Thursday, March 26, 2009

Myleene Klass in PVC

Myleene Klass dons PVC for a photo shoot in the current issue of Look magazine here in the UK.  The trouble is, if you go to the website for Look, you’ll find nothing about it.  No pictures, no interview, nothing.

Instead, the Daily Mail covers the story for the online audience, including the pictures.  Of course they put their usual ultra-conservative spin on it, but it would have been better to have the story on Look’s website with the original context to link to.

Magazine websites annoy the hell out of me.  They publish these stories and photoshoots in their magazines, but their websites have nothing from the magazines in them, absolutely nothing!

Putting stories that you publish in your magazine onto your website is a way of promoting the magazine and getting the online audience involved.  But without these articles on your website, you have no way of generating online interest in your website.

Get your act together!

Time to say no to biased media

You mean like Fox News Channel?

This seems to be a bit of a problem for FOX as they advertise something called “The FOX Nation” that will be launching on 30th March 2009.  The trouble is they leave themselves wide open to an accusation of hypocrisy.

image

Fox News Channel = Biased Media.  Talk Radio = Biased Media.  Both are HEAVILY Conservative, yet they seem to think otherwise.  They seem to think they’re “Fair and Balanced”.  Yet they have a predominacne of Conservative voices and no Liberal voices at all, at least not on the TV channel. 

If FOX want to practice free speech, then maybe John Moody should stop sending out his daily talking points, and they should ACTUALLY report some real news.  Then he could actually have a liberal host their own daily show on the network, so that both sides get free speech on the network. 

I won’t hold my breath waiting for this to happen.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Fox News’ Megan Kelly vs Britney Spears??? Watch out for the claws!!!

On Fox News Channel’s American Newsroom today, there was a segment in which anchor Megyn Kelly called out Britney Spears for the video to her new song “If You Seek Amy”.  This comes after Kelly put the song in her “Kelly’s Court” segment back in January, because she claimed the title was just “the F word” spelled out in disguise.  Having gone through it several times, and read through the lyrics, if it is the case, and it is a reasonable probability, then I think it’s actually two words that she’s saying.  The F word that Megan refered to, and the last syllable of “Amy”.

However, Britney has referenced the previous America’s Newsroom segment in her music video, by using a programme name, set and anchor that bare a passing resemblence to Megyn Kelly.  She probably found out about the segment and decided that a piss take would be a bit of fun.

Of course, Megyn, like all the other Fox News actors and actresses, goes totally overboard, calls Britney out, invites her on the show, then goes all catty, meowing to the camera and baring her claws.

Stop being so bloody predictable!  The song was obviously an attempt to draw some publicity, and the video as well, and it’s worked.  A little free publicity and she’ll get that song to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in no time flat.  Not sure that this will have the same effect over here for the UK Number 1 spot.  But we’ll have to wait to find out.  Maybe she’ll just create another controversy over here, though I couldn’t guess on which show she’ll create it on.

Anyway, here’s the segment from America’s Newsroom…

Newsbusters highlights “ultra secret website”!!! Nice story, shame about the facts.

Newsbusters, the Media Research Center blog that constantly busts news, that the rest of us would like to see unbusted and unbiased, spins another one out of control, by highlighting a story on politico.com about a website where journalists meet to discuss things off the record.  Newsbusters however, manages to make it sound like some secret, left-wing plotting cabal, ultra secret, website that is so hush hush you’re not supposed to even know it exists.

So, if that were the case, why did anybody even agree to talk about it???

Jeffrey Toobin of the New York Times has the quote of the article here saying that the list is probably in “…general agreement about the stupidity of today’s GOP…”  Yeah, I think that’s something everybody, except current GOP members it seems, can agree on, and with proof like this Newsbusters article, I wonder how the GOP can even possibly argue their way out of this one.

St Patrick’s Day – March 17th 2009

To one and all, a very happy St Paddy’s Day!

Monday, March 16, 2009

S4/C comes under pressure from Welsh language activists.

Most of the time, I have no problem with Welsh, Gaelic and Cornish language activists.  They're promoting minority languages in a world that seems to be dominated mostly by English.  But this is going into the "looney tunes" category, because it is silly.

A welsh-language pressure group, complaining about a proposal, not something that is definitely happening, but a proposal, that S4/C takes over the English language news on ITV Wales.

I admit it would be good if they managed to take over their own provision for news, from the BBC.  But I will applaud them for having the guts to even propose a move to take on the production of ITV Wales News.  Maybe it will show ITV that regional news is not regarded by every broadcast corporation as a liability, but as something to be proud of.

Dick Cheney shows up the failure of Conservative-Republicanism.

The Republican Party as of late seems to resemble a circular firing squad.  Even when they're aiming at the opposition, they do a "Dick Cheney" and hit their own men.  But now, the original has decided to add his bullets into the mix, and despite being aimed at US President Barack Obama, he manages to only shoot the Republicans collectively in the foot.

He appeared on CNN's State of the Union with John King, and proceeded to demonstrate yet again why the Republican Party not only lost both in 2006, and 2008, and why it will continue to lose until it disengages itself from rabid right wing conservatives like Rush "Limburger" Limbaugh.

"Limburger" and his fellow right wing talk show hosts, such as Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck, are the public face of the GOP right now.  And Ugh!!! What a revolting face it is.  And the likes of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, John McCain and Lindsay Graham, do nothing to improve the public face of Republicanism.  In fact, if anything, they've actually managed to make it look worse now, than at election time back in November 2008.  Add into that mix, the new, and perhaps soon to be evicted, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, and former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt "Gingrinch" Gingrich, and a few others, and you have the political equivalent of a mass of bird poop!

The "circular firing squad" description that has become prevalent over the last couple of weeks, is very apt, but in some ways, doesn't do the situation real justice.  On top of this, you have moderate republicans, and rabid conservatives fighting for what is left, of the soul of the party, after "Emperor" Cheney and "Darth" Bush basically tore it out.  It's not just random shots being fired, it's an ideological battle, between unmoveable, unshakeable, unfathomable conservatism, which believes it is right, and everybody else is wrong, even the majority, and the more moderate republicans who have read the tea leaves correctly and realise that the centre ground NEEDS to be retaken in order to make the party electable again, and believe that conservatism will ultimately destroy the party.

Perhaps the conservative movement should get behind their own parties.  They have two of them after all.  The American Conservative Party, and the Conservative Party of the United States of America.  Why tack themselves onto the Republican Party?

The answer of course is simple.  The conservative movement, knows full well that it cannot run and win under its own banner.  Therefore, they tack themselves onto the more moderate Republican banner to become winners.  They think that by doing that, the public won't notice that Conservatism, and Republicanism, aren't necessarily the same thing.  The only time they go against that meme is a time like now when by linking the two, they've brought the Republican Party down badly, so they try to highlight the fact that Republicanism and Conservatism are different agendas.  Sorry guys, but you can't have it both ways!

At this point in time, it's difficult to see how the Republican Party can come back into electability, because right now, it looks like it's heading further and further out towards the extremities, and as the UK's Conservative Party proved from 1997 until recently, heading back to your base is a sure fire way to make yourself unelectable.