Bloggasm

I have gone nearly six months now without cable. I keep myself fed with the occasional Netflix rental but otherwise I am now in a perpetual state of television fasting. This stems from my own cheapness rather than any objection to the medium — I moved to an apartment with more expensive rent and utilities and suddenly the idea of spending another $40 a month on cable seemed much less necessary.

But before this plunge I watched anywhere from a half hour to an hour of cable news a night, usually when exercising. Though in the past I was pretty eclectic about which network to watch, sometime early in 2007 I settled on watching MSNBC almost exclusively. What show I watched depended entirely on when I got around to exercising that night, but more often than not I would find myself following the ping-pong match that is Chris Mathews’s Hardball.

At first, I found the show entertaining. But then when we entered February and March of 2007, Matthews, unlike the rest of America, which was just starting to prepare itself for a presidential season, was ready to draw blood. He became obsessed, in every single episode, — every single god damn night — with who may or may not run. When he didn’t have a potential presidential candidate to pester with his annoying “areyagonnarun??” prattle, he and his guests would spend 15 to 20 minutes of every night repeating the same “analysis,” a mixture of the obvious and wildfire predictions not tied to any actual public opinion polls.

Soon, I found myself reaching some kind of internal crescendo and having to change the channel in the same way that I had to switch off the radio after listening to Dr. Laura Schlessinger tell yet another pregnant mom that she better quit her job and abandon the feminist notion of a career. You reach a point sometimes when bottlenecking no longer gives you pleasure; just as some movies are so bad that they sink lower than the realm of camp, Matthews had managed to frustrate me to the point of driving me away.

But then came the six months without cable and I didn’t give him much thought other than reading the occasional blog post or media article panning him. Today, though, I revisited Matthews at length when I read a profile of him in the New York Times Magazine Suddenly I was barraged with flashbacks of his contrived “Ha!” and duck-like speech, his sportscaster play-by-play shallowness, his horse race coverage. I realized then that he is the epitome of what’s wrong with cable news.

Matthews is the antithesis of wonkery. He and his guests almost never provide insight to policies; there is no depth given to the issues themselves, other than the occasional argument over whether a specific platform can get pushed through into law. Candidates like to repeat the cliche that they’re not running for themselves, they’re running for the country. But Matthews shows no pretense over his coverage; it is about the candidate. His show is a character study of the presidential hopeful, a back-and-forth sportscaster analysis.

What’s worse is that he is the definition of the mainstream media’s bizarre concept of a “centrist.” To them, fair and balanced isn’t about truth, it’s about making sure the scales are equally weighted with both liberals and conservatives. All opinions are created equal in this cable news world, regardless of which opinion is held up by facts. Nothing three dimensional is ever revealed in this world because, to pundits like Matthews, politics is a continuous game of “gotcha.”

To illustrate my point, take a look at this quote from Matthews’s profile:

On the morning of the Cleveland debate, Matthews was standing in the lobby of the Ritz when Russert walked through, straight from a workout, wearing a sweat-drenched Buffalo Bills sweatshirt, long shorts and black rubber-soled shoes with tube socks. “Here he is; here he is, the man,” Matthews said to Russert, who smiled and chatted for a few minutes before returning to his room. (An MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, tried, after the fact, to declare Russert’s outfit “off the record.”)

If MSNBC is so afraid of being candid about something as simple as Russert’s exercise outfit, then why should we expect anything more from the politicians they’re supposed to cover? MSNBC — and other cable news channels — have become the two-faced political machines they’re supposed to counteract. They’re nothing but noise.

Ok, I was going to wait off another day or two before posting some new links, but some of these are starting to get outdated and will be old news by Friday. So here are some media-related links for your enjoyment.

1. Many of us can remember a time when the only widely-used browser was Netscape, but I almost completely forgot Netscape existed until I read that it’s pretty much closing up shop.

2. Sites like Technorati and Bloglines are notorious for being shut down for hours at a time because of errors and maintenance, but they weren’t the only sites in 2007 to have major outages.

3. Let’s say you’re a striking writer entering a high-class bar after a long day of picketing, and inside the bar are the very producers you’re striking against. There’s only one word to describe your situation: AWKWAAAARRRDDD

4. If you live in Australia and want to look at internet porn, make sure you ask your government nicely first.

5. The New York Times proves in one fell swoop that god is dead. More about their stupid decision over here.

6. Paul E. Steiger writes a departing column for the Wall Street Journal, one in which he pines for the golden days of journalism. This one is actually more entertaining than your normal OMG-newspapers-are-dying column that has become ubiquitous over the past year.

7. Remember that cute girl that sang a song about Digg.com? Well, it looks like her internet fame might result in her getting a record deal.

8. Kudos to Chelsea Clinton for telling a 9-year-old bitch to shove it. For all she knows, that young journalist was a Helen Thomas in training.

9. I can just picture the Gawker Media advertising staff groaning in unison when they found out that they’d have to sell advertising for a…wait for it…blog about science fiction. Something tells me this isn’t a profitable niche.

10. Maybe Tucker Carlson isn’t a gonner after all.

11. Ten obscure Google tricks you didn’t know about.

I’m not a regular listener of talk radio, but I’ve always wondered why they use a one-person format. It seems like they could keep the conversation going more smoothly if a talk radio host had another host to talk to. To me, it just seems so unnatural for a guy to basically talk to himself for hours straight; the few times I have listened to the medium I noticed that there seems to be no flow.

I’m currently reading an article about right-wing radio that was originally published in The Atlantic Monthly. It’s written by David Foster Wallace and is titled “Host.” Now, I usually hate it when bloggers simply block quote huge chunks of text, but I really need to in this instance.

In this particular passage, Wallace describes the difficulty of being a talk radio host:

To appreciate these skills and some of the difficulties involved, you might wish to do an experiment. Try sitting alone in a room with a clock, turning on a tape recorder, and starting to speak into it. Speak about anything you want — with the proviso that your topic, and your opinions on it, must be of interest to some group of strangers who you imagine will be listening to the tape. Naturally, in order to be even minimally interesting, your remarks should be intelligible and their reasoning sequential — a listener will have to be able to follow the logic of what you’re saying — which means that you will have to know enough about your topic to organize your statements in a coherent way. (But you cannot do much of this organizing beforehand; it has to occur at the same time you’re speaking. Plus, ideally, what you’re saying should be not just comprehensible and interesting but compelling, stimulating, which means that your remarks have to provoke and sustain some kind of emotional reaction in the listeners, which in turn will require you to construct some kind of identifiable persona for yourself — your comments will need to strike the listener as coming from an actual human being, someone with a real personality and real feelings about whatever it is you’re discussing. And it gets even trickier: You’re trying to communicate in real time with someone you cannot see or hear responses from; and though you’re communicating in speech, your remarks cannot have any of the fragmentary repetitive, garbled qualities of real interhuman speech or speech’s ticcy pauses while you try to think of how to phrase what you want to say next. You’re also, of course, denied the physical inflections that are so much a part of spoken English — the facial expressions, changes in posture, and symphony of little gestures that accompany and buttress real talking. Everything unspoken about you, your topic, and how you feel about it has to be conveyed through pitch, volume, tone, and pacing. The pacing is especially important: it can’t be too slow, since that’s low-energy and dull, but it can’t be too rushed or it will sound like babbling. And so you have somehow to keep all these different imperatives and structures in mind at the same time, while also filling exactly, say, eleven minutes, with no dead air and no going over, such that at 10:46 you have wound things up neatly and are in a position to say, “KFI is the station with the most frequent traffic reports. Alan LaGreen is in the KFI Traffic Center” (which, to be honest, Mr. Z. sometimes leaves himself only three or even two seconds for and has to say extremely fast, which he can always do without a flub). So then, ready: go.

Excerpted from The New Kings of Nonfiction

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Saskboy is a computer scientist who comments on all sorts of news, movies, and his daily thoughts. Photography, politics, preserving humankind, and having fun through humour are just a few of the things he likes to do and share online. Some of his creations include the Pet Foil Hat Technology seen on cats everywhere there’s an addicted eBay buyer, and The Teleban — a blog group of funny people semi-devoted to banning television in jest. He often writes to be funny, and wrote this bio in the third person to make it seem at first as if he had someone else promoting his site. He’s currently living in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada where the snow ought to melt any week now.

Saskboy’s been blogging since 2002, and contributes to Off The Grid, a blog that won the 2006 Canadian Blog Award for Best Science/Technology blog. He co-moderates and is the assistant webmaster of a prominent Canadian political blog aggregator, and has organized public Barbeque picnics for groups of Saskatchewan bloggers affiliated with the Saskatchewan Blog Aggregator

Simon Owens: For Bloggasm, I’ve conducted nearly 200 interviews, and the vast majority were with bloggers who could be categorized within a specific niche. You’re one of those bloggers who blogs on whatever comes to mind. Do you find it hard to gain readers this way?

Saskboy: Ah, the niche of the “whatever-blogger”. It’s not a famous niche, and certainly not the way to attract a regular and massive following. It’s the type of blog I enjoy writing (and reading) the most, however. I started blogging to share pictures and stories with my family after I temporarily moved several thousand kilometers east to Canada’s capital city Ottawa. Then I got interested in eBay’s discussion forums, and found I enjoyed writing and commenting on almost any subject under the sun. I hated it when something I’d put hours into discussing, would scroll off the page into the virtual dustbin, and so I started saving my rants, jokes, and conversations by putting them into a blog I could archive, instead.

Sometimes I get onto a kick about politics or environmental policies. Other times it’s tech news, or things that relate to big-business locking customers out of fairly using things we’ve bought. I also do a bit of travelling in my job, so I have photography from small towns that most people would normally never visit. My blog is a true journal and log of my days, not a focused news or gossip blog which tends to get the most loyal readers and huge traffic numbers, but I’m happy with the crowd I do have (and look forward to meeting many more as they slowly discover my blog). I enjoy the intelligent and humourous comments I do get at my site.

Simon Owens: I’ve noticed that several of the Canadian bloggers I’ve interviewed follow US politics closely. Do you find this to be a trend among most Candians? How do you guys view the recent power shift in Congress from the Republicans to the Democrats?

Saskboy: All Canadians who follow politics, also follow US politics closely. Canada’s certainly not the 51st state, but we listen to what comes out of Washington DC, because we know it will have a significant effect on what happens on our side of the border. Many of our jobs depend on trade with the USA, so having an insular President in power impacts on our trade and tourism industries, as we saw with the Beef BSE blockade, softwood lumber NAFTA dispute, and the ongoing Homeland Security passport directive that is killing the camaraderie and cross-border shopping trips that have gone on for generations between our countries.

Canadians politically also have an unfortunate sense of smugness that comes from knowing a lot about American politics, while the average American knows next to nothing about Canada, let alone our politics. It’s understandable really, but it doesn’t mean we like being unnoticed and unacknowledged as an important part of North America by American culture. Canadian news always contains coverage of American news (which is part of why we know American politics), but we don’t see an equivalent proportion of Canadian coverage on American media. And when we do, half of the time it’s through the distorted lens of Bill O’Reily, or Ann Coulter who tell lies about Canada in their reports.

I think most Canadians are either optimistic that the Democrat-controlled Congress will improve the relations between our countries, or are entirely indifferent to the change. Both the Democrats and Republicans are to the right ideologically of slightly more than half of Canadians. There are some differences between the parties, but the almighty dollar rules even more strongly than it does in Canada, so two parties who are beholden to corporate interests don’t really give the independent thinker or politician a fair chance to be heard.

I was impressed when Senator Leahy tore a strip off of Alberto Gonzalez for witholding information from a Senate committee, concerning the deportion of Canadian Maher Arar to Syria where he was tortured. Holding the executive branch responsible for crimes is something we didn’t see during the Republican years, so hopefully the improved oversight is a glimmer of things to come. American democracy is suffering from a lack of imagination, especially if it elects another Clinton to the presidency. I don’t think it’s right for only Bushes and Clintons to be in power from 1988 through 2012, even if Hillary would do a fair job.

Simon Owens: How does the Candian political blogosphere compare to US political blogs? Do you have your own versions of Michelle Malkins, Instapundits, and Daily Kos?

Saskboy: The Canadian political blogosphere is vastly different from the American political blogosphere. In Canada, blog aggregators (sites which republish the feeds of member blogs) rule the numbers game, with only a few exceptions. There are popular newsprint media bloggers, and one very large Conservative blog written mostly by one woman, Kate (also from Saskatchewan like me), but the most popular sites are ones that direct readers to the hot news of the day on whatever blog siezes upon the latest topic in the best way. Kate’s blog is politically in line with Michelle Malkin’s, so you could say she’s the Canadian version, but since Canadian bloggers know of Malkin, Kos, Little Green Footballs, Glenn Reynolds, etc. it’s as accurate to say we add to the American blogosphere at the same time as being a microcosm of it. Progressive bloggers is probably the closest site Canada has in readership, style, and ideology to Daily Kos. And Bourque may be our Instapundit, although he was just rocked with a paid-headlines-as-real-news scandal, so his readership may have taken a dive?

Simon Owens: You linked to a “10 things that blogging has taught me” item recently, which commented mostly on the quick, often hysterical nature of the blogosphere. Do you think that bloggers are still in their toddler stage, and will mature as a form of journalism media as time goes on?

Saskboy: I think the bloggers of tomorrow are the kids making websites in grade 6 classes, and the bloggers of today are people who barely grew up with computers. The blogosphere is going to be changing constantly, but there will always be new bloggers, some having just started using computers, and some having used them their entire life. I don’t see blogging evolving into journalism of the kind provided by major news stations and professional journalists, at least not if the Internet and laws regarding free speech stay as they are today. There’s no way for every blogger to devote the kind of time they’d need to “evolve” into a pro, so we’ll always have cat-blogs, and variety blogs like mine.

The other aspect to your question is the implication of having bloggers a part of the main stream public consciousness. As blogs endure, some will grow into professional journals, and the public will become more aware of independent media online. Blogs have the ability to revolutionize where people get their news from, and that will have profund implications on culture around the world. I think the jury is out on whether bloggers will be more or less hysterical than the current media, where everything is a “shocking revelation” if you trust CNN to describe the nature of events.

Simon Owens: What are the five blogs you’d recommend to supplement the reading of your own?

Saskboy: 1. Miss Cellania - is a great read, and there’s more than enough laughs to kill an evening with, on any given day. Miss C has her fingers on the pulse of every joke on the web that you haven’t seen yet.

2. The Galloping Beaver - has an excellent perspective on political news, usually from a person with a lot of military experience. When I need to know how a government is messing up in regards to defence, TGB is an excellent resource.

3. I put a lot of effort into promoting blogs from my home province, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t plug the SaskBlogs Aggregator hosted and designed by Lance Levsen, another ex-military blogger. There is a nice cross section of blogs to be read at the Aggregator, and I swing by almost every day to get the latest on what other Saskatchewanians think about current events.

4. The Prairie Wrangler - Olaf’s blog is from a conservative viewpoint, but unlike many Canadian Conservative bloggers (known as Blogging Tories in Canada), he conducts himself in a more personable manner. Facts and intelligent discussion are important to Olaf, so along with the humour of the daily political cartoon, you find plenty of honest debate from dozens of commenters.

5. There are a few I’d like to put for my last pick. There are so many good blogs I read, and 5 doesn’t cover nearly enough of them. But Procrastinatrix is an interesting and intelligent (even when there are poo jokes) blog. Bonus points go to her for actually knowing the details of feces, and still having a sense of humour.

And in “link dump” fashion here are other considerations: 1337hax0r for his excellent set of websites combined with his political and technical knowledge. Nic’s Opinions for the sometimes naughty jokes, and funny threads. Liberal Catnip for her blistering indictments of government incompetence. And Jim Bobby Sez for his unique, accented style.

***

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The video footage you see below will no-doubt be fairly shocking. It depicts the atrociously disgusting and unsanitary conditions at a widely-used market for produce, one that ships to popular restaurant chains which serve millions of people. Hidden cameras show workers urinating mere feet away from the produce. It has rats crawling all over it. The produce is stored mere feet away from dumpsters and port-o-potties, which is a violation of health code. And it also proves that the health department has known about all these things and previously overlooked them.

Here is the video:

But besides making us thoroughly shocked, this piece of investigative journalism does something that is the epitome of what journalism is supposed to do: it causes positive change. It’s easy to forget that when we are slushing our way through the trenches that is 24-hour-cable news, pundit talk radio, and extremely biased blogging and column-writing. Journalism is to serve as a watch-dog system to protect citizens.

These journalists found out that there was a problem, and then immediately began investigating it. They placed hidden cameras, interviewed sources, and weren’t afraid to ask hard questions. And in the end, the Health Department is literally forced to do its job, and several restaurants refused to do business with the market until it cleaned up its act. Because of this investigative journalism, thousands of people will now be eating healthier food and will be in less danger.

Watching that video was a breath of fresh air after watching Chris Matthews and Co. and having to wade through a dozen mud-slinging bloggers like Michelle Malkin every day.

***

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Ok, what’s more funny: The fact that Rush Limbaugh was arrested for having unprescribed drugs, or the fact that the drug in question was viagra? You be the judge:

Rush Limbaugh was detained for more than three hours Monday at Palm Beach International Airport after authorities said they found a bottle of Viagra in his possession without a prescription.

Customs officials found a prescription bottle labeled as Viagra in his luggage that didn’t have Limbaugh’s name on it, but that of two doctors, said Paul Miller, spokesman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

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Ernest Svenson is a lawyer living in Louisiana. He blogs over at Ernie the Attorney.

Simon Owens: I’ve noticed that new political blogs pop up every day, mostly written by people with a mild interest in politics who don’t have any special qualifications to give their opinions more weight. As a blogger who’s also an attorney, do you find that bloggers who have real training in their area of interest carry more weight? Do you think that bloggers are more likely to cite you as a source because of your law degree?

Ernest Svenson: First, I think that it’s great that people without any so-called ‘training’ are joining in conversations. Obviously, there are many blogs that are just low-level rant machines. But there are significant numbers of blogs that offer interesting points of view, and are well-reasoned and well-written. Over time those blogs become better written and more thoughtful. If you want to find mediocrity and hackneyed commentary you can find it pretty much anywhere. When you find mediocrity in the mainstream media it’s particularly demoralizing because the people in the mainstream press (1) are professionals, and (2) they have long been regarded as fulfilling an important social role of educating the public about important issues. I’d like to think that if people are drawn to my site it’s because I offer a slightly different approach to my commentary than other people. In actuality there are many people who do what I do much better than I do it, but we all have to have our delusions right?

Simon Owens: As an attorney, what do you think of the conservative outcries at “activist judges”? Do you think this has become a knee-jerk reaction to anything that conservatives don’t agree with?

Ernest Svenson: There are a lot of knees jerking in both conservative and liberal camps. As for ‘activist judges,’ I’m not really sure what that means. Or, let me put it this way: I’m not sure I’ve ever met an activist judge. I’ve heard about them, so much so that I assume that they must exist. But I’ve never met one. I’ve met some sloppy judges and some sort of apathetic ones, but most of the judges are people who wake up every day, go to work, put on a robe and then struggle to make good decisions in difficult cases. Sure sometimes they screw up, and sometimes they lean towards a comfortable viewpoint when they make their decisions. How is this any different than the rest of the world? How many people jump over their biases and assumptions in every day life?

Simon Owens: Do you feel that there is too much of a negative connotation to the word “lawyer”? Do you have to constantly fight against negative stereotypes that people have formed about lawyers?

Ernest Svenson: I don’t think there is as much of a negative connotation to the word “lawyer” as there is to the phrase “legal system.” Judges, politicians, lawyers and litigants all share responsibility for the deplorable state of our legal system. The problem that we have now is that no one likes to change a political system, except people who perceive they will benefit from the change. Figuring out how to convince those who, supposedly, won’t benefit from the change makes the process cumbersome and –frankly– impossible from a political standpoint.

Simon Owens: Since you’ve joined the blogging world, have you ever entered any heated discussions with other bloggers?

Ernest Svenson: I probably have had some heated discussions, more so in the beginning. I have grown tired of highly charged debates, mostly because they don’t strike me as productive (and they’re not that enjoyable either). I think we have too many heated discussions going on in the world right now. As a result we tend to overlook things that there isn’t much room for disagreement about.. Global warming is a good example. We know it’s happening and we know it’s bad, but –for some reason– we don’t feel like discussing it.

Simon Owens: I’ve noticed that you tend to focus many of your posts on the Katrina disaster. Many reports say that the recovery isn’t going very well. Why do you think this is?

Ernest Svenson: I focus on the Katrina situation because I’m right smack in the middle of it, and because it’s fascinating to see how it affects the people around me (and me too). I often suggest that the recovery isn’t going well because that’s my human tendency –i.e. to take a short term, self-focused, view of things. Whether it’s going well viewed from some more objective standpoint I have no idea. Predictably, there will be mindless debate about many aspects of the Katrina-aftermath. Human beings would rather watch a car wreck than read a book about intricate scientific stuff. Wherever there are provocative images of human misery you can be sure that that’s what we’ll all focus on the most, and that’s what the press (and many blogs) will focus on too.

Simon Owens: What are the five blogs you’d recommend to supplement the reading of your own blog?

Ernest Svenson: I would recommend that people find their own way around the internet, and not rely on me or others who might profess some special awareness about cyberspace or the blogosphere. People who read my blog can easily figure out what other blogs I like because I link to them. But I have a narrow view of things, despite what I like to think, so people should definitely not sit up in their chairs when I start to list blogs that I like.

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