Dirty Political Tactics, Clinton Talks Monica, The "R" Word, Marine Death Update, And Scientology--Or Tom Cruise Is Crazy (Thursday's Show)
Hi everyone. Well, I'm a few news cycles behind, so some of this stuff is moot, but we'll make do. Anderson Cooper kicks things off with a run down of what the candidate's have been up to today and then we go right into a Joe Johns piece on the smears McCain is enduring in South Carolina. We all remember the Rovian crap that took him down in 2000 (accusations of fathering an illegitimate black child among others). Now there's a cartoon making the rounds that attacks his POW record in Vietnam. That sounds Rovian too. Attack them where they're strongest. Are we sure that guy really left?
Anyway, Romney's also getting slimed for being a Mormon. And you remember how Obama was accused of being a madrassa-attending Muslim extremist, which lead to CNN sending a reporter to Jakarta, which lead to a debunking, which lead to Fox News going crazy (well, crazier), which lead to an unbelievably immature cable war, which somehow ended up with Anderson being labeled the Paris Hilton of television news? Remember that? Well, the charge is back. Or rather, it continues. Now it's an email, which I just received a few days ago.
All this negativity is depressing, but if you'd like to jump into my Delorean and have a seat next to Marty McFly, I shall zoom you into the future for a second (even though it's really the past now--don't think about it too hard) to inform you that McCain won South Carolina. Yay, McCain! I'll probably never vote for the guy, but I did really want him to win this one, so he can tell all those slime balls to suck it. As for Nevada and the democrats, it looks to be a win for Clinton. Funnily enough though, Obama is the one walking away with more delegates. Democracy, she's such a trickster sometimes.
Next up, we go to an interview that Joe did with McCain about how he responds to the smears. Then we're on to an interview with former smearer, Stephen Marks. Stephen explains that he's hired by campaigns or outside groups to do "opposition research," which means digging up anything he can on the opponent. Anderson asks about some recent ads that have worked well and Stephen get all nostalgic over the Willie Horton and Swift Boat ads. Classy. Anderson asks if he feels guilty, seeing as a lot of these things aren't true. Stephen then proceeds to compare the process to buying a used car. No, really. He's just doing us all a service, you see. So, no, he doesn't feel guilty. And how does he sleep at night? Just fine, thank you very much. But Anderson, being the crazy kid that he is, is hung up on that whole "not true" aspect and brings it up again. That's not Stephen's fault though. No sir. He's only providing campaigns with the smearing-potential. Why should he have to actually take responsibility for his actions? Besides, Stephen tells us that when your campaign is behind you have to go negative. Because obviously there's absolutely nothing else you can do. Integrity? What's that? Stephen's world view makes me very sad.
On now to a Candy Crowley piece on how Hillary got her groove back. You might remember a little incident about a decade ago with Bill Clinton and an intern named Monica. Well, since that time, Hillary hasn't exactly been chatty about the situation...until now. That's right, the former first lady has finally opened up and she did it on the set of, and you might want to sit down for this, Tyra Banks. Yes, the model. Tyra Banks got the get. I am boggled. Anyway, nothing groundbreaking was said, but Hillary got to show off her softer side. But Bill apparently has his softer side put away in Al Gore's lock box. After Candy's piece, we're played a clip of Bill getting into it with a reporter over the Nevada caucus casino sites lawsuit. And Bill wasn't the only one wanting to play beat the press. Mitt Romney also got called out by a reporter for having a lobbyist run his campaign, which Romney denies. 360 only gives us the end of this tussle though. The whole exchange is longer and contains double the scary smiling.
If the reporter is right, then three cheers for him. Telling someone to their face that they're spouting BS is like the best thing ever. Although, if he's going to confront a presidential candidate, he could be a tad more respectable and, you know, stand up. So, does Romney have a lobbyist running things? Per 360: "The staff member is a senior adviser, one of many. Technically, he does not run Mitt Romney's campaign. So, you can make up your own mind about whether Mitt Romney was being accurate when he said he doesn't have a lobbyist running his campaign." Thanks guys. That was unbelievably helpful. Sigh.
I'm going to do a little time saving and skip over "What Were They Thinking?" Then we're on to a Tom Foreman piece on the ever-sucking economy. Is it a recession? Does it really matter what we call it? From Tom's piece we go back to the interview Joe did with McCain and we get to hear about how he wants to make the tax cuts permanent. Because they've been working so well for the poor and middle class so far. Whatever. After McCain, we've got Randi Kay live to talk about that Marine's death.
Transitioning now to a David Mattingly piece that should be named, "Tom Cruise is frickin scary." In case you haven't heard, a little video starring one Mr. Cruise exploded on the interwebs this week, chalk full of his Scientology musings, all set to a Mission Impossible soundtrack. It is craziness at its finest and no explanation will do it justice. You must simply watch. We then take a trip in the way-back machine to June 29, 2005, when Anderson put away his opinion-less sleeves and interviewed scientologist Bruce Wiseman. Bruce thinks psychiatry is a fraud. Like, the entire field. He tries to tell us that psychiatric drugs are tied to suicide, but Anderson points out that "factually speaking, though, the actual number of suicides or side effects is actually quite small, compared to the number of people who say that they derive very real life-saving benefits from these drugs."
Bruce then says that twice as many people on the drugs commit suicide as those not on the drugs and Anderson points out you can't draw correlations like that--those people might have committed suicide anyway. After this they kind of get stuck on electro-shock therapy for a bit, with Anderson making the point that it's not even all that common. He wants to know what's so bad about talk therapy, which sounds a lot like what Scientologists do anyway (you even have to pay for it). "Scientology addresses the spirit. Psychiatry damages the brain," says Bruce. "Let's get away from bumper-sticker slogans and let's actually talk," replies Anderson. Oooh. Bruce has it in his head that every psychiatric patient is getting pumped full of drugs or shocked, which Anderson rightly points out is "not true." And I have to say, hearing the words "not true" when confronted with BS, happens all too rarely in our media. I only wish Anderson would get that riled up when interviewing people that are a little more important than some dude from a minority religion. After the interview Anderson tells us: "Again, we're really just looking for facts, not opinion." Okay then. Whatever you say.
The Shot tonight is a 14 year old that used a bat to fend off a guy breaking into his house. Not bad. But I think I have something better. We know how 360 loves Japanese tv. Via japanprobe.com, I give you this awesome video:
The show was fairly good. B
Anyway, Romney's also getting slimed for being a Mormon. And you remember how Obama was accused of being a madrassa-attending Muslim extremist, which lead to CNN sending a reporter to Jakarta, which lead to a debunking, which lead to Fox News going crazy (well, crazier), which lead to an unbelievably immature cable war, which somehow ended up with Anderson being labeled the Paris Hilton of television news? Remember that? Well, the charge is back. Or rather, it continues. Now it's an email, which I just received a few days ago.
All this negativity is depressing, but if you'd like to jump into my Delorean and have a seat next to Marty McFly, I shall zoom you into the future for a second (even though it's really the past now--don't think about it too hard) to inform you that McCain won South Carolina. Yay, McCain! I'll probably never vote for the guy, but I did really want him to win this one, so he can tell all those slime balls to suck it. As for Nevada and the democrats, it looks to be a win for Clinton. Funnily enough though, Obama is the one walking away with more delegates. Democracy, she's such a trickster sometimes.
Next up, we go to an interview that Joe did with McCain about how he responds to the smears. Then we're on to an interview with former smearer, Stephen Marks. Stephen explains that he's hired by campaigns or outside groups to do "opposition research," which means digging up anything he can on the opponent. Anderson asks about some recent ads that have worked well and Stephen get all nostalgic over the Willie Horton and Swift Boat ads. Classy. Anderson asks if he feels guilty, seeing as a lot of these things aren't true. Stephen then proceeds to compare the process to buying a used car. No, really. He's just doing us all a service, you see. So, no, he doesn't feel guilty. And how does he sleep at night? Just fine, thank you very much. But Anderson, being the crazy kid that he is, is hung up on that whole "not true" aspect and brings it up again. That's not Stephen's fault though. No sir. He's only providing campaigns with the smearing-potential. Why should he have to actually take responsibility for his actions? Besides, Stephen tells us that when your campaign is behind you have to go negative. Because obviously there's absolutely nothing else you can do. Integrity? What's that? Stephen's world view makes me very sad.
On now to a Candy Crowley piece on how Hillary got her groove back. You might remember a little incident about a decade ago with Bill Clinton and an intern named Monica. Well, since that time, Hillary hasn't exactly been chatty about the situation...until now. That's right, the former first lady has finally opened up and she did it on the set of, and you might want to sit down for this, Tyra Banks. Yes, the model. Tyra Banks got the get. I am boggled. Anyway, nothing groundbreaking was said, but Hillary got to show off her softer side. But Bill apparently has his softer side put away in Al Gore's lock box. After Candy's piece, we're played a clip of Bill getting into it with a reporter over the Nevada caucus casino sites lawsuit. And Bill wasn't the only one wanting to play beat the press. Mitt Romney also got called out by a reporter for having a lobbyist run his campaign, which Romney denies. 360 only gives us the end of this tussle though. The whole exchange is longer and contains double the scary smiling.
If the reporter is right, then three cheers for him. Telling someone to their face that they're spouting BS is like the best thing ever. Although, if he's going to confront a presidential candidate, he could be a tad more respectable and, you know, stand up. So, does Romney have a lobbyist running things? Per 360: "The staff member is a senior adviser, one of many. Technically, he does not run Mitt Romney's campaign. So, you can make up your own mind about whether Mitt Romney was being accurate when he said he doesn't have a lobbyist running his campaign." Thanks guys. That was unbelievably helpful. Sigh.
I'm going to do a little time saving and skip over "What Were They Thinking?" Then we're on to a Tom Foreman piece on the ever-sucking economy. Is it a recession? Does it really matter what we call it? From Tom's piece we go back to the interview Joe did with McCain and we get to hear about how he wants to make the tax cuts permanent. Because they've been working so well for the poor and middle class so far. Whatever. After McCain, we've got Randi Kay live to talk about that Marine's death.
Transitioning now to a David Mattingly piece that should be named, "Tom Cruise is frickin scary." In case you haven't heard, a little video starring one Mr. Cruise exploded on the interwebs this week, chalk full of his Scientology musings, all set to a Mission Impossible soundtrack. It is craziness at its finest and no explanation will do it justice. You must simply watch. We then take a trip in the way-back machine to June 29, 2005, when Anderson put away his opinion-less sleeves and interviewed scientologist Bruce Wiseman. Bruce thinks psychiatry is a fraud. Like, the entire field. He tries to tell us that psychiatric drugs are tied to suicide, but Anderson points out that "factually speaking, though, the actual number of suicides or side effects is actually quite small, compared to the number of people who say that they derive very real life-saving benefits from these drugs."
Bruce then says that twice as many people on the drugs commit suicide as those not on the drugs and Anderson points out you can't draw correlations like that--those people might have committed suicide anyway. After this they kind of get stuck on electro-shock therapy for a bit, with Anderson making the point that it's not even all that common. He wants to know what's so bad about talk therapy, which sounds a lot like what Scientologists do anyway (you even have to pay for it). "Scientology addresses the spirit. Psychiatry damages the brain," says Bruce. "Let's get away from bumper-sticker slogans and let's actually talk," replies Anderson. Oooh. Bruce has it in his head that every psychiatric patient is getting pumped full of drugs or shocked, which Anderson rightly points out is "not true." And I have to say, hearing the words "not true" when confronted with BS, happens all too rarely in our media. I only wish Anderson would get that riled up when interviewing people that are a little more important than some dude from a minority religion. After the interview Anderson tells us: "Again, we're really just looking for facts, not opinion." Okay then. Whatever you say.
The Shot tonight is a 14 year old that used a bat to fend off a guy breaking into his house. Not bad. But I think I have something better. We know how 360 loves Japanese tv. Via japanprobe.com, I give you this awesome video:
The show was fairly good. B
posted by eliza at 3:42 AM
1 Comments:
Hang it up Cooper your journal bits are so distorted and unreal it's funny.
Post a Comment
<< Home