The state of things
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I hope everyone enjoyed their long holiday weekend. I didn't bother posting anything since most people were going to be traveling or away from their computers, plus, there wasn't hardly any news to post anyway. Of the things that have happened, I'll catch up you up.
I forgot to do the weekend box office preview, I discovered a problem with Yahoo!'s email system that can prevent people from registering accounts for commenting, and Rupert Murdock is still a douchebag intent on indoctrinating not only the United States, but the entire world into the neo-con culture. Still interested?
Firstly, somebody tried to register an account for commenting here three times on Sunday that has btinternet as their ISP. All three confirmation messages that my software sent out were instantly bounced back by Yahoo! due to some form of parental control over the email account that will not allow you to receive messages from someone who isn't in your address book. My own personal attempts to contact this person failed as well.
This form of draconian control is a great way to keep a child safe, but not a teenager. It's also not consistent with SMTP and is probably one of many reasons why people should simply blacklist Yahoo! permanently until they come into compliance with mail transfer protocols that are like 20+ years old. That said, whoever you are, you can get squared away by adding system@mediapundit.net to your address book, then trying to get another confirmation code, or adding my own email address to your book - pwtenny@gmail.com - and sending me a note so we can talk.
Saving that, you can of course simply post a comment anonymously, which despite what it says, still allows you to post with a nickname. Sorry for the trouble, but as usual, it's totally your parents fault. I'll add a note to the registration page this week to warn people about this.
As for the strike, both sides returned to the table today and depending on who you talk to, this thing might be over before the month is through. It also may completely fall apart in the next 1.5 seconds. Your mileage may vary.
All three of the top democratic candidates for President have said they won't cross the picket line at CBS news, if and when the newsies actually call a strike which has already been authorized. CBS is perhaps one of the worst offenders I've ever heard of - these jokers made a contract offer a couple of years ago and said if the news writers didn't like it, they could stick it. The news writers didn't like it, but stood up like adults and stayed on the job for 2.5 years trying to work out a fair deal.
CBS would have none of it, and are about to lose all of their news writers because of it. Big media greed and arrogance is why things like this happen, people. I hate to make a partisan political statement here, but Republicans are the party of big media and big business. When you vote for the, you get things like this, and will keep getting more of it until they learn that people come before big business.
Shows are going to start running out of new episodes very soon - Heroes only has 2 left, including tonight. Even if the strike was settled this week, it'd be too late to prevent a lot of these shows from going into reruns, at least for a while.
Speaking of Heroes, I have to get going so I can post a few more things before it starts. More stuff later.
Update: Forgot, the thing about Murdoch. Apparently Rupert really wants to turn Sky News into a partisan extension of the American Republican party in the worst way, but his son and the people who work there won't let him ruin their reputations and invalidate every single word they say on the air by lying, scheming, distorting the truth, and reporting their opinion as a substitution for fact.
According to evidence given by the media mogul to a British parliamentary committee, the only reason that Sky News is not more like Fox News is that “nobody at Sky listens to me.â€
But in a conversation with Norman Fowler, chairman of the communications committee of the House of Lords, the U.K. parliament’s upper house, Murdoch said he’d like Sky News to be more like Fox News to make it “a proper alternative to the BBC.†This, presumably, was a reference to the media owner’s belief that BBC News contains an inherent liberal bias.
Have you ever noticed how you never hear crap like that coming out of mouths of actual liberals? You never hear them say "Gee, when I'm going to be President, I'm going to stuff the Supreme Court with liberals just like me!" You don't hear them demanding liberal alternatives to conservative commentators - they want actually fair and balanced content that calls it down the middle. Conservatives aren't like that.
They want bias, bias in their favor, and hate anything and everything that doesn't toe the line - their line. Perhaps not all of them, but it doesn't take all of them. It only takes a precious few who sit at the top of the power structure. People like Murdoch.
Something to think about, my British friends. Do you want this man to poison your culture and your news like he did ours?
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