Category: Reprints & Crossposts

Reprints & Crossposts

Beck is Head Faking the Left, & we are falling for it

Posted on by The 40 year old magpie

Two Americas. Two Consensus Realities. We are witnessing a breakdown in what we define as “Glenn Beck” Nowhere more clearly can this be seen in articles from the NY Times regarding Beck’s departure: The article in the business section toes the “declining ratings” line gives us a fuller story to , whereas mediadecoder’ blog shares this consciously ignored by all other outlets, morsel of FOX’s vertical integration with Beck, but BOTH share this:

Fox News and Mercury Radio Arts, which have clashed over the making of the program, will “work together to develop and produce a variety of television projects for air on the Fox News Channel as well as content for other platforms including Fox News’ digital properties,” the companies said in the statement.As expected, a senior Fox News executive, Joel Cheatwood, will join Mr. Beck at Mercury Radio Arts starting later this month.

In the article in the business section, we get a fuller reading on that little morsel:

Notably, descriptions of Mr. Beck’s future plans drew derisive comments in some quarters of Fox News, where they argued that Mr. Beck needed the huge platform of his Fox show to build his media empire.At times, Mr. Beck and his managers said they sensed that Fox was retaliating in public, although they did not prove it.

Last month, when Mr. Cheatwood was first said to be moving over to Mercury, his Fox salary was suddenly leaked to a reporter. That day, a staff member who had been working with Fox on Mr. Beck’s show was asked if he could imagine working at an institution that would leak a salary figure. The staff member replied, “Not only can I imagine it, we’ve done it for 27 months,” referring to the precise number of months Mr. Beck had been at Fox. “It’s not fun.”

Let me repeat and emphasize that last sentence: As expected, a senior Fox News executive, Joel Cheatwood, will join Mr. Beck at Mercury Radio Arts starting later this month.

So, while my fellow Progressives pat themselves over this “victory” they cannot see the massive head fake in the story, and claim FOX is “well rid of Cheatwood” (he had the temerity to talk to Beck without Royal Leave to do so), I call shennanigans and bullshit. As an actor, I have to analyze a script, to get “into the head” of the character and circumstances. I apply the same standard to entertainment news – if there is more than one article on the same subject, I’ll look at all of them as things are always “left out”. like the statement above. As far as I know, THAT is the ONLY reference to FOX involvment with Beck’s production company. Roger Ailes is quite happy that we think that Beck was fired or quit:

Beck said that he went to Roger Ailes, Fox News chairman and CEO, in January to discuss ways they could continue to work together without the daily show.

“Half of the headlines say he’s been canceled,” Ailes said. “The other half say he quit. We’re pretty happy with both of them.”
…
Ailes emphasized that Fox and Beck will continue to work together.

“We like each other,” he said in a dual interview with Beck. “We’re not drawing pictures of each other on the walls, having staff fights and stealing each other’s food out of the refrigerator or any of that stuff.”

Beck sees himself as “Howard Beale” are we seeing the beginning of Beck’s desired end?

The proof is in the pudding with my claim that the Vertical Integration between Beck and FOX is being studiously ignored:

WaPo

ABC News

even media matters gets it wrong

UPDATE: AS I SAID, I CALL SHENNANIGANS, and I am correct: From a “press release” over at glennbeck.com regarding Joel Cheatwood’s “defection” from FOX:

Joel Cheatwood, SVP/Development at FOX News, will be joining Mercury Radio Arts effective April 24, 2011. Part of his role as EVP will be to manage the partnership and serve as a liaison with FOX News.

Ailes said, “Joel is a good friend and one of the most talented and creative executives in the business. Over the past four years I have consistently valued his input and advice and that will not stop as we work with him in his new role.”

Activism, Reprints & Crossposts

The First Amendment does not protect your right to deliberate inflame

Posted on by The 40 year old magpie

Terry Jones is directly responsible for this. Arrest Jones for giving Aid & Comfort. The 1st Amendment does not protect one from the yelling of “FIRE” in a crowded theater if there is no fire, and done purely for the panic response. Jones is a fifth columnist who needs to be tried as such. He cannot hide behind “we gave it a trial and found it guilty”. That’s the same as holding a fencepost responsible for embedding a splinter in a rancher. The teaparty and people of Jones’ quasi-religious ilk refuses to understand that words have consequences. and some are very very fatal. Just ask the 20 people who died as a result He knew the CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER  to Life and Limb should he go forth with the book burning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. […] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Yet, he just didn’t give a shit. It wasn’t HIS life or HIS limbs that would bear the scars of retribution. from the NY TIMES article

Unable to find Americans on whom to vent their anger, the mob turned instead on the next-best symbol of Western intrusion — the nearby United Nations headquarters. “Some of our colleagues were just hunted down,” said a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, Kieran Dwyer, in confirming the attack.

YOU ACHIEVED YOUR AIM. HOPE YOU WERE WELL PAYED BY THE DESTROYER OF SOULS.

WITH FREE SPEECH, COMES RESPONSIBILITY

 

NOTE: This originally appeared as a note on my facebook page, which led to a lively and civil discussion on the limits of free speech and its repercussions. One friend brought up flag-burning. No one, to my knowledge or reporteed in the news has been killed for that act. Beaten up and/or arrested, but not murdered.    

update: Jones has called the repercussions in Afghanistan “tragic”, but he isn’t repentant, and the death toll due to this incident ha passed 50

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Ghimeabragh, oil on velvet, Reprints & Crossposts

The Tale of Kochheaded Dave

Posted on by The 40 year old magpie

Poor little Davey Koch. Someone punked his Governor, and now he’s crying about “Identity Theft”

 

Yes, children, gather round and hear a tale of Poor Kochheaded Dave.
Dave was so wealthy, even he was impressed by it, and thought he was Master of the World. One day, while Kochheaded Dave was petting his second favorite pet, it was an oddly adorable, yet vicious little beast called a “teaparty”, his first, another vicious, yet unadorable beast called a “Walker” was being tutored in the art of deception.

A man, an alien being known as a “Journalist”, picked up his telephone, and made a call to the pet, Walker, and knowing he wouldn’t get to talk to the Walker if he revealed himself, pretended to be Kochheaded Dave. Hilarity ensued as the Walker rolled over and exposed his throat to the Pretender as the Pretender played his unpaid role. The Pretender, when he had had his fill, ended the call, and revealed himself to the World. Now, this revelation caused the Walker great anguish at having been revealed to be the pet of Kochheaded Dave, and Dave. Well, Kochheaded Dave was outraged at the humiliation of his pet Walker, and the admission that he, Kochheaded Dave owned such a pet.

Thinking about what recourse he had, Kochheaded Dave went to the press and declared:

“It’s a case of identity theft,” Koch told the New York Times in a rare interview Friday. “I didn’t even know his name before this brouhaha erupted.”

Poor Kochheaded Dave was beside himself (his favorite sexual position) and “joked”:

“I was thinking to myself, ‘My God, if I called up a senator or a congressman to discuss something with them, and they heard ‘David Koch is on the line,’ they’d immediately say, ‘That’s that fraud again — tell him to get lost!'” he said.

And, you know, that Senator would be quite correct in that assessment.

x-posted to DailyKos

Reprints & Crossposts

I take it back: Glenn Beck is not a Clown

Posted on by The 40 year old magpie

Nor, is he nuts. He is rather, an adept at the NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) technique called “Sleight of Mouth“. He may be the BEST at it that I have seen.
What is “Sleight of Mouth” you ask? it’s verbal shell game/three card monty designed to confuse you, then hypnotize you and then, reframe your world. The technique was created as a means of eliciting therapeutic change in thinking by Robert Dilts, and in the video, you can see its misuse.

Continue reading →

Reprints & Crossposts

Reprint: A 1st Person Aftermath

Posted on by The 40 year old magpie

I’ve reprinted this almost every year since the Towers fell:
Written September 18, 2001, the first day I could board the Staten Island Ferry, and get into Manhattan. It was first posted my my old xanga.com blog, it’s been since posted to usenet and other blogs. Ironically, it was Rosh ha Shanna. The comment at the end still rings true. 9 years later, it still rings true. 9 years later…

Aftermath In the World of the Discordian, I would hazard that as of 9/11/01, we have left the Age of Bureaucacy, and entered the Age of Aftermath…

Sept 18, 2001 (Rosh HaShanah) I wrote:

A week ago, while trying to capture the remnants of Dreams, the phone rang. “Kelly, it’s Carl. the World Trade Center collapsed.” and with those words, everything changed. I turned on the radio and listened. Carl and I talked about what happened, about the safety of his family when he said: “The other Tower just collapsed. I gotta go.” He had watched it all from his office.

Over the next few days, I climbed out onto the fire escape to view the skyline. We had entered the Underworld, and New York Harbor had become the River Styx with Charon at the helm of the Ferries that ran between South Ferry and Staten Island, I emailed friends and family to let them know I was ok, helped a friend whose Mother was Missing Never to be Recovered, volunteered at the Red Cross Emergency Center at the just opened Staten Island Yankees Ballpark….

(written on the Ferry going towards Lower Manhattan) I am now beginning my own Journey to the Underworld. I am no Orpheus, but, perhaps I am. The city is shrouded. The forlorn tolling of a buoy bell. Is that fog? or, is it smoke from the still smoldering ruins? It’s a cynic’s question. Journalist on deck. from Japan. from somewhere in the U.S.

I can feel the Pain. Smell the Dead. The Ferry is arriving and I step in the Domain of Hades and Hekate.

I chose to ride a bus. An M15 Local. Not much choice. It’s the only running. Lower Manhattan was ghostly in its emptiness. as the bus turned off Water St, it started to become surreal – from the closed stores and the empty Sea Port. people walking to – where? As the bus moved uptown, Life returned in slow motion. the smoke. the smell receded to be replaced by traffic. The traffic grew heavier as and then came the pictures. Walls of pictures. no picture covering another, and one woman looking at each one in its turn that had been posted on a wall of a deli. the bus first passed by Beth Israel, then Bellvue and NYU. the next wall of pictures was taped to a construction barrier at, I believe, Bellvue. and the bus continued up 1st Ave. We passed a playground where the adults seemed to outnumber the children and none were at play. Getting off the bus at 50th St., in the shadow of the UN, I walked down to 48th St. and began to walk west towards Broadway. As I walked, I was struck by the Silence. No talking. no cell phones. no music. no car horns. Silence. I walked past a silent and empty Rockefeller Center, and I stopped to look at the FOX-TV News zipper and once more was stunned: bin Laden had achieved what no one could. A unilateral cease-fire betwixt Palestinians and Israelis. Maybe they finally realized that ‘tit for tat’ would bring ruin to both sides.

Later in the day, I walked over to Engine 54 in the Heart of the Theater District, just four blocks from the theater I used to manage. It was overwhelming. The Letters and flowers.Candles and Prayers. I cried. for the Missing Never to be Recovered, the Dead, the Living, but mostly for the children. I wished that they had missed this performance, along with the rest of the 5000+. It was one curtain that never should have gone up.

It’s weird. I’m sitting at Starbucks and the music is this “happy-Doo-Wop” version of “muzak” It was unreal looking out the window, traffic flowing down 9th Ave. as though nothing is amiss…I considered attending Rosh Hashanah services, but somehow, I felt empty by the consideration. so, I traveled back down to South Ferry, riding the 4 Express to Bowling Green. As the train approached Fulton Street Station, smoke was evident in the tunnel, you could smell flesh. My sinuses reacted immediately and I knew my voice would be affected as well.

What I didn’t plan on was becoming violently ill a few hours after I got home.

********************************
As I said, I wrote this one week after the event.

Some of it now seems naive.

However, it still makes me cry.

©2001-2010 Kelly Lincoln