Picture Depicts Actual Person

Almost all of the awards out there that are taken "seriously" (as seriously as you can take something that is awarded subjectively) are for things that are done well. What we as a people need are awards that are for things done like crap. These awards need to be handed out at a huge ceremony. There needs to be a red carpet. There needs to be 'round the clock cable news coverage. But instead of getting a trophy, the winners are immediately shipped off to some sort of deserted island which will eventually be completely inhabited solely by winners of the P.O.S. Awards.

Let's start with the Journalism category. I only have one nomination right now. I could dig a bit for competition to this nominee, but I doubt that I'd find a serious contender. So, without any further ado, here is my nomination for the P.O.S. Journalism Award:

Over there at something called truthout is an article by a chap by the name of Dahr Jamail. I'm not including Mr. Jamail in my nomination process here, as I am going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that he did not have a hand in the part of the process that went horribly awry over there. His article is a horrific story about a one US Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson. Spec. Hutchinson is to be deployed to Afghanistan. She has not been able to find someone to take care of her 11-month old child, Damani while she is gone. (Hutchinson is a single mother. There is no mention in the article of a father, even though one would seemingly have to exist. Hutchinson's family members have their own health issues and are unable to care for an infant as well.) She did not show up when her plane left for Afghanistan. Thus, because this is the most reasonable thing for the Army to do, she was arrested and her son was placed with Child Protective Services. She faces up to a year in jail. Sure. That makes perfect sense. What. The. Hell.

This whole story is a mess. But it's not as much of a mess as the way that they reported it on truthout. Look what they did. Behold!

Yes, yes. That's heartbreaking isn't it. It's also extremely odd and completely ridiculous when you've seen a picture of US Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson and her SON Damani. Wait. What now? Isn't that a picture of them? Uh, no. This is, behold!

Wait a minute. So, for some reason, truthout doesn't have access to Google and couldn't come up with an actual photo of Spec. Hutchinson and her child so they went with some sort of stock photo for effect? And underneath they went with the caption of "A soldier with her child"? Do they even know if that's really that soldier's child? Do they even know if that soldier was being deployed or returning home? (Usually, you see the crying like in that picture upon return, not upon departure. Granted, I have NO idea which one it is. Purely speculating is what I'm up to.) How asinine is that?

Quick! Someone accuse them of being racist! They didn't want to show a black soldier, so instead they showed a white soldier. Quick! Hurry! Before people figure out that they are not racist, they're only completely incompetent and have no idea how to run The Google!

What's the purpose of a photo that is not of the actual person in the story? I have never understood that. I mean, I get having stock photos for some sort of advertising or display or whatever. I don't think that all of those folks in those Verizon commercials are actually Verizon customers, but they don't need to be because it isn't relevant to the depiction of the product. Is a picture that is actually of the person that the story about necessary? Why, yes. YES IT IS! Why bother using actual pictures of actual people EVER if you're going to do crap like this? Why not just have a big file of photos (I'm sure that truthout could get their employees to pose for them) and just rotate through those. Man smiling. Woman scorned. Child playing ball. School being taught. Work being attended. Dog wagging tail. Cat playing with yarn. Building from afar. No need to use the actual subjects from actual stories. Noooo! That's so old school!

This is just such a P.O.S. excuse for journalism at any level I don't know what else to say. I'd like to know the rationale behind not using an actual photo of Spec. Hutchinson and her child. I'm doubting that it's a cost issue, as the photos for other stories that I've read were provided by Spec. Hutchinson herself. It's not like they had to license it from Getty Images or anything. They're either just lazy, incompetent or both. Whatever the reason, it's inexcusable. Thus, truthout being my leading candidate for the winner of the P.O.S. Journalism Award. If a serious contender emerges any time soon, I'll let you know (but don't hold your breath.)

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Irrelevant Details In The News

You'd think I'd be used to this by now. But apparently I'm not. I say that because it still never ceases to amaze me when I read an article that is just a craptastic pile of blather masquerading as journalism. I continue to think the same thing. What in the hell are they thinking?

Today's example and case in point comes to us via the Erin Andrews story. Erin Andrews, if you're not already aware, is a very hot woman who holds a microphone emblazoned with the ESPN logo on it. I have no idea if she knows anything about sports and neither does anyone who has ever seen her or watched her do whatever it is that she does. That's because most people could care less what comes out of her mouth as long as whatever it is that she does, she does looking like that. Good Lord, they're she's beautiful. That microphone could have a swastika on it and folks would still tune in.

Erin Andrews was in the news more than she usually was last July when videos surface on the Internet (shocking, I know) of her getting undressed or being in a glorious state of undress in her hotel room. It appeared that the videos were taken without her knowledge (OK, now that one does shock me) via a reverse peephole dealio or something like that. I didn't know there was such a thing as a reverse peephole, nor did I know that you could utilize one at a hotel room of your choosing. Then again, I'm not a pervert. I swear.

But just the other day the person who is (allegedly) the pervert who took the videos was arrested. The pervert is allegedly a one 47-year old Michael David Barrett of Westmont, Illinois. According to a ridiculous article which was written by an AP Writer and was published on the ABC News website (among others), we learn that the pervert man "...kept his yard manicured, played golf and enjoyed cooking on a gas grill on a patio behind his $300,000 suburban Chicago town house." WHAT?!?!

Cooking? On a gas grill? A pervert?! Are you sure?? What's your source?! Was there chicken? Was he cooking chicken on the gas grill?! I'll be he was! All perverts cook chicken on gas grills! Seriously, how is any of that relevant to anything? I can't figure it out. Yet whenever there is some sort of tawdry goings on out there within all of the Internets, when those partaking in said tawdriness are uncovered (for all the world to shun and mock), the most meaningless details about them in relation to what they have done always seem to surface and I don't get it. What else do we have in this craptastic article?

Oh, good! It includes some of my favorite inexplicable and irrelevant statements in these situations. There's the "It's the apparently normal life of Michael David Barrett, a 47-year-old insurance company employee, that made his arrest for allegedly secretly videotaping Andrews nude so upsetting, his neighbors said Sunday." Wait. What?

So, they're saying that the guy didn't openly act like a pervert? THAT is what is so upsetting to them? The clandestine perversion? OH, well, of course then. That explains their dismay and disbelief. Oh, wait. No, it doesn't. In fact, that doesn't make any sense AT ALL!

Look, he was secretly taping a woman in her hotel room! Did these neighbors expect that he would be candid and open about his little hobby there? I don't think that he would! Why not? Well, for starters, it's right there in the name! SECRETLY taping! He wasn't blatantly opening taping women in their hotel rooms, was he? NO! Why not? Well, because you can usually only do that ONCE. But secretly, you can, theoretically do it more than once!

I'm going to try to go easy on some of the folks that were quoted in this story because they're senior citizens. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to let them skate. We're supposed to be looking to our elders for wisdom and guidance. Tell you what. How about if we still do that, but we just look for it someplace other than these folks, OK? OK!

"I'm totally shocked," said David Wayne, 72, a retired corporate executive who lives several doors down from Barrett. "He looked absolutely normal — nothing distinguishing." I can't tell if he thinks that's a good thing or a bad thing. Is he upset that he didn't know he was living on the same street as a pervert? Would he have preferred that Mr. Barrett exhibit some distinguishing and, in all likelihood, disturbing behaviors? Is he surprised that he didn't know he was living on the same street as a pervert? Does he think that he knows everything about all of his other neighbors? He doesn't!

Why do they insist on interviewing the people that always live "several doors down"? First of all, how many is several? Three? Or twenty seven? I could tell you stuff about my neighbors on either side of me and the three directly across the street from me and my two neighbors. Other than that, I don't have much. Granted, my walled off compound does hamper the sociability factor, but that seems to be a reasonable radius within which to limit your interviews in a situation like this.

I still don't know what the interviewer was looking for by talking to these people. It's not like this guy was Phillip Garrido and had a prison camp full of women that he either kidnapped or fathered in his backyard. This is a guy who videotaped Erin Andrews in a state of undress. What sort of things could neighbors say that might indicate that anyone should have seen this coming? I can't think of a single thing.

Everyone that knows him says that he's a "regular guy". Of course they do, because what are the choices in this situation? You can be a "regular guy" or you can be "the perverted weirdo who is always trying to film women". Most guys who are the perverted weirdo, prefer not to be thought of that way. It enables them to hide their untoward activities and it enables them to do them more than once. (By the way, there were seven videos of Ms. Andrews, so that theory I just laid out there would seem to be true.)

Please. Please all news media reporters/journalists out there. Please stop trying to find something in nothing. Every single time a case like this arises and the neighbors are interviewed, it's always the same. He was a regular guy. We had no idea he was a serial killer. That's why I think that the safest place for anyone (anyone who is worried about being offed by a serial killer, that is) is right next door to the maniacs. Maniacs, as a general rule, seem to leave their neighbors alone. They'll stalk someone across state lines when they really could have spent that time stalking their neighbor and staring at them through the Venetian blinds from the comfort of their own perverted home. But that doesn't interest them, so you're safe that way. Serial killers - the best neighbors ever!

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Food: The Key to Understanding Kidnapping Rapists

To understand how CNN, the once revered, now bungling, semi-news network, found itself in the position that it is currently in (that being one of a cable news network whose participants seem to merely phone it in every day) one needs look no further than The Larry King Show. I'm all for any iconic newsman continuing to "report" the "news", but when an interviewer's questions begin to sound more like some of the blather that you'd hear coming out of Grandpa Simpson, you kind of have to wonder if someone is going to point this out to them or if they're going to just wait until the person ends up following Dan Rather out the door.

Larry King interviewed a woman named Katie Callaway Hall. Ms. Hall was the first victim of perverted rapist and child kidnapper Phillip Garrido. Basically, back in 1976, Ms. Hall gave A-Hole Garrido a ride and he, in turn, forced her to drive across statelines from California to Nevada and to a storage shed that he had set up as a sexual perversion emporium and proceeded to rape her for the next eight hours until she was rescued. A-Hole Garrido was convicted, sentenced to 50 years in one case and 5 to life in another and manged to get out of prison within 11 years. Then he proceeded to kidnap 11-year old Jaycee Dugard and hold her for 18 years and father two children with her beginning when she was 14. Oh, yeah, he's a piece of work.

So Larry King has Ms. Hall on his show. First of all, she came forward after learning that the pig who raped her and imprisoned her was the same guy who had abducted Jaycee Dugard. She wanted people to know what kind of an effing monster this guy is. And I think that's awesome that she did come forward to tell her story, especially since it's not exactly the stuff that bedtime stories are made out of. So with a story like this, you'd expect questions that went somewhere along the lines of the crime, her feelings then, her feelings now, the trial, etc. Basically, all things that are RELEVANT to the story. But Larry must have had different thoughts on that matter.

She describes how, when she decided to give Garrido a ride, she had a bunch of food in her car because she had stopped at the store and bought some things that her boyfriend had asked her to pick up. And for some inexplicable reason, Larry focuses on the food aspect! I don't know why! No one cares! And is it relevant what happened to her groceries after all of the kidnapping but before all of the raping? I don't think it is.

KING: Why did you let him in the car?

HALL: I don't know. It was the worst decision I've ever made, I think. It truly was.

KING: What happened when he got in?

HALL: When he got in, I filled his hands with a lot of food that I had in the front seat anyway -- I tried to engage him.

KING: He was holding your food?

HALL: He was. I tried to engage him in small conversation on the trip. Tried to stay on the main street....on another main street that I turned. So I took him a little further up...I just turned around the corner and pulled over, and he slammed my head into the steering wheel, and pulled out handcuffs. He took my keys out, threw them on the floor, and pulled out handcuffs, and handcuffed me, and said, 'I just want a piece of ass. If you be good, you won't get hurt.'

KING: What did he do with the food?

WTF? Are you kidding me? What did he do with the food? Who in the hell cares what he did with the food?! We have head slamming, handcuffing, key throwing and kidnapping and YOU want to know what he did with the FOOD?! WHY?!? What is wrong with you? That's not only idiotic, it's insulting. This woman is strong enough to sit there on your show and tell millions of people that she was raped and you're asking her what her rapist did with her food. What is wrong with you?

By the way, in case you were now wondering "What did he do with the food?", Ms. Hall answered (with a perplexed look on her face, as if to say "What in the hell is wrong with you?"), "He put it on the floor. I guess. I don't know." There! Put it on the floor! Thank God we know that!

That kind of journalism is just a waste of space and airtime. There's no reason for it. It's crap. If you can't think of something better to ask about than the completely irrelevant food situation, then I believe that's a pretty good indicator that your time has come to get the Hell-o Kitty outta there.

Now, I had shortened the exchange between the two for brevity here, but you can watch the interaction in the video below and see for yourself just how close we should be to planning Larry King's retirement party.

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This is Not the Way it is

So with the passing of Walter Cronkite at age 92 due to being 92, I felt the need to go back and look through some of the more interesting or captivating moments during his career. And as I was watching YouTube clips, the difference between news now and news when it was just news (and not just something to occupy our time online when we're not looking at porn) is amazing to me. Granted, I think present news coverage is far from neutral reporting and often misses the point because reporters don't know how to be reporters (but they DO know how to stand there and look all pretty. And I'm not knocking that! We like 'em pretty. Makes us pay closer attention to them when they have a lovely set of...eyes.), so I wouldn't necessarily say that I'm being neutral, but I'm not a reporter. I just call 'em as I see 'em.

It's not even just the style of reporting as it also is the content of the reporting if you were to compare the two eras. Here's an example. Here we have a super-smart scientist guy explaining to the media at a news conference what the problem is over at Three Mile Island on March 30, 1979. He draws us this informative graphic so that we can better grasp the concept of how a build up of nuclear gases inside of a reactor is bad. Behold!

Huh. OK, well, good thing he was talking at the same time, right? Or maybe it's just really such a simple concept that not much more than that was needed. Hard to say, but let's compare it with this graphic from 1994 which shows us a 4 year timeline of the top three finishers in the figure skating event at the Olympics in Lillehammer. Behold!

Good Lord. Shouldn't the figure skating thing be a case of 'less is more'? We get all of that for figure skating, but we only needed a rudimentary line drawing for Three Mile Island? I'm not so sure I'd call this progress, really.

Then I watched some footage on YouTube of when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald and it's a little chaotic as you can imagine. The poor reporter, a one Bob Huffaker, is completely shocked. He doesn't know what to do, what to say. "The shots were fired by a man wearing a black hat, a brown coat, a man that everyone down here thought was a Secret Service agent." (Doesn't sound very "secret" to me, but I'm going to cut you a break being as how you've just see a Presidential assassin gunned down right in front of you.) But it's when the ambulance shows up and everyone is scrambling to get out of the way and poor Bob looks at the camera with a look on his face that just says, "WTF just happened here?" It's as hilarious as it is extremely telling. Behold!

Meanwhile, the press folks are trying to do their reporting and they're all being fairly cordial to one another, trying to stay out of each other's shots and what not. You've got people gently tapping on other's backs to get them to move or asking them to get down and out of the shot. All of that is in stark contrast to how reporters and cameramen behave at news events today. They'll trample each other and stand on the dead body if they think that it will get them a better shot. But not then. Here's the cop (they call him Pat) who is supposed to keep the crowd back so that they can get Oswald in the ambulance. He's crouching down so that the news cameras can get a better shot. You can hear the news guys saying, "Pat! Pat, can you get down a little?"

And I saw this and just about flipped.

There's Pat the Cop and the guy next to him is trying to keep him out of the camera's view. Look at where the other guy's hand is! It could SO just take Pat's gun right there. You would NEVER see anything like that today. (In his defense, poor Pat the Cop looked almost as shaken up as Bob the Reporter. Then again, I'm just assuming that Pat is a cop and not some security guard that was hired for the day.)

Poor Bob the Reporter keeps trying to do his job in the midst of all of this. As they're waiting for ol' Oswald to be wheeled out for the futile ride to the hospital, Bob mentions that "The only word so far is that the shot came from a man wearing a black hat and a coat." Well, that narrows it down, doesn't it? Have you looked at the guy with his hand on Pat the Cop? I think he has a black hat and a coat. Maybe it was him! Eh, maybe not.

Meanwhile, when they do get Oswald in the ambulance, they wheel him out on a stretcher and he's kind of falling off on one side and there are many great camera angles of this scene. So it was perfectly OK then, but today, a photo like that of someone dying or someone that has been shot (someone fairly well known, of course) would have all of the tabloids scrambling to see if they could bid the highest for it. Back then? Evening news footage! Assassin guy half falling off a gurney! Not a big deal AND free! Huh. Go figure.

I find how we did things back then kind of odd. For some reason, we thought it was a fine idea to have a perp walk where we trot out the accused and display his weaponry of choice for all the world to see. Then again, we also thought it was a fine idea to have our President driving around in a convertible in the middle of the day. Well, at least we learn from our mistakes every now and then.

Then there was the way that things were described. To say that they were brief is an understatement. We have these words of wisdom after the shooting of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"They have issued an all points bulletin for a well-dressed white man seen running from the scene." Yeah, that really narrows it down quite a bit.

"They rushed the 39-year old Negro leader to a hospital where he died of a bullet wound..." The "Negro leader"? You know, that just SOUNDS bad. Just that is SOUNDED bad, couldn't folks have figured out earlier that it WAS bad?

"Police said they found a high powered hunting rifle about a block from the hotel but it was not immediately identified as the murder weapon." No, because high powered hunting rifles are constantly being strewn about town! It's a mess! No one ever picks up their high powered hunting rifles when they're done assassinating people. Nope, they just leave them lying there, cluttering up the neighborhood! The nerve!

I'm not even going to pretend to wax all poetic about Walter Cronkite dying, as I can vaguely remember my Dad watching him do the news on TV. (It was long before I grew to be as cynical as I am. Well, probably not TOO long. I like to get a head start on things.) He was 92. Seems to me like he had one hell of a run. But he hasn't done the news on a nightly basis since 1981, meaning that he has been off of the air longer than he was on it. You'd think that those who make their craptastic attempts at journalism these days would sit up and take notice of what it was that Walter Cronkite did and how he did it. But I doubt that the majority of them can even see the relevance in how he did his job and how he became the most trusted man in America. Besides, who cares about being trusted as long as you're getting paid? And THAT'S the way it is.

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