I'm alive! And again, so too is this blog. To get things rolling again, here are some delightful random videos:
Firstly, I've gotten beer thrown at my head at sporting events on two separate occasions. But I never handled it as well as this guy:
The ending to this is pretty hilarious. But perhaps it's promoting unprotected sex? Still funny.
The gaming bloggers are angry, and for good reason. Cable news pundit Jack Thompson reportedly appeared on Fox News today, blaming the deadly shooting at Virginia Tech University on violent video games.
Even as I post this, no one publicly knows who did it, why he did it, or if the guy's even actually a student there. But certainly such premature finger-pointing has to be motivated by one of two things (if not both): a) Thompson's will to exploit a tragedy essentially still unfolding for a personal vendetta against violent games, or b) Fox News Channel's decision to try and pick fights and create controversy rather than just report the facts of the matter.
Aside from the inevitable comparisons to other shooting rampages, such as the 1966 incident at the University of Texas at Austin, or the Columbine school shooting, the news media has nothing more to work with than the occasional first-hand account of students and the facts being presented by school and police authorities. The ongoing news media today has been dominated by local news affiliate video updates, press conferences and speeches by the president and various senators and house members, and updates as the death toll increases throughout the day and new details of the case are revealed.
Clearly Fox was either really stretching for content, or intentionally trying to inject some controversy into the story. Probably the latter. There's no way they'd book Thompson, an outspoken activist against violent games, without knowing exactly what he'd say.
We're used to seeing this Nancy Grace-style fishing for controversy (not to say she's the only one - this could provide a good respite from the depressing news of the day) in the days, weeks and even months following any high-profile incident, and maybe the ratings such fights provide are why cable networks perpetuate the habit and the journalists who work there put up with it. But hours after it happens, surely before many parents even know their child has injured or killed? That's crossing a line.
Getting into disputes about what is or isn't racist and when someone should or shouldn't be punished for said racism isn't really my thing so I've intentionally avoided discussing the recent Don Imus debacle.
But I think MSNBC is doing the right thing in dropping his radio show simulcast from their morning lineup. And not just because I generally loathe shock jocks and always prefer CNN over MSNBC for my breakfast-time news updates. Rather MSNBC is removing itself from this mess they were inadvertantly drug into. Plenty of pundits and even Barack Obama (today on ABC NewsNow) aren't necessarily blaming NBC, but certainly directing some of their anger towards the Universal-owned news network and looking to MSNBC to fire him.
What so many people are overlooking is the fact that MSNBC has little control over Imus' daily content; although run out of a studio at MSNBC's N.J. headquarters, the show is produced by WFAN, a radio outlet owned by CBS. MSNBC simply airs the video version of the morning broadcast on their channel. It's yet to be seen how many radio stations drop Imus' syndicated version or what WFAN ends up doing with him (although the amount of money they'll lose in licensing fees when NBC quits paying them is probably a good indicator of things to come). But rather than try to explain why they're not really responsible for Imus' bad behavior, MSNBC took the easier and probably most universally-appealing route and just kicked him to the curb.
This all comes on the heels of another morning cable news shakeup - CNN's decision to replace its pair of O'Brien's. (Side note: I have to admit I've been kind of a fan of Soledad O'Brien forever, since she was a correspondent on the discovery channel when I was a kid, and I've loved watching her move up the broadcast ladder up to the Today Show and CNN, I'm very interested to see where she ends up in the future) But MSNBC could take advantage of the changes going on to revamp their AM lineup and reclaim some new viewers from among the disgruntled O'Brien fans and all the new Imus haters out there.
