blog.marcwiesner.com

Witness now the unraveling of the Republican Machine. First Myers pulls out of the nomination process. Now we’ve gotten the first of what I hope to be many indictments of that republican right that has been such a global malfeasance.

What I want to know is where is our inquisition? Clinton lies about sleeping around (something that’s none of the Federal Government’s business anyway) and he gets reamed by Ken Starr. Bush and his clique sends us to war in Iraq under the lie of weapons of masdestruction (of which there are NONE), then they violate national security by naming an undercover CIA agent. I could give a damn that Clinton got some on the side, it’s not like he killed Monica after he messed around with her. Where is the justice for the tens of thousands killed as a result of Bush’s perjury?

Now that the ball is rolling on inditing members of the hard-line Republican Right I prey that it keeps going. I prey for momentum. I prey for justice.

Capital hill is rank with it this week. After Robert’s nomination was so rushed through the Senate by the republican machine with no regard for Democrat requests that actual documentation of Robert’s stance and history it is the sweetest irony that the same fate has befallen the Republican party after Bush put Myers’ name forward. All of a sudden the GOP starts to reckon that it is important to see the writings of a person before they are given a lifetime appointment to one of the most powerful unelected seats in the US’s political system.

I love it when they get theirs and it’s doubly sweet when it happens so swiftly. Finally we’re seeing some signs of division within that party.

I went to get my car smogged today for its sale Thursday (meeting the buyer at 6 pm). I was a bit nervous because it failed smog as a gross polluter last year. I replaced the O2 sensor a month after it failed smog but I didn’t have another buyer so I didn’t go back to the smog station. Not only did it pass smog today but it passed beautifully. Feels good to know that there shouldn’t be any more obstacles for the sale on Thursday evening and even better to know that for the last year I wasn’t driving around in a Gross Polluter. Now the search for a replacement car begins in earnest.

After class today I was a bit more than suprised to discover that I had been double-parked. Not by anyone dropping off a friend or a construction truck or somthing that would make sense. No. I was double-parked by two big yellow school busses.

SCU didn’t even have any tours going through today. I checked. So what could I do? I waited, and played with the top of my car (the zipper for the convertable top had come off one of the sets of teeth). I eventually got out and got the top fixed. Hurah.

Today was also the last day of my midterms. I’m sure I bombed my text in intermediate mandarin, I left one-third of the exam blank because I didn’t have time to study the vocab. The other courses, I’ll have to wait and see.

Results from this weekend’s efforts: about 200 pages of reading, two take-home midterms, and a good ways towards completing my thesis proposal. Doesn’t seem like that much, does it? I also fixed my computer (twas a bad stick of PQI RAM that did it) and helped Yuri and Sarah move. Not bad, all told. Still on my plate: arts homework and paper for Weds, find a car, more reading….lots more reading.

Since some (*cough* 弟弟 *cough*) have criticized me for not being positive enough and spending too much time talking about politics I’m putting up a more positive post that doesn’t have any political message (unless you’re trying too hard to read into something).

Midterms are coming up at Santa Clara. The bad news is that I’ve got take-home tests due in my two history classes, quizzes in my other two classes, the first piece of my senior thesis, as well as home work in the non-history classes and reading in the history classes. On the plus side though, and here’s the positive, the due dates are somewhat stagnated. Monday is a mandarin quiz, Tuesday is the Chinese Civ midterm and the bibliography for my thesis, Wednesday is an assignment and quiz in my art class, and Thursday is my Japanese History midterm. The midterms for Japanese History is the one that I’m really sweating. We’ll see what happens.

Another milestone in the debate over what constitutes journalism is close on the horizon. Yahoo!’s working on revamping their news search feature to include results from blogs. Listed as “citizen journals,” blog posts will appear along side results from mainstream news sources.

I love how protective professional journalists are about their domain. Like theirs is a priestly duty not suitable for the tainted hands of the common people. What network did John Adams work for? Was it Fox or the Times that published the Federalists Papers? No No No, these were PEOPLE writing for people. That’s what networks are afraid of; that their lack of integrity and dedication will be exposed throughly once a truly independent piece of writing can be viewed along side one of the kiddy-gloved pieces from Murdock’s Machine

Here’s somthing fun. On October 6 2005 former Vice-President of the United States Al Gore was speaking at We Media, an event hosted by the Associated Press under the American Media Institute. In his speech he talked about the slip of mainstream news towards sensationalism and the importance of ratings over reporting.

Gore:

The purpose of television news is no longer to inform the American people or serve the public interest. It is to ‘glue eyeballs to the screen’ in order to build ratings and sell advertising. (link)

Two things I like about this.

After spending most of Thursday and Friday with course-work and reading I had sweet respite last night getting together with my bro, Cpt. Wu, and a couple gents formerly of the Gram Dorms for a game of cards. I was probably the loser of the night, having to re-buy at least four times, but at least it was a $1 buy-in so I didn’t lose too much. Alas, back to my work; I’ve got a couple presentations due Monday.

Let’s break down the news, shall we? Looking at TV and newspapers we can distinguish the type of operation by its size; larger (national) operations and smaller (local) operations. National news outfits cost more money to run so they either have to have owners with deep pockets like Rupert Murdock and/or sell air time as commercials, both options make money contingent upon what they report, that is to say that if a source of funding finds a story you’re about to air objectionable you don’t want to air it or you’ll lose your funding. Bigger operations have more money so they can afford a shiner appearance.

On the other side, a smaller stations cover more local news partially because it’s what’s missing from national sources. As a result they may engrandize local events and exaggerate an event that happens within their locality. With less funding, a local outfit may cut a few corners or hire staff (both in front of the camera and behind) who are fresher on the scene.

So you have to be careful about believing the news from a big station because they’re whores for their money and you have to be careful about the news you get from a small station because of their focus on the local. The bigger station may distract you with their shiny effects while the smaller station may make you laugh when a newscaster stands in front of an LCD featuring the weatherman she’s introducing who, in turn, is standing in front of an LCD with the weather he’s going to be describing. The big difference is the sensationalism. Both local and national news sources (especially in the case of TV) are prone to being over saturated with sensationalist stories of a trivial event. The small stations will do this because it’ll boost viewership and it’s usually cheap to cover since they can send one reporter out to one place for 20 minutes worth of news instead of three to different places to fill that time. The bigger stations are the tricky ones though. They’ll hold on to a trivial story a lot longer. They can entertain themselves for at least six hours day talking about an airplane that’s crashed (if it’s a domestic plane). The reason for this is misdirection. By keeping the cameras on the airplane people are tricked into thinking that this is news. It’s not, it’s repetition. Events that you haven’t heard of are news. They distract you from what’s really going on: war, genocide, government corruption, unethical corporate practices. That’s news, the rest is polished trickery.