This story on msnbc.com regarding Pres. Obama saying that Kanye West, in his comments during the VMA acceptance speech by Taylor Swift, was being a 'jackass' and the quote then having been not only 'Twittered' but then to be picked up by the media & questioned on whether that was an appropriate thing to do, etc., is on the vomit side of ridiculous.
(a) The President is entitled to his opinions. (Mr. West also apologized for his behaviour, so it is likely that even he would have agreed w/ Pres. Obama that his behaviour was jackass material.)
(b) So it was Twittered...big deal. Terry Moran found it amusing.
(c) The current debate on whether anything a public figure says should be "off the record" is ridiculous. That anything is made of this he-said-big-deal moment makes me see that humans in general are hopeless.
Bombs fall. People are hungry. Animals are finding their habitat shrinking. Our temperatures and oceans are rising. Kids tote guns. Violence, particularly against women and children, continues to escalate. Surely we can find something more meaningful to remember, discuss, & fix.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Well stated. Let me add a few thoughts regarding journalism and decency in general:
(a) The late David Brinkley observed, "The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news, we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were." Keeping this in mind, I try to filter out the fluff that masquerades as being newsworthy in all forms of media.
(b) Journalism, by and large, deals with what life is not, in that newsworthiness is built on a foundation of anomaly. In portraying life in terms of its oddities, journalism gives us something more like a photographic negative than a snapshot. One can't help but lump Serena Williams' US Open tirade, Joe Wilson's "You lie!" outburst, and Kanye's behavior at the VMAs (someone called them a trifecta of buffoons) all together and assume that decorum and decency in general are waning (which you never did), but we need to be mindful that all three incidents were deemed newsworthy precisely because they were anomalous.
(c) In a nutshell, yes, these things are not newsworthy, nor are they meaningful beyond those directly involved, or useful other than as a future topic on Jeopardy or to be seen as keeping up with what passes as "current events". So why the heck are we even blogging and commenting about this? If nothing else, just to highlight the fatuousness that has become the media today. I don't think humanity is hopeless. I think media standards are.
BTW, your blog is inspiring me to create my own. Maybe.
Love, Jr.
There is some truth to news being rpts on the anomalous. But i think more importantly, news is/should be on matters that matter--matters that affect us, potentially affect us, affect our views on the world in a meaningful way.
The "human interest" stories -- dog rescuing baby abandoned by 14-year-old mother, tightwad millionaire making family members count toilet paper squares, etc. -- that's where the oddities belong, and even those broaden our views on what goes on and what ppl are capable of.
This one comment by the President in my book didn't fit either, and for it to have gotten blown up by the press is dizzyingly dim. I think sometimes the newspeople do think too much of themselves, they get caught up in the moment, in their jobs, and in writing the 'news' with an empty pen deliver hollow stories.
The waitress who chastised reporters (during this past presidential campaign) for questioning her on "how much tip did Hilary Clinton leave you?" -- bravo for her! THERE'S a level-headed gal!
Post a Comment