Football Fans

She seems like such a nice lady.

After Meeting With John McCain, Sheehan Called Him a “Warmonger”.

“Senator Babykiller and I had a frank exchange of ideas.”

Giant Squid Finally Captured on Film.

Flight Attendants, the newest grievance group, boycott Jodie Foster’s new Thriller Flightplan (CAUTION – STORY REVEALS MOVIE PLOT).

“Coffee, Tea or Arsenic, Ms. Foster?”

Fantastic Anatomy of How The San Francisco Chronicle Tells Only a Sliver of the Anti-War Protest Story.

The San Francisco Chronicle featured the original photograph on its front page in order to convey a positive message about the rally — perhaps that even politically aware teenagers were inspired to show up and rally for peace, sporting the message, “People of Color say ‘No to War!’” And that served the Chronicle’s agenda.

But this simple analysis reveals the very subtle but insidious type of bias that occurs in the media all the time. The Chronicle did not print an inaccuracy, nor did it doctor a photograph to misrepresent the facts. Instead, the Chronicle committed the sin of omission: it told you the truth, but it didn’t tell you the whole truth.

Because the whole truth — that the girl was part of a group of naive teenagers recruited by Communist activists to wear terrorist-style bandannas and carry Palestinian flags and obscene placards — is disturbing, and doesn’t conform to the narrative that the Chronicle is trying to promote. By presenting the photo out of context, and only showing the one image that suits its purpose, the Chronicle is intentionally manipulating the reader’s impression of the rally, and the rally’s intent.

Such tactics — in the no-man’s-land between ethical and unethical — are commonplace in the media, and have been for decades. It is only now, with the advent of citizen journalism, that we can at last begin to see the whole story and realize that the public has been manipulated like this all along.

(thanks to AceofSpades)

A thorough debunking of most hysterical claims.

Folklore: 30-40 Bodies stuffed inside a freezer at Convention Center. (Hat Tip Donny Baseball)

Fact: Nope. (Hat Tip Acassa)

Folklore: I’ve got a report there are bodies stacked in the basement of the Superdome. (FEMA doctor)

Fact: National Guard officials put the body count at the Superdome at six, saying the other four bodies came from the area around the stadium.

Six… Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide.

Of the 841 (885 9-27) recorded hurricane-related deaths in Louisiana, four are identified as gunshot victims, Johannessen said.

Folklore: Mayor Nagin on the Today Show, “It wouldn’t be unreasonable to have 10,000…” (VIDEO HERE)

Facts: There have been 885 deaths in Louisiana attributed to Hurricane Katrina:

701 are at the makeshift morgue in St. Gabriel

Parish Coroners:

Ascension — 5
Assumption — 2
East Baton Rouge – 72
Iberia – 6
Jefferson – 30
Lafourche — 2
Livingston — 5
Plaquemines — 3
St. Charles – 8
St. Tammany – 7
Tangipahoa — 26
Terrebonne — 15
West Baton Rouge – 3

Most of the dead from Katrina have been sent to the makeshift morgue in St. Gabriel, Louisiana a town of 5,500, 15 miles south of Baton Rouge.

Actual photo taken on Bourbon Street, 9/1/05.

The ex-SecEd may be a SAT vocabulary exercise in excess (tendentious, officious, erudite, profligate, dogmatic….), but he has the backbone for all that and more.

“A thought experiment about public policy, on national radio, should not have received the condemnations it has. Anyone paying attention to this debate should be offended by those who have selectively quoted me, distorted my meaning, and taken out of context the dialogue I engaged in this week. Such distortions from ‘leaders’ of organizations and parties is a disgrace not only to the organizations and institutions they serve, but to the First Amendment.

Study up, Summers.

The Hugh Hewitt/Brian Montopoli demonstrates the lengths CBS is willing to go to placate the blogosphere, as Hugh Hewitt has a nutty interviews a blogger from their new media blog, The Public Eye.

Montopoli posted a list of journalists who have become bloggers. Was it a complete list? No. Montopoli specified it wasn’t definitive and was subjective. Did he try to include conservative bloggers that met his criteria? Yes. He missed at least two biggies: Michael Barone and Michelle Malkin. But he included The Corner, and clearly tried, in his earnest liberal mode, to include conservatives. Was most of his list left of center? Sure. Most journalists are liberals. Didn’t Hugh get the memo?

HH: But I mean, so what’s to distinguish? Why is she not Michael Barone? Or is this just Brian Montopoli’s view of the world, which is in fact, then, not objective, and not journalism?

BM: Well, I mean I used the word subjective in the post. So, I’m not sure why you’re hammering me for it not being objective.

…..

HH: You’ve got 30 different blogs listed here. 25 of them are center-left or hard left. You’ve excluded obvious center-right people like Jack Kelly and Michael Barone. I don’t think intentionally. You’ve designed the rules to exclude people like me and Michelle Malkin, because you don’t like us, and then you purport to be objective…

BM: You’re on our blogroll, Hugh. How do you say we don’t like you. And another thing. I e-mailed you, asking you to do a critique of our website. We have this outside voices feature. Jonathan Last is doing it. You never got back to me.

HH: I don’t want to do anything for CBS. You guys are like…you’ve got the Plague.

BM: Well, at the very least, you could have written me back. Here I am on your radio show.

HH: I might catch what you have. If you have…If I end up working for you, I’m going to end up being identified with CBS, which has a terrible reputation, because of punk stunts like this, Brian.

BM: You’re saying if Hewitt critiques CBS in a critical way on our website, which is what we wanted you to do…

HH: I’m saying I’m not going to help you guys make money.

BM: …it would have ruined your credibility? You would have been kicked out on the street?

…

HH: All right. Now let’s go back to this. Austin Bay…novelist, writer, University of Texas, Colonel, great blogger. He doesn’t count as a blogger journalist?

BM: Um, where is his journalistic outlet?

HH: He writes novels, and he writes for AustinBay.net. You’d have to go look. He does a lot of writing for syndicated features.

BM: But he’s not a mainstream media journalist who also blogs, which is what we were trying to bring attention to.

HH: Again, define for me mainstream media, because after all, mainstream media would include, I would think, novels and television. Roger L. Simon, for example.

BM: Well then, um, I don’t think a novelist who blogs I would consider a member of the mainstream media. And I think most people would agree with me.

So all this time when Hugh’s been bashing the MSM, he was bitching about J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown. Damn. Who knew?

Jeff Jarvis, however, seems to think it was a righteous kill, that Montopoli gave a “lousy interview” and that the Public Eye isn’t a real blog. Why?

Well, for example: Instead of publishing your list of journalist bloggers, ask for a list.

Yes, there’s an example. That’s how most bloggers work. They ask their readers what their opinions should be. That’s why most of us got started, because we all wanted to ask other people what they think and write about it.

Besides, Jarvis says, referring to another PE blogger, “we have a media guy acting as a blogger saying that bloggers just want to act as media guys. ”

That’s right, he’s not really a blogger. He only writes for a blog.

Hey, we have to do something about this. We can’t let anyone who just writes on a blog and acts like a blogger actually call himself a blogger. We need to set a standard. Let’s start a group. An association. We can have initials. Charge fees. Require accreditation. Create a college major for it. All the while effortlessly preaching on about the wonderful open, organic, democratic, ever-changing nature of the blogosphere.

I remember back in the 80s when women used to declare that they weren’t feminists, but they did believe in equal rights for women. Fewer women bother to make the distinction these days; everyone knows you can support equal rights for women and still think NOW an abomination.

Pretty soon, some folks will be saying that they aren’t bloggers. They just have a blog.

Molly Shattuck, Baltimore Ravens Cheerleader

Yes, she’s a perky blonde in great shape, but she also happens to be about 15 years older than most of the other woman on the squad, married and the mother of three.

Empire film magazine named a scene in which Berkley and MacLachlan couple energetically in a swimming pool as the worst sex scene of the many hundreds it surveyed

“I left Saved by the Bell for this?”

Erin Brockovich gets an undeserved award from Harvard.

Her alleged fight for environmental justice was told in the cleverly titled 2000 movie “Erin Brockovich.” In it, the Brockovich character, played by Julia Roberts, and showing more cleavage than scientific knowledge, is a crusading legal assistant who exposes the alleged poisoning of everything — from chickens to frogs to people — by a Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) plant’s leaching of a rust inhibitor called chromium-6 into the water supply of nearby Hinkley.

Only problem: It was all false. No one chemical agent could possibly have caused all the symptoms described in the film, and chromium-6 in the water couldn’t have caused any of them.

“I’d like to thank my agent, my plastic surgeon, and most of all, you, the little people.”