I am reading the front pages of the NYT, WaPo, and ESPN mobile sites. One doesn’t have a Tiger Woods story on it. Guess which?
What’s news
by DougJ| 178 Comments
This post is in: Media, General Stupidity
by DougJ| 178 Comments
This post is in: Media, General Stupidity
I am reading the front pages of the NYT, WaPo, and ESPN mobile sites. One doesn’t have a Tiger Woods story on it. Guess which?
Comments are closed.
DecidedFenceSitter
Well all three main websites do. :)
NY Times: Woods Says Car Accident Is His Fault, but Private
ESPN: Woods blames self; 911 call released
Washington Post: For 3rd time, Woods cancels meeting with police
donovong
That’s real news, while the fact that nine children lost their father or mother today in a senseless shooting of four police officers is way below the fold.
Fucking morons.
MikeJ
OT: Let me say up front, I’m against shooting people. There’s no excuse for shooting four cops while they are having coffee. But Jesus, they got shot at 8:30 this morning and just now are they removing the bodies. With a procession of every cop in three counties and fire department ladder companies hanging american flags over the street.
It shouldn’t take ten hours to remove the bodies from a crime scene, and it shouldn’t take a procession 3 miles long to control traffic to get them to the morgue.
And the local news is wondering why the “person of interest” is avoiding the police. Even if you were innocent with the governor and the chief of police as you alibi, would you want to peacefully turn yourself in when the cops are looking for the guy that shot four officers?
asiangrrlMN
@donovong: Well, you know, where’s the pizazz in that? That story is grim.
Michael G
Q: Why is this newsworthy *at all*?
A: Because Drudge has it on his front page and newspaper editors cannot think for themselves anymore, therefore it MUST be a big deal.
Drive By Wisdom
Thousands of Americans line up to meet Sarah Palin in Richland Washington.
Guess which bloggers ignore it?
Keith G
@Drive By Wisdom: Thousands of people masturbate every night. I see no need to read about that either.
MikeJ
@Drive By Wisdom: Where the fuck is Richland? I live in Washington and I’ve never heard of it.
Sadly, DougJ never does posts on what the special at the Sonic Drive in Maple Valley is either.
Unabogie
@Drive By Wisdom:
We’ve had enough by now, haven’t you?
asiangrrlMN
@Keith G: I had a response, but yours was way funnier. Snicker.
Mine was going to be, “And only four actually got their books signed by her!”
Oh, man. I sense a full-on snarkfest coming. Bring your best, bitchez!
Mike G
Meanwhile, the rightardosphere is hyping CLIMATEGATE — as if one scientist fudging his data means that all global warming claims are a hoax, and we can go back to driving Hummers! Yeehaaaww!
These scientifically-illiterate fucktards don’t get that scientific consensus isn’t built upon one scientist pulling ideas out of his ass, talk radio-style. Results have to be reproducible by other scientists, not taken on the ‘blind faith’ they exalt as a virtue.
BR
Apparently the guy they are looking for in the police murders was pardoned by Mike Huckabee himself in Arkansas a few years ago.
Let’s see how the GOP “law-and-order” folks like that one.
valdivia
But DougJ the crashers are the most important story right now. Who cares what else happens? Tiger may rate a second, and then if someone asks Obama about Tiger we will come full circle.
donovong
@asiangrrlMN: I know. And it doesn’t involve any tin-foil balloons or hawt blonde trespassers.
It also turns out that Mike Huckabee commuted the suspected shooter’s loonngg sentence in Arkansas years ago.
I repeat – fucking morons.
donovong
@Keith G: And by what means do you come to this knowledge, Keith?
asiangrrlMN
@donovong: Good lord. If that is true…Huckabee commuted this guy’s sentence? Really. This guy. Screwed. We’re all screwed.
MikeJ
@BR: Fuck Huckabee. I’ve got family history in one of his other pardons (who went on to kill).
Keith G
W@asiangrrlMN:Well babe, you are most likely right as we know *she* does not like to finish what she starts.
maus
thousands queue up to buy american idol tickets, having roughly the same importance in our lives.
asiangrrlMN
@Keith G: She’s a quitter, is our Sarah!
JK
Doug,
How many news cycles can morons like Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, et al devote to these stupid fucking Salahis and how many times will assholes like Matthews, Blitzer, Cooper suggest that if their last names were Jensen, Armstrong, or Smith, they would have been unable to gate crash the state dinner?
Karen in GA
@BR: Huckabee’s got a history of questionable judgment.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/04/documents-expose-huckabee_n_75362.html>See here, assuming I haven’t screwed up the link.
Edit: Okay, it looks funny, but it’s functional. I’m quitting while I’m ahead.
ellaesther
Oh man, Balloon Juice, I don’t think I’ve commented since the evening before Thanksgiving. I’ve been living in a nearly internet-less reality! It’s been odd. Good, and odd!
Re: Tiger Woods vs. the four police officers, as national stories:
1) Tiger Woods belongs to all of America — he’s not a local celebrity (one guesses that you haven’t been reading about Chicago’s social scene this weekend, for instance), he’s an American celebrity, and a very rich and famous one, at that, and we take a very personal interest in our rich and famous national celebrities. Which we shouldn’t, but we do.
2) While you would normally expect the American press to go wild over four police officers being shot to death, it reads to me like a local event — that is, it was probably a result of some local nastiness, and doesn’t resonate as an attack on America, as the Ft. Hood attack did — and, I’m just guessing here, the police department has likely very firmly asked their local reporters to keep a lid on things as they investigate. So no one has anything new to report.
Having said all of that, I’m kind of sick that I know anything at all about the Tiger Woods story, and am so sad for those four families and for their community. It looks like the town they served in was about as big as mine, and I know that we would be very badly thrown by such a horrible crime.
gwangung
@Mike G: Now you know what biologists have been thinking for the past forty years.
And it’s gonna take AT LEAST forty years to go through this, even after the oceans rise a few meters and the icecaps shrink by 50%.
Magnetar Melon
If only we had a BBC…
Comrade Jake
@Mike G:
Right, and well, it’s not clear there was any fudging either.
JK
@ellaesther:
Don’t forget Balloon Boy and Carrie Prejean.
PeakVT
Ok, apparently there were plenty of “signs” that this shooter was a danger. My question is: how many people displaying “signs” are there roaming the nation? Do the police deal with dozens of these people every day, and which makes picking out the one guy that is about to snap difficult?
Annie
@Drive By Wisdom:
After looking at the picture, I think I will keep drinking…
ellaesther
@JK: There comes a point where the sheer ability to read — the eyes’ ability to take in these squiggles and markings and automatically arrange them so that they communicate to me in my language — is a burden. I have entirely new techniques for standing in line at the grocery store — BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO KNOW whatever the National Enquirer/People/whathaveyou is trying to sell me. Even if it is true! It’s none of my damn business! But if my eyes alight on a cover, well, fuck me, I have to deal with the rumor that, I don’t know, the President has a secret gay lover, or that so-and-so and whatshername are in love/getting married/pregnant/breaking up/all four.
Oh grammar school education, why must you curse me so?!?
Roger Moore
Of course you also have to consider why a site like ESPN isn’t reporting much on Woods. It may be because there isn’t much newsworthy there, but I suspect otherwise. Sports news people know that they’re going to have to keep working with Woods for years, so they don’t want to say or do anything that’s going to piss him off and get him to freeze them out in the future. It’s essentially the same dynamic as the Villagers’ unwillingness to criticize the powers that be in Washington for fear of losing their access. It’s just that in this case its the sportswriters who are worried about losing access and the front page writers who can feel free to do as they please.
Zam
@Roger Moore: I like to think it’s because ESPN is a real news organization who doesn’t take their cues from Drudge and other screaming idiots.
bago
@ellaesther: That’s only because HEATH LEDGER has a dark secret history with MEL GIBSON that involves PATRICK SWAYZE’s brave battle with cancer, which can only push the story of LADY GAGA’s nip slip off of the pages.
JK
@ellaesther:
There should be a special place in Hell reserved for the news execs who pollute the airwaves with Balloon Boy, Carrie Prejean, young missing white women, and other tabloid garbage.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Karen in GA: Huckabee’s got even bigger problems if the stories out of Seattle are true. He commuted the sentence of a serial troublemaker who is now wanted for questioning in the deaths of the four police officers in the Seattle area.
MattR
@Zam: Unfortunately that is not the case. ESPN has a history of promoting and/or ignoring stories based on who is involved and their (or their team or their sport) relationship with the network. The Ben Roethlisberger rape accusations jump out at me as a quick example.
Corner Stone
@Zam: ESPN is a member of the ABC/Disney family.
They absolutely take their cue from Drudge. Where possible.
In this case, it’s clear TW isn’t going down for anything and will come out of this squeaky clean in two weeks. So why piss Golf Jesus off?
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@Zam: ESPN isn’t a real news outfit. They have their favorites as well. Favre. Big Ben. Tiger. Tebow.
General Winfield Stuck
you all leave Tiger aloooooooone!!
ellaesther
@bago: (not to mention Lady Gaga’s possible penis).
arguingwithsignposts
@Corner Stone:
God, if they don’t remind us of that ABC link EVERY FREAKIN’ DAY!
IMHO, the balloon boy/carrie prejean/tiger woods/sarah palin freakshow coverage is a result of the 24/7 gaping hole of coverage all these cable networks have created. With fewer journalists to provide coverage, all they’ve got most of the time is car chases and b.s. celebrity coverage.
Oh, yeah, and Matt Drudge can suck it, too. The man hasn’t done an honest day’s journalism in his life.
gizmo
NY Times:
“Nine years ago in Arkansas, The Seattle Times reported, Mr. Clemmons was released from prison after Gov. Mike Huckabee commuted his lengthy prison sentence, over the protests of prosecutors.”
Just imagine if a Democrat had commuted that sentence. The rightwing shit storm would never cease.
Karen in GA
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: Yep — I was responding to BR, who had pointed out Huckabee’s history with the Washington suspect.
Unreal, this guy. The trouble is, the crackpots who would consider voting for him have proven themselves capable of overlooking all sorts of things. Hell, Wayne Dumond didn’t make any difference to them. I’m not so sure they’d care about this — they can make excuses for anything.
ellaesther
@JK: Ten minutes ago, I wrote: “(Not to mention Lady Gaga’s possible [male reproductive organ])”, and just came back now to check in and went: D’oh! Of course I got sent to moderation!
Anyhoo, that’s what I said. I’m sure that at some point it will appear in the thread!
Pigs & Spiders
TOUCHDOWN STILLERS!!
arguingwithsignposts
@Pigs & Spiders:
Now there’s something you won’t see Big Ben doing.
Wile E. Quixote
@Drive By Wisdom
Everyone, because who gives a fuck what a bunch of useless, lazy, good for nothing eastern Washington shit weasels do? Really, eastern Washington is almost completely useless, it’s chock full of dumbshit Republicans who always whine and cry about how unfair things are and say that they want to split the state in half. But what these Republican dumbfucks don’t realize is that if Washington were split in half, say down the middle of the Cascades, the eastern half would dry up and blow away, because it’s tax dollars from the western half of the state, where all of the big businesses, all of the tourism, the major military bases and the ports are that keep eastern Washington from turning into a complete and utter shithole.
Oh, and let’s add in the fact that it’s eastern Washington farmers who bring most of the illegal immigrants into the state to pick their crops, who graze their cattle on federal land, who receive massive farm subsidies, who water their crops with subsidized water from federally owned dams and you’ve got an area that’s just chock full of lazy assholes who need to be slammed in the face with a rifle butt until they wake up and stop being such a bunch of whiny little bitches who feel that they’re entitled to other people’s money.
hal
Was the clemency thing the guy who was supposedly born again? Anyway, I just a headline somewhere about Huckabee saying he probably wasn’t going to run in 2012. I guess we know why.
The Sheriff Is A Ni-
This Dixon kid can play.
@Drive By Wisdom: If you can’t outdraw the Detroit Lions, you’re not a national story.
JK
@arguingwithsignposts:
If I had a choice, I’d prefer the days when New York had 6 or 7 daily newspapers which included 2 or 3 broadsheets over 24/7 cable news. The only thing I’d want to keep would be the 3 C-SPAN channels.
The inconvenient truth that these news exec fuckers at Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC choose to ignore is that there is real goddamn news to report.
With shoe string budgets, World Focus, Democracy Now, and the BBC run circles around 24/7 cable news in terms of coverage of hard news.
The immediacy of 24/7 news is great in theory, but if all it produces is 23 shades of stories on Palin, Prejean, and Balloon Boy, the cable news channels can go fuck themselves.
Punchy
@MikeJ: I am sick of that term “Person of interest”. It means we wont call him a suspect, cuz we have zero evidence, yet we’ll tar and trash his name anyways.
Yutsano
@Drive By Wisdom: Ha. Dude. You’re not from here I can tell. That view of that street isn’t even CLOSE to having thousands of people on it, much less there is no area anywhere NEAR there that could accomodate that much parking without causing a huge ruckus. So when you’re done giving 9/12 type bullshit numbers come back to play. Or don’t, your choice.
Litlebritdifrnt
Hey any of you watching CNNs heros right now? It is all kinds of awesome.
Peter J
@Drive By Wisdom:
…and 750 of them had to go home without ever meeting Palin since she quit before greeting all of them.
Litlebritdifrnt
Okay this heros thing has got me in a serious emotional wreck place cause the Tides Loads of Hope ad just had me crying.
Punchy
Pitts just survived a miracle attempt by Cundiff. If there’s no fumble and subsequent 4 yard loss, Ravens win this.
Brian J
@Karen in GA: @gizmo:
How can you be sure a Democrat group like ACORN didn’t have a hand in this? I mean, ACORN, people! Those people can do anything!
Brian J
@JK:
When was the last time New York had that many papers for more than a few years?
Karen in GA
@Brian J: Nope. We brought ACORN down when we found their emails about the global warming hoax.
drillfork
You never hear of Tiger doing anything stupid or weird. It’s a story.
Meanwhile, we have like 2-3 mass murders in America every month. That’s not news.
Brachiator
@JK:
And even here, it is the myth of 24/7 news. I can’t remember enough details to do a google search, but I recall one of the networks whining that they couldn’t cover a story that broke over the weekend because they had to run their pre-recorded (cheap) pseudo-news programs.
Drive By Wisdom
@Yutsano: Obviously, you are not from there either:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsAGBIKeJJk
It is really trivial to catch you liberals in a lie – you cannot help yourselves. It is all right there on youtube, even your pet media reported several thousand, but you cannot deal with it, so it does not exist.
As always, the reality-based community is anything but.
MattR
@Brachiator: It may have been the plane crash in Buffalo in February. Ir occurred on a Friday night after 10 pm and I remember flipping through the various 24/7 networks noticing how long it took them to get an actual anchor to get on the air instead of just rebroadcasting a local news feed.
handy
LOL looks “they” surround you Yutsano! There’s a movement brewing for sure. A Tea Party movement you betcha.
LD50
@Drive By Wisdom: Dozens of dumbshit rednecks standing in line to see the ignorant buffoon who helped McCain lose. Ah, it’s little blips like this that brighten the day of wingnuts everywhere!
Yutsano
@Drive By Wisdom: That street in your picture is Jadwin Avenue going north. That line is 1-2 people deep. Going half a mile on that sidewalk is MAYBE a thousand people tops. The fact that the local news is too lazy to get a decent count doesn’t keep the puckey from smelling like bull. You still think I ain’t from here?
JK
@Brian J:
I’m guessing the early 1960’s. I’ve totally had it with cable news.
@Brachiator:
I’ve reached the point where I wish some brilliant hacker had the technical capablitity to completely block out the signals of Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. I’d love to turn on my tv one night and see The Endless Summer, The Ascent of Man, Cosmos or Gosford Park airing instead of the garbage cable news programs that pollute primetime.
MattR
@Yutsano: You can probably ignore anyone who thinks that liberals have a “pet media” as it shows a complete disassociation with reality.
General Winfield Stuck
@Drive By Wisdom:
Thousands of idiots in this country isn’t exactly news dude. Whether she actually sticks around to sign their books, or quits and goes home is the only question that remains.
Wile E. Quixote
@Drive by Wisdom
Nope, it’s just that no one cares. The people lining up to get copies of Palin’s book are welfare sucking Republican shit weasels. The fact is that if it weren’t for massive federal spending by the Democrats, most notably the Bonneville Power Administration but also the creation of the Hanford reservation, and massive tax payments by the western, liberal half of the state eastern Washington would be more of a shithole than it is today. Face it Drive by Wisdom, Republicans are stupid, lazy and generally good for nothing.
The fact that these useless shit-weasels, who consume the tax dollars of their social, moral, intellectual and financial betters are lining up to buy a ghost-written book about a useless, lazy, whining quitter like Sarah “I can’t even hack a single term as the governor of useless, lousy, frozen shithole like Alaska” Palin is about as significant as the fact that there were long lines outside of Best Buy the day after Thanksgiving. Who cares other than useless, lazy, welfare sucking Republican shits like you?
As far as not handling reality goes, well you can’t handle the reality that Republicans take far more in tax dollars than they pay, they’re welfare recipients. Sarah Palin, who raised taxes on oil companies in Alaska so that she could increase welfare payments to Alaska residents is the queen of the Republican welfare recipients. If the residents of Eastern Washington, and all of the red states out there, had to get off of their lazy asses and stop relying on the government they’d probably be dead of starvation within six months.
Royston Vasey
@Wile E. Quixote: Yay! You win the Interons.
Drive By Wisdom
@Yutsano:
Like all liberals, when you are caught in a blatant lie, move the goal posts or keep digging.
Instead of denying what is right in front of you, perhaps you should get out more often in “your” neighborhood. Are you afraid to come out?
LD50
@Drive By Wisdom: Hey, stupid fucking wingnut, why is a couple hundred morons waiting to see Caribou Barbie in Richland, WA any more newsworthy than if they did it in Dogdick, Mississippi? Indeed, why do you think it’s newsworthy at all?
Seriously, is “LIBTARD BLOGS WONT TALK ABOUT PALIN SINING BOOKS!!!” the *best* evidence for ‘liberal media’ conspiracies you can FIND?
MattR
@Drive By Wisdom: Except that Yutsano accurately characterized the line based on the original picture you linked to as well as the Youtube video, which both showed the line being 1-2 people deep for the most part.
Comrade Mary
Huh. So I guess I’m the only one here who likes both Lady Gaga and Stefani Germanotta.
OK, I like Gaga more than the Nyro-esque stuff she was doing as Stefani. I like this year’s mindfuckery and the costumes and the hooks and the persona play. No, she’s not just another manufactured pop-tart. She’s a self-made pop-tart, damn it.
BDeevDad
@Wile E. Quixote: Just for that I clicked through to your site and was disappointed by the lack of current posts. That was all sorts of win.
Yutsano
@MattR: Not to mention the other picture from the local newspaper belies the half-mile story. It was in fact taken a bit further up the line (the McDonald’s is the big reference point here) than the first picture, so something here ain’t adding up.
JK
@Comrade Mary:
Mary,
Many thanks for posting that explanation about the origin of the comrade meme and also for all those nifty editing tricks.
How do you feel about Joni Mitchell?
bago
@ellaesther: She is SO the next Madonna.
MattR
@Yutsano: Based on my (admittedly amateur) experience with crowds, I would guess that the first picture (and video) showing the line as a couple people deep was taken before the event started and the second picture was taken after the line started moving and everybody pushed forward to get closer.
Having said that, I am glad for the Drive By Wisdom since I now know that the McRib is back.
Yutsano
@bago: What, one isn’t enough?
Comrade Mary
@JK: I’m hot and cold on Joni, which probably means that I’ll lose my Canadian citizenship. I have some of her classic 60s and early 70s stuff and love it, but apart from The Hissing of Summer Lawns, her excursions into more jazzy areas haven’t brought me along with her.
I’m open to being convinced with the right YouTube link, though.
Drive By Wisdom
@LD50:
Well, there are those politicians who have not taken six months deciding a General’s advice during wartime is correct, and there are those who do. The former can write a book in that time, the latter is hopefully coming close to actually making a decision. I realize that delay will never be newsworthy here.
MattR
@Comrade Mary: As long as you like Neil Young I think your Canadian citizenship is safe.
LD50
@Drive By Wisdom: So, do you have wingnut friends who actually think that’s a coherent answer?
MattR
@Drive By Wisdom: How does that answer LD50’s question in any way?
RareSanity
@Roger Moore:
In my humble opinion, the reason ESPN isn’t going full-on Tiger is pretty simple…football.
You had college “rivalry week” and NFL. I don’t care how big of a star Tiger is, he’s not bigger than college and pro football combined. If this accident happened during the summer, after the NFL draft and before training camp, it would have been wall to wall.
Even I would rather listen to pseudo updates on a Tiger scandal than a breakdown of a team’s game 56 of 162 in MLB.
O.T.
Jeebus baseball is boring…I have an idea to make it a little more exciting though, pitch clock. From the time a ball hit’s the catcher’s glove (or is fouled off), excluding a steal attempt, the pitcher has 10 seconds to throw the next pitch or it’s automatically a ball. If the batter is not in the box, too damn bad.
Now we’re talking entertaining!
Yutsano
@MattR: And I’M moving the goalposts? Gotcha.
Church Lady
“these useless shit-weasels, who consume the tax dollars of their social, moral, intellectual and financial betters”
Wile, you old dog, you sound JUST like a conservative talking about liberal freeloaders!
BDeevDad
@Drive By Wisdom: Your actually arguing about taking General’s advice wrt Palin who has national security experience where? and Bush who more often then not went against the advice of Generals.
RareSanity
Addendum to previous post:
RE: Batter in the box
To damn bad for the batter, if the pitch comes and you’re not in the box, you better hope he throws a ball…
JK
@Comrade Mary:
I absolutely love Joni Mitchell
Big Yellow Taxi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgMEPk6fvpg
Chelsea Morning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5DYLYHlKvk
Yutsano
@Church Lady: Ha. This area is nothing but federal dollar tit-sucking freeloaders. Granted they’re cleaning up a mess the federal government made here decades ago, but the economy here would be NOTHING without massive federal government intervention. And they want a smaller government. Go figure.
gwangung
That, in no way, answered his question. Which, of course, was your intent. But we’re not as stupid as the knee jerk partisans you’re familiar with.
BDeevDad
@Church Lady: Listening to a conservative talk about fiscal responsibility reminds of an old Texas saying
LD50
@Yutsano: I assume that when people in that position say they want ‘less government’, what they really mean is they want all the same services, but with no taxes at all and a white president.
gwangung
@Yutsano: If’n I recall, it sucks in more state dollars than what the state taxes it for, too.
Now Palin’s signing might be of interest in the Tri-Cities area and mayyyybe to the Puget Sound area, but why would that even be of interest outside of the state of Washington?
JK
@Comrade Mary:
One more Joni song
Cactus Tree
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLNF32bKed0
Water Song – Hot Tuna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6giiYDlqRQs
Drive By Wisdom
@MattR:
Alas, McDonald’s does not take food stamps. Real food is for real taxpayers.
@BDeevDad: I see, a democrat gets elected and they suddeny have a great depth of National Security experience. Our democrat is learning.
Yutsano
@LD50: Yep, pretty much. There’s a lot of brown around here (A LOT) and a growing population from Sudan and other countries in Africa. To lose the presidency to them was a bit too much for a lot of folks here. Bilingual signs are groused about to no end here (never mind their practicality) and one town here is actually more or less completely segregated by race. It’s a fascinating study of if wingnuts ran the world without the consequences of losing all the tax base.
LD50
@Drive By Wisdom:
Um, you’re not answering the questions, dumbshit.
JK
@BDeevDad:
All Hat, No Cattle = The Political Philosophy of Sarah Palin
DougJ
Thousands of Americans line up to meet Sarah Palin in Richland Washington.
Guess which bloggers ignore it?
I drove to my own local Palin book signing and reported favorably on the crowd.
I gave at the office, my friend.
Yutsano
@Drive By Wisdom:
Apparently you missed the article where low-level troops qualify for food aid. Why do you hate our soldiers?
LD50
@Drive By Wisdom:
As opposed to your dear Sarah being able to see Putin when he rears his head?
Comrade Mary
@MattR: Ah, I love Neil, that weird and cranky old bastard.
(And one of my favourites from Joni: Carey).
BDeevDad
@LD50: That’s because he is showing he doesn’t know shit.
MattR
These Rush lyrics seem particularly appropriate when discussing Sarah Palin. From the song Superconductor written in 1989 (full lyrics here and a video here) The entire song pretty much perfectly sums up the talking heads that currently infest our news media.
Yutsano
@DougJ: Yes but you didn’t blog about THIS book signing Doug, which was oh so much more important. After all if Bible spice couldn’t attract a crowd in the radioactive conservative armpit of the Soshulst State of Washington, THAT would be news. As it is I’m honestly underwhelmed that in a population of 150,000 in the local area alone she barely pulls in 3,000 if that.
Drive By Wisdom
@Yutsano:
Let us see… Congress: Democrat. White House: Democrat, with National Security credentials to put Palin to shame.
If anything is “all hat and no cattle” it is liberals “love” for the troops.
Yutsano
@Drive By Wisdom: Okay you’re not even trying any more. I’ll give you a second chance to try and make that argument coherent.
dSquib
Simple. ESPN covers Tiger’s arms, torso and so on – all that which he needs to be a top golfer. Once the relevant body part is located in the nether regions, that’s where the real news steps in.
Wile E. Quixote
@Drive by Wisdom
No, it’s the Republicans who are afraid to come out. You know, Republicans like Larry Craig (R, third toilet from left), Mark Foley, Jim West, Richard Curtis, Roy Cohn (R, died of AIDS), Terry Dolan (R, died of AIDS), Ted Haggard, Charlie Crist, Lindsey Graham, etc.
The Ensign and Sanford scandals were refreshing in a way, it was nice to see that there were still a few male Republican politicians who were interested in having sex with women and not with other men (not that there’s anything wrong with that) or teenage boys.
Roger Moore
@RareSanity:
Baseball is dull only to dull minds. — Red Barber
The key thing to understand about baseball is that it’s mostly about pace. It’s at least as much about long buildup as it is about dramatic release. Games are mostly relaxing, and when they aren’t relaxing they get tense. If you don’t know the game, you’ll miss the tension and with it most of the enjoyment. Moments of great excitement are rare, which they have to be for tension to remain dominant. It’s a very different style from football, which it has to be given the difference in schedules.
FWIW, there is supposed to be a pitch clock in baseball, though it only applies when the bases are empty. From the rulebook:
The batter isn’t supposed to delay the game either; the umpire can call a strike without the pitcher even throwing a pitch if the batter refuses to get into the batters’ box promptly. The umpires just need to adopt a more stringent view of what constitutes promptly.
MattR
@Drive By Wisdom: Shockingly another non-response. The reason why people are forced to use food stamps is irrelevant to your claim that people who do use them do not deserve real food. Are you standing by that claim?
Independently, I have to laugh at the idea that McDonald’s qualifies as “real food”.
LD50
@Drive By Wisdom:
DBW, you’re babbling.
JK
@RareSanity:
Baseball is one of the greatest inventions of mankind. The only problems with it are:
1. No salary cap which enables the NY Yankees to buy a playoff berth each season. Note to Yankee fans – Notice that I didn’t write buy a WS title, but buy a playoff berth which is half the battle.
2. The National League needs to quit fucking around and adopt the designated hitter rule right now. I know purists will demand that I be declared an enemy combatant, but pitchers are specialists unlike every other player on the field and it makes no fucking sense for them to ever being swinging a bat.
Yutsano
@LD50: I am eerily missing BoB here. He at least pretends to try.
The Sheriff Is A Ni-
@Drive By Wisdom:
And we owe it all to douchebags like you, Witless. In times like these were hard-working honest Americans are struggling to keep afloat, we can rest assured they’ll never take a party seriously that has a platform consisting solely of ‘whatever pisses off libertals’. Thanks to you and people like you, we can rest easy that the Democrats will have the next ten to twenty years to clean up all of the GOP’s messes.
MattR
@Yutsano:
Isn’t that one of the signs of the apocalypse?
Yutsano
@MattR: If you mean the classic Greek definition of the word, I sincerely hope so.
BDeevDad
Name me one Nat’l Sec Credential Palin has? And seeing Russia doesn’t count.
The Sheriff Is A Ni-
@BDeevDad: She’s a Republican. That instantly confers national security expertise. Just ask Dubya and Rumsfailed.
Yutsano
@The Sheriff Is A Ni-: Saint Ronnie decreed after Carter that simply having an R after your name made you instantly more credible on defense than a Democrat by default. Then he actually made peace with the Soviets and singlehandedly defeated the Communist hordes. From then on all it takes is to be a Republican, regardless of performance.
Jason Bylinowski
@LD50: “DBW, you’re babbling.”
Yeah, he is babbling. Why do all of our oppo trolls do this? BOB speaks in riddles and never directly addresses the issue at hand. I’ve only been lurking here since late 2007, and I do not remember any conservatives who presented a cogent argument. Oddly enough, I’ve tried to be the good-faith troll myself at several right-leaning websites (not under this name, as it would be risky for me), and I quickly got banninated. Is this jut a sad effect of our niche-prone internet culture, or have I just missed out on the good times. Because to me, having a real political argument can be a very good time, as long as both parties accept that there is no such thing as a perfect political viewpoint. In my view, that is the sort of perspective that is lacking these days in most blogs, and is probably the reason I like to read John Cole, as he has to constantly reassess his positions due to his strange dispositional metamorphosis a few years ago.
BDeevDad
@The Sheriff Is A Ni-: And she loves the troops more as well.
Yutsano
@Jason Bylinowski: If they actually had to address an issue, they might actually have to think. Notice how they both fall back on either simple quotes or longstanding Republican petards? The instant they have to think for themselves they go into panic mode and either change the subject or descend into ad hominem attack. I just once want a Republican/conservative to make a cogent argument that makes me think.
M. Bouffant
@Jason Bylinowski:
having a real political argument can be a very good time, as long as both parties accept that there is no such thing as a perfect political viewpoint
Yes, but where you gonna find an argument these days? The ideas & policies of Republicans & conservatives have been completely discredited over the last eight yrs., & current reactionary discourse is “piss off the liberals” & “tax cuts.”
They haven’t a leg or brain cell to stand on.
LD50
@Jason Bylinowski:
Rightwing blogs ban far more people, and far more quickly than leftwing blogs. Likewise, it is VASTLY easier to get banished from a pro-Intelligent Design or Creationism blog than it is to get kicked out from an evolution blog.
I knew a guy who hated liberals like crazy who posted quite happily at Free Republic for two years until one day a few years back he committed the unforgivable sin of saying that George Bush had done something wrong (can’t recall what it was, but it was something quite minor). He was permanently banned within 20 minutes.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Church Lady: “Wile, you old dog, you sound JUST like a conservative talking about liberal freeloaders!”
Nothing like getting an opinion from the voice of experience…lol!
Just for Drive By: I think everyone here will agree that your posts are a serious crime against thinking people so I was wondering if you know that the proper way to do a drive-by is to NOT return to the scene of the crime, right?
Stupid criminals.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal):
One other thought for Drive By:
Give up already. It’s just pathetic that you keep driving by, firing one quick shot after another, and you haven’t hit a damned thing. I do have to admit that it’s really funny watching as you make your getaway each time, your ass getting peppered with buckshot the whole way.
Harley Furguson, the Tractorcycle
@Drive By Wisdom:
And then there are those who totally ignore the advice of Generals during wartime, like Bushie and Rumsferatu ignored General Eric Shinseki telling them that it would take “several hundred thousand” troops to adequately occupy Iraq.
Not to mention that Rumsferatu literally threatened to fire any of the planning staff who mentioned planning for the occupation.
mcd410x
Oh, don’t worry. The Huckabee supporters will construct an alternate reality where this is a good thing. It’s what they do.
mcd410x
Of course, this could be an excellent opportunity to start a conversation about letting potential killers go so we can put people who smoke pot in jail.
Hahahaha. I’m sorry. Who am I kidding?
Yutsano
@mcd410x: Cause pot is bad mmmmkay?
Zuzu's Petals
@Yutsano:
One time I saw more than 100 people stampede a truck that was giving away free Brown Cow yogurt. No kidding, it was a stampede.
Zuzu's Petals
@Drive By Wisdom:
What an incredibly stupid comment. Military families have been using food stamps since at least the Reagan era.
burnspbesq
@Brian J:
When we first moved to the Jersey suburbs of NY in 1964, there were eight daily newspapers generally available in the city:
Times
Daily News
Post
Herald Tribune
Journal American
World-Telegram & Sun
Newsday
Long Island Press
burnspbesq
I’m willing to forgive Canada for Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. They did, after all, send us Bruce Cockburn and k.d. laing.
burnspbesq
Dear Drive-By Wisdom,
I know you’re trying your hardest, but you suck.
Go away, and don’t come back until you have some game.
We have standards for trolls around here.
RareSanity
@Roger Moore:
meh…
Most baseball fans would like to think this.
It’s analogous to a statement I made to a intelligent young lady I dated (briefly) in college. She was an English Lit major and I engineering. She would condescend about how I just didn’t understand the depths of great literature while implying that I wasn’t smart enough to, and one night I told her:
“Just because you enjoy reading something and exploring the ten different interpretations of its meaning, doesn’t make you smarter than me. Here, this is called a partial differential equation. The solution will take up about 4 pages and there is only one right answer. I can solve it, can you?”
So, I don’t find baseball boring because I don’t understand the many layers of the game, I prefer sports that keep me constantly engaged, not just sparingly.
Calouste
@Jason Bylinowski:
If conservatives made cogent arguments, they wouldn’t be conservatives, they would be liberals. See our esteemed host for example.
(Of course for conservatives in the above, read wingnuts, because those two terms are practically synonyms in America these days.
Ranger 3
I understand a man is having difficulties with his marriage. He plays golf.
Ranger 3
@RareSanity:
I thought you had to be gay to post on this blog.
Gravenstone
Taking advantage of the open thread motiff and the deaths of the earlier football threads.
Earlier today I saw a comparison of Favre’s and Cutler’s 2009 numbers, with Cutler taking on a very (recent) Favre-like TD to Int ratio. Suddenly it struck me, what if Jay Cutler has been cursed to become Brett Favre’s personal Portait of Dorian Grey? Discuss.
drillfork
As far as Favre v. Cutler, it does make a difference the team around you.
As far as just Favre, as a Vikings fan, his season has been so stunningly good, I’m now waiting for him to get Theismanned. It’s the Vikings, and the disaster will come. It has to. Probably when they’re up 10 on the Saints in the NFC championship game. And in about four years they’ll be in L.A., too.
As far as just Cutler, as much as I hate to say it, I think there is something to the body language thing. When things go wrong, he just looks miserable and freaked out out there. If Donovan McNabb, who’s unaware of NFL overtime rules, can see it, I think it’s a legitimate issue.
Still, injuries have reduced the Bears to a pile of puddin. It’s mostly that…
zengolf
@RareSanity:
meh…
Late to the game here but football is more boring than baseball. 7 seconds of play then everyone falls over, stands around for 30 seconds then 7 more seconds. I follow both but football isn’t the more interesting game.
Your example is a good one but not in the way you think,
Once you can solve the PDE you have solved it while you can never solve say Moby Dick. Baseball is like a great book and football is a PDE and anyone who thinks solving PDEs is harder than great literature is a fool.
btw I double-majored in Physics and Philosophy so I can solve PDEs.
zengolf
Brick Oven Bill
Tiger was definitely not drunk. This is why the police did not administer a breathalyzer, and why Tiger refused to see anybody for the next day.
Brick Oven Bill
Tiger also got beat up by a girl.
This is a good story.
Go Nike. Go Buick.
arguingwithsignposts
Updated this explains it all. Now with extra god-bothering goodness!
Demo Woman
@burnspbesq: LOL…
toujoursdan
Ok. I don’t understand this. Bush called for international action on Afghanistan and then ignored that war for over 6 1/2 years (while hundreds British, French and Canadian troops were dying, BTW) and now one of his Republican wingnuts is complaining that Obama went through a process of actually talking to allies and military generals before making a decision on what to do next?
Next fauxrage please.
cs
Forget the sportswriter who said it and forget the exact quote but the gist of it was: “Baseball is popular with intellectuals because it is such a simple game.”
And this is true. Baseball is pretty easy to digest for most people. The strategies are easy to understand and the stats are rather clear. I can understand why others like it, but for me there’s not much depth. The depth of strategies to consider seem to be: who to put in the lineup today?, is this a good time to bunt?, time to change the pitcher?, good time to steal a base?
Thats not much, especially compared to football, where players have to keep dozens of plays in their head, react quickly to changing circumstances, not only know their own position well but be ready to assume another role quickly as needed. For either players or spectators, football engages the mind much more than baseball.
arguingwithsignposts
I see a new book. Baseball fans are from Mars, Football fans are from Venus.
noncarborundum
@burnspbesq: My dad worked in NYC and always brought home the Newark Evening News, which I presume he bought in the city to read on the train.
jwb
Would somebody please just take Ross Douthat and put him out of his misery? Seriously. I loved the teaser on the home page for his column this morning: “The lack of confidence in government has turned many older voters rightward. Younger voters have not followed yet.” The “yet” is especially priceless.
jwb
@arguingwithsignposts: Love the update!
Ed in NJ
@cs:
I love football, probably more than baseball, but you can’t actually believe what you wrote, can you?
I will allow that coaching football is more complex than managing baseball, since you need to coordinate the activities of 11 men at a time, and the QB must be able to read the D and, on passing plays make a series of checkdowns, but for the most part, each player has one assignment, to block or cover, to run a route, etc.. Let’s not turn football into some kind of advanced physics all for the purpose of denigrating the game of baseball.
Oh, and our new troll sucks. His mommy issues are apparent. Apparently not smart enough or interesting enough to contribute at the right wing blogs, he posts here to get the attention he craves.
flukebucket
@asiangrrlMN:
And none of them read it.
noncarborundum
@Drive By Wisdom: Where were you when Reagan and Bush II expressed their admiration for Truman, a president who fired a general in wartime? Or did everything before 1/20/09 just not happen?
flukebucket
@Brick Oven Bill: Yeah but did he shoot his wife in the face?
Ranger 3
@Ed in NJ: Not new. But my mommy issues are significant, and I do crave attention.
Thanks for the feedback, btw. Everyone else thanks you also… as I will now be around that much longer before scurrying on to the next destination in my empty quest for amusment.
Never feed the trolls, Ed. A smart guy like you should have figured that out by now.
harlana pepper
What is interesting about the Tiger Woods story is that he is, after all, only human. Woods is the equivalent, to us ordinary schmucks, of a god in Greek mythology. The Greeks enjoyed their gods’ more mortal failures and foibles, because it made the gods seem more like them, which is why they wrote about them at length.
harlana pepper
@Wile E. Quixote: you’re just good
RedKitten
OT, but this cracks me the hell up:
She went Galt on a charity 5K, for crying out loud.
harlana pepper
@RedKitten: sweet!
debit
@RedKitten: What cracks me up is that I could walk a 5K in forty minutes. What, did she run for ten and then leave?
And how much do you want to bet the folks at the end were there only to see her flushed face and heaving bosoms so they could go home and think about starbursts later.
jwb
@RedKitten: Priceless!
jeffreyw
@arguingwithsignposts: Well done, sir, well done indeed.
Demo Woman
@debit: You both are missing the point of the story. She left early because she did not want to detract from the actual winner of the race.
lol
Malron
Has any villager made the connection to OJ yet? Trust me, they will….
Comrade Darkness
Guess which?
Oh, that’s easy, the one that doesn’t need to dodge writing about actual news and doing real work…
Roger Moore
@cs:
The problem is that football goes way too far in that direction. There’s so much going on during a game that it’s impossible to follow everything that’s happening in anything close to real time. That’s why the real professionals spend so much time studying game tape: even they can’t get the nuance without repeated viewing from multiple angles. Any game that can’t be fully appreciated while you’re there watching it has jumped the shark.
Comrade Darkness
@Mike G: I would welcome them driving hummers, and buying books from idiots every week. All of it equals less money for their idiot pols.
RareSanity
@zengolf:
My response is actually going to reverse the stereotypical roles in this conversation. That statement shows that you have very little understanding of the intricacies game of football. Football is highly complex, the “falling down”, although most prevalent when viewing, is the most minor part of the game. It is a huge chess match for all four quarters, especially in the NFL.
I played baseball and football through high school and football in college. Football is not only more physically taxing than baseball, each participant (coach and player) is required to make orders of magnitude more decisions per play than a baseball player (or manager) per pitch or at bat.
By the way, although I may have inferred it, I never stated football was more interesting. I said that football keeps me constantly engaged and baseball only sparingly. The boring part of baseball, to me, is more the 162 games and all of time wasted with batters stepping out of the box, pitchers stepping off the rubber, manager’s coming out of the dugout to argue…the kind of stuff that isn’t really related to the actual game, in my opinion.
@Ranger 3:
No, it is not a requirement. However, this site welcomes comments from all. You should feel just as comfortable here as all of the other gay blogs you frequent…not that there is anything wrong with that.
noncarborundum
@RedKitten:
<blockquote.She didn’t finish the race, opting to leave the course early to avoid more crowds at the end.
Because if Bible Spice is about anything, it’s avoiding crowds.
Ed Drone
Bible Spice and the Right-Whinge Fringe (sounds like a band, doesn’t it?) seem to have this ability to take a position, and, when events show that the position was truly stupid, immediately erase all reference to the position from their frame of reference and start over.
I call Ms. Palin and her party the “Etch-a-Sketch” candidates. No wonder nothing existed between St. Ronald and Barack HUSSEIN Obama (our first foreign president). They shook the frame and wiped their memories of all mention of their at-the-time beloved “W.”
Ed
HyperIon
why isn’t the title of this post “We are all Tiger now”?