Editor / writer / sometimes a musician
I can’t believe they won. Neither can Thomas Boswell, who gets it just right in writing about Cardinal Nation. And the Cards are now the Worst World Series Champs Ever, and the Detroit Tigers have to be wondering what happened…but as someone who remembers the deer-in the-headlights drubbing the Cards took a couple of years ago, I say to the Tigers: I recognize your pain, and your time will come.
Actor Michael J. Fox has been filming commercials for Democratic candidates who support stem cell research — although that’s an issue that scrambles the usual party and moral divisions. If you’ve seen one, with Fox twitching and his voice shaking as he argues for a given candidate, you just know that these ads are effective.
Enter Rush Limbaugh. Rush said earlier this week that Fox was faking it for effect. That’s rough stuff even by talk radio standards. Limbaugh subsequently apologized (while still criticizing Fox for ‘shilling for Democratic politicians’ in fine j’accuse! style), but it still makes you shake your head
People don’t believe me when I tell them I’ve been online since 1983, when I connected my Commodore 64 to CompuServe at 300 baud. I was running a computer bulletin board within weeks, and I became a Back in the Day type, and I’ve been at it ever since.
There’s a problem with having been around for so long: I’ve got some interesting online detritus. Now, none of it is horribly embarrassing and I’ve never been much into the darker corners of the online world, so there’s no criminal stuff. Still, there are strings out there that just make me groan or are just inexplicably geeky today.
Like: My FidoNet address from 1993. Yes, once upon a time, it really was possible to send e-mail to randy.lilleston@157.n109.z1.fidonet.org and reach me (assuming you typed everything correctly). Not many people tried, though, mostly because hardly anyone had e-mail yet.
Also out there:
The harp amp mini-FAQ from, oh, 1994 or so.
My request for help in finding a wedding reception hall in 1996.
A review of a three-day cruise I took in 1998.
A bio posted on CNN’s old ‘AllPolitics’ site in 1999.
An interview I did on Air Force One in 2000. I believe this trip was the last time I saw Bill Clinton in person.
Quotes from a 1994 American Journalism Review interview (and some more recent ones from the same publication).
Homebrewing info from a mailing list in 1998.
A review of an El Cheapo Vegas trip, complete with a downtown hotel, from 2002.
Those are just a few examples. There are many more.
I have this recessive goofball gene, and it wants to come out and play every once in a while, so I’m not ashamed to admit I like Road Runner cartoons and watching stuff blow up and going to events that have little or no redeeming social value. Thus, this year I’m going to something I’ve always wanted to attend: The World Championship Punkin Chunkin in Millsboro, Delaware. In the event, contestants use everything from catapaults to air cannons to launch pumpkins for amazing distances. The joy, of course, is in watching the pumpkin fly through the air and splatter on the ground.
There is no point to this at all, which is exactly the point. You either like this sort of nonsense or you don’t (although alcohol helps to sway the unconvinced), but I am definitely in the former camp.
CNN has been going for a new level of gutter-stupid with its ‘reporting’ over the non-threat involving ‘dirty bombs’ at NFL stadiums this weekend, and its ‘newsgathering’ was so awful that I have a hard time keeping any respect for my former employer.
Here’s what happened:
1. Dumbass knucklehead posts alleged threat earlier this month on a public Web bulletin board — not some sort of al-Qaeda site, but just a place where people swap messages on everything. I found the message after I heard the initial news reports; anyone who has spent 10 minutes surfing the web would have recognized it as a heaping pile of BS.
2. Weeks later, the Department of Homeland Security hears about the post and dutifully notifies the NFL in the finest CYA fashion, emphasizing that it isn’t a credible threat (no kidding, guys).
3. CNN’s Jeanne Meserve finds out about it, apparently forgets how to be skeptical or lacks any understanding of that whole ‘internet’ thing, grabs some airtime and breathlessly alerts the planet about the vicious potential terrorist plot. You had to see this performance to believe it…I felt like we were all gonna die at any moment.
4. Wolf Blitzer sends the non-story into high orbit, spending the top 15 minutes of The Situation Room and most of the first half-hour on the topic. He’s every bit as breathless as Meserve. Of course, this ‘coverage’ also gets the dreaded red BREAKING NEWS banner across the bottom of the screen, ignoring the fact that this is not news at all and that a real journalist would have quickly stuck a pin in this balloon.
5. CNN follows up on the story again and again and again and again over the next day, bringing on security experts and generally beating this dead horse all over the place. Of course, the network always uses the ‘non-credible threat’ phrase as a disclaimer, but this is like doing a report on porn and airing a whole bunch of porn to ‘show how bad it is.’
This ‘story’ is so ridiculous, so stupid, that not even CNN’s red-meat-loving competitors went very far with it. And a journalist with, oh, 12 minutes of training should have been able to knock it down. An editor running a real newsroom would have yelled at — or even demoted or fired — someone for hyping this thin gruel in this indefensible manner. What an awful performance.
Update: It’s 3:45 p.m. and CNN has just announced, via live remote standup from a reporter in Milwaukee, that the whole thing was a hoax. No shit.