Completely Unnecessary

Well, supposedly the cat’s out of the bag. Eight minutes ago, the NYT posted that Biden’s been selected to fill the other half of the Obama ticket.

If it’s true, it’s certainly not the way Obama would have liked it to get out - Friday night via ‘people told of the decision’.

I’d actually really like it if the Obama camp pulled a big ’syke!’ on the press. That seems unlikely, though, since it would incurr the wrath of the people that Obama needs to communicate with voters.

All the buildup, though, seems rather… blah. The NYT’s Adam Nagourney’s been saying all week it’s Biden. It was supposed to be announced on Saturday, and now it’s announced by Nagourney and Jeff Zelney on Friday night instead.

It’s unclear to me if I’m supposed to be thrilled by this. (Also, if Nagourney’s paper really gets that many accolades for breaking a story that they’ve pretty much had all week.)

I’m hoping for an Obama bait-and-switch. American politics is supposed to be all drama and circuses.

I demand absurd surprises. If McCain selects Alan Keyes, I’ll vote for him.

ps - They’ve got Biden saying that Obama was ‘not yet ready’ to be president. Can’t wait to see those commercials run on loop for the next couple months. (Oh yeah, I don’t have to. Yay!)

Update- Obama’s website now has the Obama/Biden ticket up. Way to steal the Democratic ticket’s thunder, liberal media.

Vaguely Related

• NYT’s Clinton Must-Read
• Life Without Hillary Clinton

In two sentences or less:

The Notebook (film): Meh. Too much or not enough softcore (especially in the deleted scenes), I can’t tell.

Wuthering Heights (book): Sister Emily should have sold the story rights to Charlotte.

The Girl with the Pearl Earring (film): I can’t take seeing Cillian Murphy tragically wasted in another film this week; two was enough. Also, as a character note: I hope to she sold that shit.

Maus (book - graphic biography?): Wonderful - still not sure how I never read the original since Maus II has been a favorite of my bookshelf for years.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (book): Getting better. I know it’s a noir, but it shouldn’t take me 100 pages to care.

Buffy (Season Six, Disc 2 - ‘Life Serial’, ‘All the Way’, ‘Once More With Feeling’, ‘Tabula Rasa’) (tv): Maybe my favorite three episodes of Buffy ever. ‘All the Way’ would make it four if Dawn’s grisly murder had been a plot point.

‘Life Serial’ gets an additional two sentences, since Warren’s (Adam Busch) outburst during one of The Trio’s James Bond arguments still makes me laugh out loud anytime I hear it or think of it:

I mean, there’s a shot of, like, pigeons doing double takes when the gondola blasted by!  Moonraker is inexcusable.

I think that’s honestly the best combination of writing and delivery I’ve ever seen.

Angel (Season Four) (tv): Kinda zzzzzzz. Narrative structure, much?

Herald Sun (newspaper): I actually had to read some of the HS for some research the other day - hands down the worst newspaper I’ve ever read. HS is inexcusable.

[Things I forgot! -Ed.]

Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog (online video) - Awesomely wonderful. If I’d know there was only a short period of time to watch it for free, I would have done it a bunch more times.’

Possums (animals) - So cutie pie and so everywhere. I lure them over with the promise of food, but then get a little nervous and ride away.

Vaguely Related

• Murdoch + Newsday = Media Regulation, Please!
• In other editoral pages with strong opinions…

Has there ever been a better television show than My So-Called Life? I think not.

In fact, reading Amelie Gillete’s recaps earlier today has completely derailed my plan for my afternoon. Instead of editing this thing that simply must be in tomorrow, I’ve been reading about MSCL, Buffy and LOST.

My So-Called Life is one of the few cult classics that I loved from the outset. I wasn’t a Buffy fan until the final year, I missed the first two (defining) episodes of LOST by being in Europe, I didn’t watch Arrested Development until the third season because I get bad reception on FOX, and my recent obsessions with Angel and Veronica Mars are just that - recent (and methinks, fleeting).

But ah, MSCL - I watched each and every episode (with one exception, below), and I think it’s fair to say that it pretty much defined my 8th grade experience. I sighed when Angela (Clare Danes) sighed, I mooned over Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto), and I yearned for Brian’s (Devon Gummersall) success in winning Angela’s affections.

I was one of the thousands who wrote letters to ABC begging them not to cancel it. Yet the 19 (more or less) perfect episodes are all we have to relish Clare Danes in flannel sack dresses. Between that and Kurt’s suicide, it’s lucky I made it to HS at all.

The one episode I missed was due to live coverage a plane crash one Thursday night in October. The audacity of a plane to crash during My So-Called Life! I honestly remember stomping around the basement, praying that they would at least cut back to the last half of the episode. Angela and Jordan had just, like, officially gotten together at the end of the previous episode!

And then they were broken up the week after.

I had to wait, I believe, until my junior year of college to find out what happened during Angela and Jordan’s brief and tempestuous official coupledom. (And, seriously, what a jerk!)

It was traumatic is all I’m saying. In all fairness, it was probably also traumatic for the people on the plane, though I can’t imagine they were experiencing the same degree of agnst..

There was a point to all this (and I do thank you for hanging in there after yesterday’s interminable post). I realized today that Angela might be the reason that I begin so many sentences - both when speaking and in my casual writing - that begin with “So…”

She does it a LOT. And so do I.

Sadly, there was no one at my HS with Jordan’s locker-leaning abilities. Oh, how the girls swoon over a manly, affected lean.

if you do one thing this summer/winter (because my brain is still confused by the necessity of legwarmers in July), get My So-Called Life out on DVD. And dye your hair Crimson Glow.

Just before I was about to hit post, I checked IMDB. Here’s the strangest fact ever: AJ Langer (Rayanne) married a English Lord, and will one day be Countess of Devon (which is bizarre since two actors on the show were named Devon. It’s a pretty small cast; it always seemed crazy, and now even weirder…).

Vaguely Related

• Russian TV Explains the Pennsylvania Primary
• Questionable Commentary on Eurovision

Let’s watch media priming in action, shall we?

Priming (and this is the short version) argues that the media help shape the way people think about issues - either through highlighting a particular issue or through the way an issue is presented. Essentially, people don’t use all the knowledge they know at any given time; our brains tend to travel down paths created through repetition or recent exposure.

Man, how boring is media theory?!?!

Here’s the lede from the NYT/Reuters story about the Green Party convention and nomination:

The U.S. Green Party, which captured far less than 1 percent of the vote in the last presidential election, chose former Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney as its 2008 presidential candidate on Saturday.

The most important information comes first in hard news. So, the most important thing about the Green Party according to Reuters is that its candidates and the party are wildly unviable. They do not and cannot win elections.

Two paragraphs later, this information is reiterated and expanded upon, just in case you missed it:

In 2004, the Green Party drew 119,859 votes, or 0.1 percent of the total, finishing in sixth place behind the two major parties and three other third-party tickets.

But, wait… didn’t they do pretty well once? (Next paragraph)

The party’s best performance came in 2000 when Ralph Nader headed the ticket, and won 2.8 million votes, or 2.7 percent of the total. Some political analysts say Nader, a political and consumer activist, may have drawn votes from Democrat Al Gore and helped tip the election to Republican George W. Bush. Nader is running for president again this year as an independent.

That information comes before a description of McKinney, meaning it is more important than her qualifications or fitness for the presidency.

There’s a real sense of trying desperately to fill the story out. What is this sentence about?

The U.S. Green Party says it is a partner with the European Federation of Green Parties and the Federation of Green Parties of the Americas.

It ’says’ it is? And what does this signify? We’ll never know. (Sounds vaguely un-American though, doesn’t it?)

And, lastly, we get a quote from what is clearly the Green Party press release.

It’s pretty obvious that Reuters sent no one to the convention. There’s no one quoted in the story; they don’t even use a direct quote for the spokesman in the 3rd par, as would be standard.

So this story is just a combination of a press release and knowledge the Reuters writer thought was important enough for reiteration to readers. These facts are essentially:

• The Green Party loses elections by vast margins.
• When the party does well, they siphon votes from real candidates (and we get George W. Bush)

I don’t necessarily disagree with the bit about Nader (and Jeremy will explain why I am both wrong and a bad person in the comments), but these are the facts that we are constantly told about a party that - by its very position as a third party - challenges the status quo.

Imagine if the story about Obama’s nomination in Denver started this way:

The Democratic Party, which lost the presidency in both 2000 and 2004, chose Senator Barack Obama as its 2008 presidential candidate on Saturday.

Does that sound like a party you want to vote for?

As a small, realatively unfamiliar party, the Green Party relies on the media to introduce it and its candidate to the public. The US paper of record just ran with an agency story based on a press release that says, ‘Don’t waste your vote.’

Democracy served. Or primed.

Link:
Green Party Names McKinney as Presidental Pick

Vaguely Related

• NYT’s Clinton Must-Read
• Life Without Hillary Clinton

I told you he was back in fine form.

As opposed to last year when I was not so pleased with him, Kennedy has made some interesting rulings. (Not that I always agree with them, but…).

Anyway, the Times has a feature about his role on the Court this year.

He’s like the new Sandra Day-O!

Vaguely Related

• Pictures in the Media: White vs. Brown
• NYT’s Clinton Must-Read

…for not posting.

I mean, it does. I know that more than one of you check this blog regularly for new and (ahem) insightful content.

But I can’t control your poor life choices.

So I’ve been tempted this week to blog about the lovely and soul-inspiring weddings of biddies - because obviously that’s awesome.

I think if you can’t be happy for 80+-year-old women getting married you don’t really understand what life is about. There’s fundamental level at which you don’t understand happiness.

[Ed. note - Um, Firefox 3, vaguely appealing though it is, does not seem to have incorporated spellcheck in a timely manner. This is absolutely disastrous for your editor, who can't spell her way out of a very small shoebox.] [Oh thank crap, it kicked back in; I had spelled disastrous wrong. I'm more of a big picture kind of girl.]

Anyway, I’ve been sick and also working/marking/watching Angel, so it’s really a grab bag of reasons why I’ve lacked the wherewithal to fulfill the blogging duties that - I will remind you - come with little to no financial reward.

I had something to say. I think it was this:

I know the Administration only has a short number of months (yay!) left in office, but this doesn’t mean that they should drive down their game.

It will potentially frighten several of you to learn that my father is a Republican. Not of the truly alarming variety - he just believes in lower taxes, etc, etc. (whereas I believe in stealing from the rich, etc., etc.).

Anyway, he sends me an article last week in which George Will (displaying the youngest picture GenXers have ever seen of George Will) is all about drilling in ANWAR and everywhere offshore because the Chinese are already doing it.

Eh, they’re not.

But, if the story gets repeated enough times, it looks like good enough impetus for Bush to advocate drilling off all our coastlines a few days later. The NYT, however, is not so impressed with that, considering it won’t lower gas prices until 2030.

But hey - talking points trotted out in the press ten days before they become ‘policy’ is just typical. Could these guys try anymore? I mean, where are those bold policy suggestions of yore? Isn’t there a country we should think about invading?

Oh, or is it just that we’ve gotten lazy, considering the oil contracts with one that we’ve already invaded?

Personally, I’m happier thinking about old ladies getting married.

Congrats to them and everyone taking the plunge (especially to Elissa and Keith, who I love with all my heart… even though they’re not gay. It’s not, like, a definite criteria for my support of your union).

Vaguely Related

• Justice Kennedy Back In Fine Form
• Zimbabwe Election Redux

Here’s the lede to a NYT article run the other day about the media’s potentially sexist treatment of Senator Clinton during her presidental campaign:

Angered by what they consider sexist news coverage of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, many women and erstwhile Clinton supporters are proposing boycotts of the cable networks, putting up videos on a “Media Hall of Shame,” starting a national conversation about sexism and pushing Mrs. Clinton’s rival, Senator Barack Obama, to address the matter.

And here is the picture they ran (and, considering that I saw it on HuffPost today, continue to run):

That is a sloppy screen capture, I apologise. I feel I should also say…

For realz?!?!

Though, I guess what better way to give that extra bit of meta f-you to Clinton than to show a picture of her boobs in the story in which you pretty much of blow off those charges of sexism.

Nice work.

Then again, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann called Katie Couric the “Worst Person in the World” for backing up the Clinton campaign, so I guess there are worse things.

Vaguely Related

• Life Without Hillary Clinton
• Tony Abbott Knows the Lingo

I haven’t had a chance to watch Clinton’s concession speech yet, but I hear from all sides that it was wonderful.

With Clinton formally out of the race, at least the press will stop gender-tagging/bashing her:

With Clinton no longer in ‘08 waters, the race for women voters heats up as the McCain campaign senses an opportunity to convert Democratic women who might be upset with the way their gal was treated. In speeches, McCain has been making a play for the frustrated Clinton supporters.

Or not! Jesus, they’re frustrated because they’ve seen a sitting Senator described as a ‘gal’ for 16 months.

I’m sure you guys think I go looking for this stuff, but I really don’t. This was just a Google News story that I clicked on when my browser opened.

Meanwhile, ABC is also running an exteremely long quote from an article by Politico’s Jonathan Martin (I thought the journalistic convention was no more than 25 words). An excerpt reveals a hilarious, though unsourced, belief apparently running around the McCain campaign:

But in doing so, they’ve already raised the question of whether McCain can maintain his upbeat warrior image while running an uphill race covered by a press the campaign sees as biased, and against an opponent for whom the candidate can barely conceal his contempt.

Hey, there’s that underdog meme we’re going to be hearing until November. Passed on without comment by the press, who totally, totally hates John McCain and in no way swallows old thing he has to say.

And that’s just page 2, but I have 2500 more words to write today, so…

Obama Vs McCain: A New Electoral Map Emerges [ABC News]

Vaguely Related

• Serenity November
• Russian TV Explains the Pennsylvania Primary

Nothing says ‘fun reading’ like examining media coverage of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

I started out trying to look at DR Congo. I was going to argue that the media’s sporadic and surface-level coverage added to the perception of endemic crisis in the country. But - and here’s the funny part - no one’s even touched it. Media coverage of the enormous country is so sparse and irrelevant that no one’s even taken a crack at exploring how truly bad it is.

So I moved onto Rwanda, which no one can get enough of and, might I say, during which the media did a particularly bang up job of totally stuffing up a complex and volatile situation.

You’ll be glad to know, however, that I am saving time. I now just I read straight media analyses like Babysitters’ Club books.

For those of you unfamiliar with the escapades of Kristy et al, allow me to recap:

There’s an opening chapter where they lay out the basic plot of the book. Then, a long and involved Chapter Two is devoted to, I believe quite literally, the same detailed explanation of who the Club members are and how the Club works.

The litany is so precise that, years later, I remember that Kirsty is the tomboy who lives with her dad and step-mom; MaryAnne’s mom died and her dad is conservative; Claudia is Japanese-American and wears funky clothes and loves junk food; which is an anathema to Stacey because she has diabetes.

And Dawn moved to California, but they go visit every once in a while.

Media analyses are kind of the same. Intro, figure out what we’re talking about. Quick skim of the Lit Review - ah, we’re talking about ‘framing’ Entman, etc, check. And then it’s just skipping more or less blindly through the Methology and Results to get to the Discussion, where we actually get into whatever they hell it is they’re talking about.

Occasionally, I stop and think about how much pain, effort and chunks of my soul went into that one particularly obnoxious paragraph in my Methodology and I want to cry.

And then I’m glad I’m not the kind of person to make graphs (I skip those, too).

ps - Attentive readers will note that, without students or structured places to be, I’m back on my 6pm-3am writing schedule. No more 7am!

Vaguely Related

• TMLMTBGB, Wicked and Bryson
• Things I’ve Been Interacting With Lately

What is this photo?

The burned out skin, the lack of top teeth, the creepy, creepy thing that’s going on with the eye?

What is that? It looks like she’s got a coin jammed in it.

Actually, turn your head to the side for a second and then look at it.

The forehead and eyebrow region seem sunken in. Is this some computer animation of what the ideal orgasmic woman would look like?

She/it looks more like a corpse than a woman achieving ecstasy.

Assuming that some guy made this image, I think I know why 65% of Australian women are ’sexually disfunctional.’

Which cracks me up, by the way.

Moving to the article, the caption underneath the leading photo - of a naked man and woman in a hot tub - reads:

Professor Marita McCabe says many sexual problems are ‘very likely to be about the relationship rather than the woman’

So we’re broken, but it’s only half our fault? Awesome.

Hilariously the captioning makes it seem like Professor Marita McCabe is the woman in the hot tub. She might be - it’s actually completely unclear.

The article ends as charmingly as it began:

Attempts to develop a so-called female Viagra have so far failed.

Creepy sunken forehead demon is only half of the joy of theage.comau right now. (Sorry, thumbnail’s all stretchy unless they’re centered; WP’s new photo thingie not so awesome actually.)

Including the Joy of Sex article, there are a total of five sex-related stories gracing the top of the site. Five out of thirteen stories in the main section; four out of the top six featured stories.

All I can say is if theage.com.au can’t get you in the mood, not even female Viagra could help your frigid, huge vagine.

(I should thank the Age - I’ve been wanting a reason to link that video forever.)

Vaguely Related

• Cannibals, Whores, Child Molesters: The Age Has It All!
• Well, gosh, mister!