Camp Media Circus

Somehow I think this has less to do with 'absolute moral authority' than 'careful media packaging'.

Hat tip: Little Green Footballs


Here's what you see....



















Here's what you DON'T see...













This is no 'grassroots' protest. This is a serious PR campaign.

Continued Media Bias...

You have to love the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In a 'teaser' on today's editorial page under the heading "COMING SUNDAY", we find the following. Just for fun, I am going to add my own emphasis.

Deadline for Iraq: The war drags on amid mounting U.S. troop deaths, growing unease and anger at home and a continuing unwillingness by the Bush administration to publicly acknowledge the truth about what is going on. It is time for fresh thinking. Sen. Russ Feingold's proposed deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal is a necessary course. Setting the deadline will underline the fact that it is up to the Iraqi people, not Americans, to build their country.

Fresh new thinking? "Cut and run"? Yup, that's really fresh.

And why might there be growing unease at home? Well, here's an example from the same issue of the paper. (Couldn't find it online, so I am linking to the same AP article in The Guardian).

The headline in the Journal/Sentinel? "3 Sunnis urging voting are killed".

Which is a terrible thing. And what kind of impression does it leave? More killing, more violence in Iraq. We should just 'cut and run'.

But yet, it raises the question. So Sunnis are starting to support the new government and the constitutional process? And someone really wants this to end?

You have to wait until the middle of the article to read the following:

Many Sunni Arabs are considering taking part in the constitutional referendum after having boycotted the Jan. 30 national election ballot - a move that left the once- dominate community with few seats in a parliament dominated by Shiites and Kurds.

In recent weeks, various Sunni groups have been urging fellow Sunnis to vote in the referendum and a general election planned for December. The voter-registration deadline is Sept. 1.

And the END of the article for this:

About 1,000 people including Sunnis and Shiite followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr rallied in two Baghdad districts Friday, waving Iraqi and Shiite flags and chanting ``No to separation, yes to unity.''

A similar rally including Sunnis and Shiites was staged in the religiously mixed city of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

``After all, we are one united people whether we are Sunnis or Shiites, Kurds or Arabs,'' Hazim al-Aaraji, another al-Sadr aide, told worshippers in a Shiite mosque in Baghdad's Kazimiyah district during Friday prayers.

At a Sunni mosque across town, Sheik Ali Khudr al-Zand warned his congregation not to accept any constitution ``that would rip away the unity of the nation.''

So, why wasn't the headline "Thousands of Sunnis Rally in Support of New Iraq, Despite Threats to their Lives"?

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

From an Associated Press story this morning....

The theory of intelligent design says life on earth is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation. Nearly all scientists dismiss it as a scientific theory, and critics say it's nothing more than religion masquerading as science.

And Darwinian evolution isn't science masquerading as religion????

Al Radio and Al TV....the Future of Media???

Last week, the television industry was rocked by the debut of "Current", the new cable channel introduced by that maven of the entertainment world, none other than Al Gore.

Current is "the first national network created by, for and with an 18 to 34 year old audience", according to this press release on their website, www.current.tv.

Rather than a traditional network...Current offers short-form programming, the TV equivalent of the iPod shuffle. Its "pods" primarily consist of 15-second to 5-minute segments that run throughout the day, exploring the people, places, happenings and hot-button issues of interest to young adults.

A listing of some of its features includes:

CURRENT ISSUE - Drugs, relationships, political hot topics
CURRENT NEWLYWEDS - New married couples, including behind closed doors
CURRENT HOTTIE - Off-the-radar and onto the screen, from librarians to lifeguards, a look at those that are making heads turn and jaws drop
CURRENT LIES - What the media is telling you that isn't true (my note: this oughtta be rich!)
GOOGLE CURRENT - What our audience is searching for on the web

Can you just picture Al Gore sitting around, cooking this stuff up? "Yeah, yeah, this is cool---they'll like this!"

BCBeat, The Blog of Television, sentenced one of its interns to do a minute-by-minute blog of Current's first day. You can read it here. Pretty interesting. I give it a year, eighteen months tops.

Meanwhile, the arterial bleeding continues at "Air America", the brainchild of the other Al...Al Franken.

According to The Scrapbook column in The Weekly Standard (available online only to subscribers),

Full details having yet to be revealed, The Scrapbook has decided to withhold all comment on an emerging scandal involving massive financial improprieties at the Al Franken-headlined liberal talk-radio network Air America. Really, we mean it. That spring 2004 scheme by which the network's then-top executive appears to have diverted nearly $900,000 in New York City-funded social service grants from a Bronx-based charity to Air America's own desperately underfunded bank accounts? Mum's the word.

Meantime, though, we figure there's nothing wrong with noting the latest listenership data from Arbitron. "Now that it's possible to compare ratings for this spring to last year's start-up," the Philadelphia Inquirer's Beth Gillin reports, "it's clear that [Air America] has yet to climb out of the cellar." In particular, Franken's decision to schedule his show in direct competition with conservative talk-radio superstar Rush Limbaugh "was not such a good idea," it turns out. "Limbaugh . . . has squashed Franken like a bug."

At its flagship station in New York, Air America's audience is down 14 percent. In Philadelphia, moreover, Arbitron reports that the network has "fallen off the charts . . . meaning there were too few listeners to measure during the second quarter of this year."

It makes me think of a new twist on the old puzzler...if a blowhard falls in the forest and no one is there to hear....does he still make a sound?