2010 has been a good year for me so far. Besides getting the studio renovated and being able to take some fantastic time off to play in southern Utah, Schreiner Productions and my web ad video company ProBusiness Video have been hot. I’ve shot some wonderful new stuff for American Family Insurance, University of Utah, and others. Tomorrow, I do my first shoot with Wine Insider, an online/mail-order wine retailer.
One of the fun things about my job(s) is being able to play dress-up. This garb is the so-called “bunny suit” for the nano lab at University of Utah’s engineering school to produce the story of moveable, microscopic components on chips. Between my current career and TV news, I’ve worn lots of hats- and other stuff. Hard hats, helmets, wet suits, dry suits, clean suits, velcro suits. My rule is do everything you must to get the story. Compared to jumping out of airplanes, or walking 100 miles, putting on funny clothes is easy.
It was about as exciting a soccer game as I’ve ever seen. As a former player myself, I’m excited for the US side but more than concerned about the defeated Algerian squad (the soccer team and the “death” variety that will be shooting them). Being a radically fundamentalist Islamic nation, Algeria will not take their defeat at the hands of the most evil country on Earth lightly. Expect the coach to beheaded publicly (not live on ESPN but handled later with highlights on Sportscenter), the starting players to be kidnapped, shot, or shot then kidnapped. Or for the bench warmers, simple imprisonment and torture.
It could be worse. They could have their endorsement contracts nullified.
You’re just… an old frat party with clueless fans and old degenerates.
- Captain Meatball
I finally gave up on the Chicago Cubs more than 20 years ago. Since then, they’ve come close to actually doing something significant a couple of times. Not exactly an outstanding record and certainly not one worthy of the adoration they continue to receive from their global legions of losers. So this blog post on the Chicago Tribune site was particularly entertaining. And right on.
Media companies are struggling and the government is standing in their way. But even if the FCC got rid of the rules, would it matter anyway? That’s the $64,000 question.
- Kenneth Ferree, former FCC official
When people say right-wingers have no sense of humor, this statement is exactly what they’re talking about. Here’s a “conservative”, former big shot with the Federal Communications Commission under Bush II (the REALLY stupid one) blaming the government for corporate media’s financial crises when it was the government (the Bush, Clinton, and the other Bush administrations) who relaxed media ownership regulations to accomodate the ridiculously costly mergers and other cannibalism the industry vigorously lobbied for.
Continuing his “thought”, Ferree wonders aloud whether getting rid of those rules would matter, instead of understanding what the rules are there for in the first place and developing a solution worth considering. The punch line to this comic irony is a tired, outdated metaphor in which he references a 1950s game show, “$64,000 Question”, that was revealed to be rigged, resulting in a government investigation and crackdown, as in REGULATIONS (watch the fantastic film “Game Show”) that became the enduring symbol of greed, corruption, and moral ambiguity that the television industry is to this day.
Now that’s sad AND funny. Just like any good TV show.
Colbert King’s excellent column in today’s Washington Post is a delightful skewering of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and the rest of the “family values” folks leading the pompous parade of moral know-it-alls while hypocritcally romping and closeting their own dirty laundry when the cameras are off. If America’s right-wingers hadn’t lost their senses of humor decades ago, they’d probably enjoy King’s column too. But to get the full effect you must know how to read.
I would’ve been more surprised if BP honcho Tony Hayward and Republican Rep. Joe Barton R-TX came out of yesterday’s oil rig disaster hearings looking intelligent, sympathetic and thorough. Alas, both these giants of political and corporate incompetence came off pretty much as we thought they would: uncaring, morally corrupt, and utterly divorced from a sense of reality or responsibility.
Despite their repeated “apologies” for this and that and even Barton’s crazy apology for apologizing, it’s more than clear that the Gulf oil disaster was not as much a product of poor maintenance and bad judgement but more of calculated disregard, stupidity, and greed. Why anyone would buy gas from BP or vote for Joe Barton is beyond me. But then again, in this age of groupthink and newspeak, a lot of things that just don’t make sense are considered not only acceptable- but preferable.
And that’s even scarier than the Tony Haywards and Joe Bartons of the world.
With BP head Tony Hayward walking and talking more like a bankrupt Wall Street broker or American car company exec, Washington better act fast: Seize BP, take their money and give it to the “small people” of the Gulf region whom BP thinks are not quite big enough for them to help. It’s either that or BP files for bankruptcy and leaves the federal government and us, the taxpayers, holding the cleanup bill just like all the other bailed-out, loser corporations. Socialism not looking so bad now, is it?
“We’re not small people. We’re human beings. They’re no greater than us. We don’t bow down to them. We don’t pray to them.”
Justin Taffinder of New Orleans
Some media accounts say BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg’s “We care about the small people” may have indeed been, as BP claims, simply a poor use of English words by a native Swede. I don’t buy it. People are people and to use qualifiers to distinguish them from other people is risky and revealing, especially when it’s regarding a major disaster that affects everyone and everything regardless of size, class or species.
But it’s BP’s actions during the Gulf spill, not their words, that reinforce their image of incompetence, greed, arrogance and NOT caring about anyone ESPECIALLY the “small people.” So Svenberg, Hayward and the rest of them can say anything they want. We know how they really feel about us. And there are plenty of words for it.
2010 has been a good year for me so far. Besides getting the studio renovated and being able to take some fantastic time off to play in southern Utah, Schreiner Productions and my web ad video company ProBusiness Video have been hot. I’ve shot some wonderful new stuff for American Family Insurance, University of Utah, and others. Tomorrow, I do my first shoot with Wine Insider, an online/mail-order wine retailer.
