WTF - Who's yo Daddy?

[RobBob]

one arrives at the conclusion that ol' Dan is a sharp tack and a trusty source of reliable insight.

...in the same way, DFA, that one arrived at that conclusion for old Dick Nixon.

[Dr_Flash_Amazing]

Surely, RobBob(a-loo-bob-a-wob-bam-boom), you're not implying that Daniel Schorr was as detrimental to his own profession as was Nixon to his?

[RobBob]

The folks on the airwaves have a job, and that is to make headlines. Since they have the ability to incite the masses, they wield quite a bit of power. But they have little responsibility and accountability for that power. How many prominent newspeople (ex: Schorr) have lived in disgrace in the same way as politicians have, once they have fucked up? Not many---there is not much accountability, and people are really just wanting to be entertained by the news.

 

Sure, there are a few young reporters who are busted for pure fiction once in awhile. But I maintain that the use of subtle spin and implication, and also pervasive exaggeration found in the news, are more damaging and serve to wrongly steer our thinking. For example, today NPR has NASA sounding like it's guilty of bungling. They have some flippin' sociology professor saying that there's "something wrong with the organization." I just about wrecked my car when I heard that, out of the mouth of somebody who probably couldn't run third shift at a Dairy Queen. The news media should save the kibbitzing for the final reports...but no, 'creating' the story is more important.

[Dru]

Dr_Flash_Amazing said:

Thank goodness for google! In a matter of minutes, one can dig up an avatar pic of a notorious Russian that one knows essentially nothing about, and can then proceed to take in a brief history lesson and learn that said character was a life-long womanizing scalawag, a dubiously righteous self-styled Orthodox monk, weaseled his way into the Russian royal family (the Romanovs!), continued to booze and sleaze his way through life while exploiting tenuous political and familial times to stay tight with -- and apparently to diddle -- the royal family, then got suckered into a perhaps untimely but probably inevitable death while furthering his pursuit of liqour and lust. Fantastic.

 

"During the fateful last evening of Rasputin's life, the conspirators drugged, poisoned, beat and shot him. Yet the staretz survived all these and actually died by drowning when his body, wrapped in a carpet was thrown into the Moika Canal on the Neva River."

 

How about that shit?

 

"Rah rah Rasputin lover of the Russian queen

There was a cat that really was gone

Rah rah Rasputin Russia's greatest love machine

It was a shame how he carried on...

 

but when his drinking, and his lusting, and his hunger for power became known to more and more people, the demand to do something about this outrageous beast became louder and louder

 

Rah rah Rasputin lover of the Russian queen

They wouldn't quit they wanted his head

Rah rah Rasputin Russia's greatest love machine

And so they shot him till he was dead..."

 

BONEY M

[RobBob]

...shot him, poisoned him, stabbed him...