Here and There

My paraphrase of Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg’s words about Steve Jobs.

Do not give a misbehaving child what (s)he wants.

And with that implicit analogy, this blog now turns its full attention toward taking down John McCain. Reader submissions are accepted.

The aim will be to expose John McCain for what he is — an old-school politician, beholden to special interests with deep pockets who play by their own rules. The arguments about approach to government are tired, but must be hashed out. The real question is who these candidates are, what they represent, and how they will lead and represent the United States of America at home and to the world.

Given these tenets, the choice should be pretty clear, methinks.

I could do a search of my blog, and see if I’ve ever written my views about Fox “News.” (My views could be summed up by those two little punctuation marks around the word news.) But I feel it necessary to rearticulate them here. Now.

It’s a sham, to put it simply.

By an overwhelming margin, journalistic media these days are for-profit machines, driven in large part by advertising revenue. As readers/viewers drop, they develop schtick, be it condensed reporting, the introduction of opinion masquerading as news, or a newfound fascination with entertainment, allowing it to trump the first aim of responsible journalism: civic life.

Modern media have become this way, they’ve evolved in the face of so-called market pressures. They had to stay relevant in today’s cutthroat news industry.

But Fox is different. Fox was born well after The New York Times, The Washington Post, CBS, NBC, CNN. Fox was created, in part, with the mandate of countering what it perceived to be a liberal bias in the existing society and its media.

In other words, Fox founded itself on a lie. But it didn’t leave it at that. No, that wouldn’t generate a single Neilsen viewer.

What it did, instead, was to mold this lie in the most deceptive of dies. It claimed that it was “Fair and Balanced.”

Its aim was not simply to bring journalism back to some mystical center. No, it set out to pull a pretty balanced press (when taken as a cumulative total) and turn it into a right-wing message machine.

This is no more clearly evidenced than by contrasting Fox’s “coverage” (read: attempted destruction) of Bill Clinton with its “coverage” (read: unending praise) of George W. Bush.

It is because of this that I do my best never to link to Fox or Fox clips that happened to live on You Tube or some video-hosting site.

Why am I bringing this up now?

Two things. I watched a pretty hilarious and awesome segment on The Daily Show yesterday. John Oliver took Fox to task in a funny, yet striking, way:

Part One

Part Two

Good stuff. Then, this morning, I was treated to this segment-o-hate, courtesy Andrew Sullivan. (Again, I’m linking to Sullivan rather than Fox or You Tube because I’d rather not be responsible for even a single click toward their content.)

There’s so much more to say, but I think I’d rather go live my life. The weather is amazing here in San Francisco today.

Reading this headline caused an actual lump in my throat this morning:

Exxon Mobil Profit Sets Record Again (NYT)

This leads me to imagine what a Greenspan endorsement would do.

Exactly what Google’s founders did, announced today.

Or, Reality Has Officially Been Turned on Its Head:

Chevron’s best quarter ever rakes in $5.3B in gains, which is 24 percent over the same time last year.

The White House offered a vigorous defense of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales today, insisting that he had not given misleading testimony to Congress, but that national security factors prevented further clarification for now.

Why, just this last weekend, I and my travel companion deliberated between Applebee’s and IHOP while visiting San Luis Obispo (more on that trip coming in travelblogue form). Today, we find out one is eating up the other. In the end, we chose IHOP, mostly due to its breakfast-centricity. It was a wise choice, as today’s news bears out.