Wednesday, August 27, 2008

(Hillary) Clinton's Speech and News Media

The event reported in Language Log about Clinton's speech -- a CBS analyst asking an FBI profiler if he thought she was being sincere when endorsing Obama. The dude -- Navarro -- apparently has a book out bout this stuff. Of course, according to Language Log, he not only contradicted the pertinent entry in his own book, but seemingly didn't even correctly analyze the evidence he presented.

The comments section gets into the interesting (to J) debate about media and its attitude (or complete disregard for) actual facts.

J Mother might be happy to see this blog entry; 3/4 of the J Family was nonplussed by the fact that, to us, Hillary's speech was fine and did everything it needed to, while the entire media seemed to be pretty sure that she did it wrong. I know that they would critique it no matter what she said -- but that's the point, if it's wrong no matter what she does just so a more interesting story can be generated, that's to J the media equivalent of criminal negligence.

Yikes. Hillary Clinton's vagina unexpectedly ate someone on South Park. I am amazed by their ability to constantly find new ways to not just go over, but build a nice summer home over the line. Considering that it was an effectively anti-racial-profiling 24 rip-off, I'm trying to decide if I can overlook the lurking misogyny. South Park's trying-too-hard-by-half take-downs of everyone and everything are perceived by some people as spreading it around fairly; this ignores the fact that attacking discriminated against groups really isn't the same as attacking the hegemonic groups in POWER, but I might get past my curmudgeonlyness this time.

On the other hand... is it a coincidence Comedy Central re-ran this episode today...?

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