Short Shots from an Ugly Un-American: Week 5
Posted by Ray Church on 08.01.2007
A look at how not to deal with problems, what the pundits and hacks on CNN and Fox are missing and the state of satire in New Zealand… and a bit of bitching and moaning about a bad flight from Thailand. All on this weeks Ugly Un-American.
What the hell is wrong with Fox and CNN?
I spent the last week and a half on a tropical beach in Thailand, sipping lime juice, playing with my daughter and eating some damn good Pad Thai Noodles. Yes, it was a pretty great time all round (except for the plane ride home, which I'll get to soon), but there's only so much sun you can take before you have to retire to your hotel room and chill off.
So there I was, in my hotel room with the magic stick known as a remote control, and what are my choices? Bad movies from the 80's, inane sitcoms and 4 choices for the news: BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN and Fox News. Now, this would normally be a choice between BBC and Al Jazeera; and I'm just waiting for the hate mail from people who have never watched either channel right now. So, anyway, I'm on holiday, so I don't want anything as serious as those two, so I ended up flipping between CNN and Fox News. What do I get?
Well, I could listen to Bill O'Reilly talking about Lindsey Lohan, or Nancy Grace talking about Lindsey Lohan. I could watch Glen Beck talking about Lindsey Lohan, or Bill O'Reilly talking to Dennis Miller… about Lindsey Lohan. Don't get me wrong, there were other things they were talking about. There was the expose on Britney Spears photo shoot. There was Glenn Beck talking to Billy Ray Cyrus about… Billy Ray Cyrus.
You would think, of course, that nothing happened in the couple of weeks I was away. Nope, not a bad news week, it's just that CNN and Fox News decided they have to improve their market share by going after the E! Channel's audience.
I always wondered how Fox News and CNN viewers repeatedly demonstrate that they don't know jack on Pew research polls like this one and this one. I always assumed it was because they were being misinformed. I never guessed it was because those channels didn't actually show news.
Now, to be fair, in the more recent of those two surveys, viewers of the O'Reilly factor outscored regular Fox News Viewers by 16%. This makes sense, but only because the news itself seemed to consist of rather bizarre infomercials, featuring their news desk anchors taking flights in the military's top fighter jets and competing for which of them can take the most g-force.
Which begs the question: Haven't either the news anchors or the fighter jets got something better to do with their time?
The YouTube Debate
I did manage to catch the YouTube / CNN debate on CNN, where the Democrats subjected themselves to the inane ramblings of YouTube devotees, and it wasn't really too much different from the other debates. Short answers between the big three and occasional bones thrown to the little guys. I don't see why the Republicans are all washing their hair on the day they were going to host the Republican debate.
Yes, I'd be the first one to send in a video asking each of the Republicans if they're Nucking Futs, but CNN gets the chance to edit and select all the videos so what's the problem. Oh, I forgot, YouTube is apparently part of the Liberal Media Conspiracy, along with Wikipedia and it's total lack of articles on the Pacific Northwest Aboreal Octopus.
The big news to come out of it is the spat between Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton over whether to engage your enemies in conversation, and once again Hillary gets out with kudos for basically getting it wrong, even from our own Joe Rivett.
OK, the basic facts. Obama believes that America should engage in dialogue with Iran, Syria, Venezuala, Cuba and North Korea. Hillary would not promise that because it would be used for propaganda. Hillary gets praised because she's "strong on America's enemies" and sounds like a president.
And she's wrong.
Everyone forgets that. Her calls for vengeance in the previous debate was also wrong. The idea that talking to another country could be used as some form of propaganda is deluded. What sort of a country serious believes that talking to another country could somehow translate into a media campaign saying "look, our system is right because America talks to us".
I can't help but think of the school yard hierarchy, with America as the cool kids. "You can't talk to that country, you might get lice".
Quick history lesson: The best analogy for this would be the cold war. America cut off diplomatic ties with all communist countries, including Russia, China, North Korea and Cuba. It then opened negotiations with Russia (under Reagan) and China (under Nixon). I don't normally heap praise on those two Presidents, but be honest: which of those countries are still seen as rogue states?
Yes, you're still frightened of China and Russia, but mainly because they threaten American hegemony. Are they model citizens in the United Nations? Not a shot, but neither is the U.S. Do diplomatic missions to Russia and China work? Absolutely. Can you engage with Russia and China in world problems? Absolutely.
And has America's policy of not engaging with North Korea and Cuba allowed America to influence anything in those two countries? They have become more dogmatic, not less.
Stupid ways to engage your enemies
This is a nice segue way. While Hillary just doesn't know how to handle the rest of the world, the Bush Administration proved it still doesn't know how to deal with its detractors. The latest news? Michael Moore has been issued a subpoena with regards to his latest movie "Sicko" because he took 9/11 victims to Cuba to get medical help.
So, the US government is going to send Michael Moore for jail for basically proving how ineffective the American government is. All it does is draw attention to the fact that they screwed up.
The same can be said to Richard Cohen, who probably means sweet F.A. to many of you. Richard Cohen is on a one man crusade to point out the foibles of Fred Thompson, which begs the question: Why bother?
Fred Thompson is the undisclosed presidential candidate for the Republican Party. He is, effectively, a nobody at the moment. The more people start to attack him now, the more press he gets for doing nothing.
While we're at it, lets throw Bill O'Reilly in there for his attacks on DailyKos. Personally, I don't read Kos, but I'm sure they've picked up plenty of readership since O'Reilly started attacking it on a daily basis.
Hey, wait. Wasn't that one of the things he accused them of? Smearing people? Isn't that what he's doing? Isn't that what he always does? I have a feeling this attack isn't because he's actually upset at the DailyKos, but that he feels he has some form of copyright over smear tactics in the same way Fox News has a copyright on the words "Fair and Balanced".
World News
New Zealand
You've probably already seen this on the Daily Show, but it's so rare I get to mention my home country in this column. Yes, New Zealand has passed a new law. Here's how the Press Gazette described it:
The new standing orders, voted in last month, concern the use of images of Parliamentary debates, and make it a contempt of Parliament for broadcasters or anyone else to use footage of the chamber for "satire, ridicule or denigration".
Yup, this is stupid. America doesn't have a monopoly on stupidity. I'm trying to get my hands on some footage from the Beehive (New Zealand's Parliament) so I can be among the first New Zealanders to break this law, and it seems I'm not alone.
The Daily Show launched the first strike, but more importantly most of the major channels in New Zealand said that they will simply ignore the law. On that list? TVNZ (which hosts TV1 and TV2), TV3 (which hosts TV3 and C4), the Maori channel and SkyTV. That is all the National channels and the one Cable Provider by the way.
So I'll let you know if any of those networks actually end up in court, or if the government finally sees what 71% of New Zealanders saw and just says "forget it, it's a stupid law anyway".
Vengeance is mine: Air Asia
Externalities.
That is the fancy word economists use when they are talking about things companies use but don't pay for. I'm talking about companies that use your water so they can sell you soft-drink, or companies that pollute the air so they can sell you artificial respirators.
And I'm talking about the 3 hours you have to wait to get an answer from a companies help line, or the company that decreases the value of your apartment by building another apartment right in the way of your view (I'm speaking from experience on this one).
And I'm talking about my entire experience with Air Asia when we flew with them this week. Air Asia is a "budget" airline, meaning they don't give a damn about you; they just want your money. They do things like not serve food with the flight, then don't let you bring food on, and then to put the nail in the coffin they charge you three times the market rate for the pack of noodles they will serve you half way through.
They don't pay their flight attendants well, expecting them to make a commission from the food they sell. This means that the flight attendants spend the entire flight trying to sell you things you don't need so they can pay for the apartment they hardly have time to sleep in. This means they don't actually have time to help passengers who need help, like young couples who are bringing their two year old daughter along for her first flight.
They don't staff their check-in counter well, and they don't staff it at all until two hours before the flight (you know, the two hours when they tell you that you must check in). That means you have this god-awful rush trying to check everyone through in time so they can get to the boarding lounge half an hour before the flight (which we have to do now because of new regulations). What does that mean?
That means they lose your luggage.
And not only your luggage but three other people as well. Doesn't seem big, right? International air companies lose luggage all the time. The problem is, this was a small flight. You lose luggage of 4 out of 500 people, that's one thing. You lose luggage of 4 out of 100 people, that's incompetence.
It's all a game of mathematics, of course. Air Asia will tell you that it has world's lowest unit cost, meaning they make money on serving customers in bulk and make very little profit on each individual traveler. That's also because they aren't actually paying for every cost that they make. They're not paying for the time it takes you to locate your luggage that they lose. They're not paying for the drinking water they won't serve you on the flight (at a time when you are forbidden from bringing any liquids onboard, I may add). They're not paying for the staff to properly run their business, or to even handle enquiries and complaints.
It's this last one I know best. I spent the few days trying to track down the correct place to send complaints about their service. They don't have one.
That's why I'm posting here. If you buy goods and they‘re not what they're advertised as, it's easy to take it back to the shop and get them to replace it. If you buy a service, what do you do? And what do you do if they don't have a complaints department to deal with these things in private?
You tell your friends not to use that service, so I'm telling you, my friends, not to fly Air Asia. There's got to be a cheaper way to save money.
The Ugly Un-American Book Club
If Oprah can do it, so can I, but I promise you mine will be more substantive than the "you can do it" bullshit pedaled on her show.
Here's your first recommendation: Alan Moore's "The Watchmen". Can't find it? Check the graphic novel section of your local Borders. That's right, your first reading assignment is a comic book; the only comic book to make Time Magazine's list of 100 best novels.
Yes, there's lots of spandex covered violence in here, but read the subtext. Think about fascism and the role of justice. Think about followers and leaders and what it says about democracy when you have "uber-men".
Shut the Hell Up Award
Well, my stint watching CNN is over, but I leave with fond… no… irritating memories of the whiny voice of Nancy Grace and the annoying self-inflated ego of Glenn Beck, and it is Glenn Beck who wins our award for today.
Here was Beck a week ago, explaining what will truly bring the system down.
Don`t you know, Mr. President, you are causing more problems? You are causing us to not believe and have good faith in our government. Stop stonewalling! Stop hiding. Stop treating us like fourth graders. We used to support you.
I know what you're thinking. This could describe any number of things that the Bush Administration has done, so let me give you the next line.
Stop giving us the excuse that a Mexican drug cartel member has some inalienable right to privacy.
Of all the things the Bush Administration has done, Glenn Beck believes that the only thing that is worth investigating is something the Bush Administration had nothing to do with.
Now, I'm not saying there isn't anything to get upset about in the affair. Basically two members of the Border Patrol have been put in jail for shooting a man who was probably smuggling drugs across the border. That's a shitty run for people who were doing their job, but that doesn't explain why Beck goes after the Bush Administration. After all, Beck himself gives plenty of reasons why you should be attacking the Bush Administration…
When it comes to this administration, there is no conspiracy with 9/11. The weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was nothing sinister with Cheney and Libby and Valerie Plame. This one is different. This one could be the president's undoing.
Oh, wait, he just said those things are not reasons to go after the Administration. Doctoring evidence and, as the Downing Street Memo stated, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy": Not a reason to go after the Bush Administration. Launching an aggressive war against a country under false pretenses: Not a reason to go after the Bush Administration. Releasing the name of an undercover agent because her husband happened to be a critic of the administration's foreign policy: Not a reason to go after the Bush Administration.
But a criminal case that the Bush Administration had absolutely nothing to do with? That's going to bring the whole government down.
My only conclusion: Glenn Beck is an idiot.
The Section Formerly Known as Pimping
Brandon took the helm of Fact or Fiction this week, and all I can say is that Josh and Mark just haven't been paying attention to the Gonzalez scandal. Josh's claim that it's unclear whether Albie G did anything wrong is the perfect example. He's been to the hill how many times, and they still can't get a clear answer from him…
Brian McLain, my favourite Scotsman, has been detailing how to spot a Fascist State here, here, here and here.
Dan Martin has been looking at the new fault lines in American politics.
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