Tuesday, March 29, 2005
SCREAM DOWN UNDER
Howard Dean will next month visit Australia. And you know something? You know something? Not only is he going to Noosa Heads, he’s going to Andamooka and Werribee and the Bungle Bungles and Shepparton and Yass! He’s going to Camperdown and Kiama and Naracoorte! And he’s going to Wallaroo and Tennant Creek and Ulla Dulla and Albury! And then he’s going to Canberra. To take back Parliament House! YEEEAAARGH!!
Monday, March 28, 2005
BEAST LOCATED
The Tasmanian Tiger lives! Apparently the creature infests Canberra; not sure if a capture so far from Tasmania is eligible for the $1.25 million prize, however.
HISTORY IN PICTURES VI
Behold! Yet more old timey photographs harvested from The Bulletin’s instant history laboratories.
SLEEPY JACKSON
Media Watch is struggling. The once-influential ABC program (it really was, back in the days of Stuart Littlemore) led yesterday’s show with this alleged AFP blooper:
Royal bride to be Camilla Parker Bowles will officially become British queen after fiancé prince Charles takes the throne … Parker Bowles is to marry Prince Charles , who will take the throne once his mother Queen Elizabeth dies, on April 8th …
Spooky host Liz Jackson’s witty rejoinder, as transcribed by the ABC: “Has any-one broken the news to Her Majesty yet? She has 11 days to live.” Well, maybe so, if that comma weren’t present between “dies” and “on”. Here’s the AFP extract in unabridged form; as any-one familiar with punctuation will deduce, the date clearly refers to the impending marriage rather than Elizabeth’s death:
Parker Bowles is to marry Prince Charles, who will take the throne once his mother Queen Elizabeth dies, on April 8, and will initially be titled Duchess of Cornwall, becoming Princess Consort when Charles is king.
Still, the paragraph is clumsy, and was re-worked in subsequent online editions of the Herald Sun and Age (information not disclosed by Media Watch). Jackson next wasted many minutes on a family murder-suicide story that initially blamed the father:
Sydney’s Daily Telegraph had already thrown caution to the winds. The paper was on the streets with this huge front page headline: ‘Father Shoots Family Dead’.
Huge? Huge? The headline was of a standard size for the Telegraph. Anyway, turns out it was the mother who killed her family … and that’s the whole story. Paper blames wrong dead person in case of several dead people. Worthy of comment, yes, but Media Watch cranked on about it for half the show (the transcript ends before the segment’s conclusion) and posts five PDF files at its site to support a case easily made in one sentence. In closing, MW urged readers to examine a two-week old NY Times piece on Bush’s “government propaganda”:
The practice of passing off government and corporate ads as news has moved into television.
Media Watch is seven years behind events. The Washington Post reported in February that similar PR tactics had been employed by the Clinton administration in 1998. This year’s Media Watch is the lamest yet.
NEW YORK TIMES TO RESPOND?
Greensboro’s News & Record has gone blog crazy:
The News & Record’s Web site features 11 staff-written Web journals, or blogs, including one by the editor that answers readers’ questions, addresses their criticisms and discusses how the paper is run.
That would be John Robinson’s charming Editor’s Log. Check ‘em out: The Chalkboard, The Lex Files, The Inside Scoop, The Front Pew, Thinking Out Loud, Off the Record, Biz Buzz, Fast Forward, Sports Extra, and (we’re in North Carolina, remember) a NASCAR blog called The Spotter. All feature comments. Note the snappiness and brevity of entries; these guys are good.
UPDATE. Jay Rosen was on to this back in January (via Jeff Jarvis). Meanwhile, in other newpaper-blog-interface news, Dr. Rusty Shackleford draws attention to a UPI piece on a blog study out earlier this month:
There may be more liberal blogs than conservative ones on the Internet, but the conservatives appear to be much more adept at employing the technology of the medium to market their message and influence public opinion, experts told UPI’s The Web.
Take last year’s presidential election. Research shows conservatives used the blogs—a contraction for the term, Web logs—to talk down Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on the Internet, perhaps making themselves one of the decisive factors in the November election’s outcome.
Leftist blogs talked down George W. Bush, too … but it didn’t seem to work, did it? Possibly they were under-funded. That Soros fellow really should’ve helped out.
REWARD CONCEALED
Oh, great work, Ambassador Nancy Powell:
A lone U.S. ambassador compromised America’s hunt for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan for more than two years, The New York Sun has learned.
Ambassador Nancy Powell, America’s representative in Pakistan, refused to allow the distribution in Pakistan of wanted posters, matchbooks, and other items advertising America’s $25 million reward for information leading to the capture of Mr. bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders.
Instead, thousands of matchbooks, posters, and other material - printed at taxpayer expense and translated into Urdu, Pashto, and other local languages - remained “impounded” on American Embassy grounds from 2002 to 2004, according to Rep. Mark Kirk, Republican of Illinois.
Such simple methods as matchbook advertising apparently work; as Ms. Powell still does, incredibly, although she’s since been relocated to the State Department.
FACE ALL OVER AUSTRALIA
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a prisoner expected to give evidence in the Schapelle Corby smuggling case in Bali fears for his life if he is identified by Australian drug gangs:
A senior member of Corby’s legal team, Vasu Rasiah, said the prisoner, John Patrick Ford, could face retribution when he returned to Australia after testifying that the former Gold Coast beauty student had been wrongly accused.
“We are worried for his safety and if the cameras are going to flag his face all over Australia, by the time he gets back he will be a dead man,” Mr Rasiah said. “We will apply [to close the court].”
So what does the Sydney Morning Herald do? It immediately runs a picture of Ford (and a smaller shot on the front page of the SMH site). So does Brisbane’s Courier Mail, and presumably several other papers in their print editions.
UPDATE. Also in the Daily Telegraph.
DEEPLY CONCERNED
Why is Kofi Annan depressed? Head on over to Roger L. Simon’s place for an insider account of oil-for-food investigations that might explain Kofi’s sadness.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
MARCH MOPAR MADNESS SALE
Reader Raffioli is selling a beautiful Holley-equipped Chrysler slant-six engine – attached to an actual Chrysler Valiant! The whole deal is going extra cheap because a hippie used to live in it. Bid NOW!
TRY THE SCHIAVO DIET, STEVE
It’s all very well for Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell to mock attempts at re-connecting Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube. Steve’s own feeding tube is evidently supplying him with enough mutton and lager to keep him alive for decades.
“RED TAPE” = “BASIC LAW, AS UNDERSTOOD BY EVERYBODY”
An Australian family has been torn apart by red tape, according to the Sunday Telegraph:
A Sydney couple who have lived in Australia for 16 years were kicked out of the country yesterday leaving two of their children behind in tears.
Hiki and Mafi Vaingalo sobbed at Sydney airport after handing over their 13-year-old son Keliti and 14-year-old daughter Na’a to relatives.
The Federal Government rejected their last-minute pleas to let them stay in Australia so the family would not be broken up.
Tragic, yes? Until we read this, in the front-page story’s fourth paragraph:
Mr and Mrs Vaingalo met and married in Australia after overstaying on tourist visas …
Umm ... where’s the red tape?
DOWD HITS 1989
It’s outdated pop culture reference #582,874 from Maureen Dowd:
The scene on Capitol Hill this past week has been almost as absurdly macabre as the movie “Weekend at Bernie’s” …
Soon from MoDo: “Hold the ectoplasm, Bill Murray! The busted ghosts of Capitol Hill are already covered with slime”; “That Wolfowitz – he’s more tight-fisted than Jack Benny!”; “Bush’s story is coming apart like Jennifer Beals’ welding in the movie ‘Flashdance’”, etc.
SUCKERS NOT BORN EVERY MINUTE
The Fox Blocker, last mentioned here a couple of months ago, is back in the news:
Kimery says he has sold about 100 of the little silver bits of metal that screw into the back of most televisions, allowing people to filter Fox News from their sets. The Tulsa, Okla., resident also has received thousands of e-mails, both angry and complimentary, as well as a few death threats since the device debuted in August.
“About 100” sales since last August. That Fox backlash sure is a big earner.
Saturday, March 26, 2005
‘NEWSPAPER’ FLAGS CYNICISM
Classy scare quote in the Sydney Morning Herald:
Schiavo parents’ latest bid to ‘save’ daughter
Nice.
BOOKED
Michael Totten has decreed that I am now among those who are it. So I have to answer these questions:
You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men, because then I’d deserve to burn.
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Yes. It led to fictional stalking, a pretend restraining order, and eventually a make-believe jail term.
The last book you bought is:
In French. Trust me, no matter what discounts they offer, never order from amazon.fr. The last book in English: something by Joe Queenan. I forget the title.
The last book you read:
Rogues, Villains, & Eccentrics: an A-Z of Roguish Britons Through the Ages, by William Donaldson. Sample entry:
Carlton, Sydney (1949- ), painter and decorator. Those who argue that bestiality should be treated with understanding had a setback in 1998 when Carlton, a married man from Bradford, was sentenced to a year in prison for having intercourse with a Staffordshire bull terrier, named Badger. He defence was that Badger had made the first move. “I can’t help it if the dog took a liking to me,” he told the court. This was not accepted.
What are you currently reading?
Nothing. Starting next week: Paul Ham’s Kokoda.
Five books you would take to a deserted island.
Five copies of The Inflatable Crown Balloon Hat Kit, by Addi Somekh. Each copy contains thirty durable balloons, so I could make a boat and go somewhere that has magazines. I prefer magazines.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Iowahawk, because at least four books he mentions will contain the words “cammer”, “flopper”, and “Toploader”;
Professor Bunyip, because he’s Australia’s finest academic;
And Shelly on the Telly, because she’s a brand-new blogger who deserves to be put under pressure before a hostile audience of thousands. Also, Shelly is a TV reviewer/performer—from Queensland—so I don’t think she has actually read any books. Her bluffing will be sensational.