Month: June 2014

You mean news should be informative rather than just sensationalist?

As far as I am concerned, the mainstream TV news sources should be utterly and completely ashamed of themselves.

A new study shows that the most informed “news” watchers are not the ones watching CNN or Fox or even reading their local newspapers. The most informed consumers of news are the ones watching Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report.

Remember back in the 2004 elections? Presidential candidate and then Senator John Kerry went on Comedy Central’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart? He didn’t really do that well. Tucker Carlson wanted to rag on Jon Stewart for not asking hard enough questions, who said among other things “I didn’t realize — and maybe this explains quite a bit — that the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity. . . . If your idea of confronting me is that I don’t ask hard-hitting enough news questions, we’re in bad shape, fellows.” 

So here we are, a few months shy of a decade later, and Comedy Central is more than “Where more Americans get their news than probably should.” Comedy Central is in fact where the most informed Americans get their news. Stephen Colbert is doing a better job of explaining convoluted topics like campaign finance than any traditional news source, and that is a pity.

Maybe — just maybe — that’s why all the major news channels are seeing a drop in viewers.

In Closing: “Come on guys, you’re making us look like a bunch of morons“; Portland Japanese Gardens; 86 real Life Pro Tips with pictures!; a few random economy things; a few really random NSA and spying on Americans things; Thank heaven Radley isn’t working for HuffPo anymore (because now I can get a freaking feed that is just him rather than 102 things I don’t care about plus just try to find what he wrote — is HuffPo that desperate for readers?); the only reason I hope Senator Warren doesn’t run for President is that she’s too useful where she is; oh look, they noticed; antibiotic resistance; and the importance of good research methodology.

Music Monday: Ladies and Gentlemen, LENA HORNE!

Apparently, women still say bad things about one another just to preserve their own [perceived] social standing.

Now here’s a topic I’d love to put to bed and never talk about again. Or more accurately, I wish the world would change enough that I never felt the need to talk about it again. However, the fact of the matter is that women and men live in one society but have completely different experiences in it. My life is somewhat better because I don’t live someplace like Nigeria or India, but my risk of being a victim of violence simply because I am not a man is too damn high. Don’t think I am speaking only for myself; Most women who aren’t Fox News anchors are aware that their *ahem* opportunities for good or ill depend in part on the variety of their genitals.

And in a phrase, that sucks.

Look, I don’t want a lot. I want to know that I am valued for who I am rather than my cup size. Women and men to earn the same pay for the same work, and indeed to have the same job opportunities. I want women to be able to go to a bar without worrying about being groped or raped and murdered, or being called a slut for — ironically! — not giving in to a man’s unwanted advances. I want Google to not find it totally logical to autofill “violence against women” from just “violen.” I want people to stop tut-tutting me for admitting that I’m a woman on the internet.

I don’t want better. I just want to be included in that thing all people being “created equal.”