their jingoistic, xenophobic point of view. And bullies have their bullhorn. But the fact that the United States public was steamrolled into a sense of almost unanimous support for an Iraq invasion, evens while millions took to the streets in protest, the world over, speaks volumes on how information is squashed and distorted by the mass media, the largest turd in the lot being that cyst in the colon of humanity, Rupert Murdoch, an Australian, of all things.