Our Media Matters

One of the things I like to do over at The Office of the Independent Blogger is monitor the media and write about stories that others ignore. Not in the way that Republicans do, where they write about Hillary Clinton being a lesbian regardless of any and all evidence to the contrary, but in the sense that there are quite a few stories ignored that shouldn't be or played up that should never see the light of day.

The problem with our media is that it is allowed to go unchecked with lies and fabrications and promotes ridiculous stories, or spends too much time on stories that don't quite matter. The girl that was kidnapped in Aruba? Shrill O'Lielly has been harping on about her for weeks now, acting as though some Aruban thugs snatched her out of a bar while incompetent law officials cheered them on. Truth is that the girl left the bar in the middle of the night after a few hours of heavy drinking with several men that she'd never met and it's safe to assume that she intended to have sex with them. O'Lielly has spent the last couple of weeks acting as though she were abducted out of her home and don't even get me started on Sean Shammity's coverage of the Aruban crisis and I use that term loosely. They've sent Alan Colmes down to Aruba where he has been "reporting" on the crisis. I think that Shammity and Pushover needs to stop being referred to as a debate show. While we're on the subject, everytime Shrill O'Lielly has run a segment about the recent shark attacks in Florida I've half-expected him to wonder whether or not the sharks are liberals attacking innocent children in Florida. You know how much liberals hate the children.

I'm sorry, I was here to discuss the media and I went on a tangent about the Propaganda Channel.

Paula Abdul is in the news again, and when she's not having sex with American Idol contestants she's urging Congress to pass tough laws against -- wait for it! -- nail salons. Someone gave her a manicure that sucked and suddenly it's Congressional business. Our press ought to be pummeling the Congress for even wasting time on this.

I admire Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and I watched him on C-Span earlier in the day. Halliburton has been overcharging our Government for things such as paper towels and buying towels that are twice as expensive as cheaper alternatives. Know why? Because the towels that Halliburton wanted just had to have Halliburton's logo on it. Halliburton has been feeding soldiers expired meals and has been giving them food that had bullets in it that were removed. Read more about it here. I'm hoping that Dorgan's remarks before the Senate today will be made available on his site. If our media had any level of competence this would be all over the TV right now.

Came across several great actions that have been taken by the press lately: The Wall Street Journal gets caught with its pants down on the subject of Iraqi troop capability; FOX is smearing liberals as anti-American who oppose the war in Afghanistan; the major networks are all parroting the White House's spin on Rove's recent comments; The Washington Post can't bring itself to be straight with the public about Social Security.

Depressing, I know.