Media

October 1, 2006April 18, 2020

When moralists throw stones….

Less than a week after former President Clinton handed the right wing their ass on Bin Laden and President Bush had more proof of his lies thrown in his face when the National Intelligence Estimate came out, a sex scandal has erupted in the US House of Representatives.

Rep. Mark Foley (R-Florida) resigned suddenly after learning a report on his inappropriate Internet contact with a 16 year old House page was about to be reported on ABC News.

What made me bust out laughing was when I heard that Foley was a leader on the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus. He worked to help gain passage of the “Adam Walsh Child Protection Act of 2006” which, among other things, increases penalties for adults who use the Internet to discuss or solicit sexual acts with “minors” (defined as an “individual who has not attained the age of 18 years”). GOP leaders hailed this law as a vital tool in protecting our nation’s children against Internet predators.

Now one would think that the GOP would bounce Foley and stick to their scripts about “protecting children”, but it seems the speaker and majority leader knew back in 2005! about Foley and his obsession with male pages.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was notified early this year of inappropriate e-mails from former representative Mark Foley (R-Fla.) to a 16-year-old page, a top GOP House member said yesterday — contradicting the speaker’s assertions that he learned of concerns about Foley only last week.
Hastert did not dispute the claims of Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), and his office confirmed that some of Hastert’s top aides knew last year that Foley had been ordered to cease contact with the boy and to treat all pages respectfully.
House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post on Friday that he had learned in late spring of inappropriate e-mails Foley sent to the page, a boy from Louisiana, and that he promptly told Hastert, who appeared to know already of the concerns. Hours later, Boehner contacted The Post to say he could not be sure he had spoken with Hastert.
GOP Knew of Foley’s Messages

Any time an adult has some kind of contact with a minor of a sexual nature, people get quite upset, and the adult usually is vilified. Unless you are a Republican and your PR comes from Fox News:

Discussing the recent resignation of former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) with host Chris Wallace on the October 1 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday, Fox News political analyst and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) claimed that House Republicans would have “been accused of gay bashing” if they had “overly aggressively reacted” to Foley’s allegedly inappropriate email communications with a 16-year-old male congressional page when House Republicans reportedly first learned of Foley’s actions in late 2005.
Gingrich: House GOP would have “been accused of gay bashing” if it “overly aggressively reacted” to Foley’s emails in 2005
On Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume asserted that there is a “difference” between the Democratic and Republican parties because former Republican Rep. Mark Foley is “out of office and in total disgrace in his party” after allegedly engaging in sexually explicit communications with underage congressional pages, while President Bill Clinton and Rep. Barney Frank were not similarly reprimanded for their “inappropriate behavior.” However, neither the Clinton nor the Frank allegations involved minors.
Hume compared Foley scandal to those involving Clinton, Frank, ignoring key difference
On Fox News’ The Big Story Primetime, Ann Coulter claimed that reports that the House Republican leadership was previously aware of communications former Rep. Mark Foley allegedly had with underage congressional pages are “somewhat incredible,” asking: “Why wait until right before the election to let it break?” and dismissing such reports as gossip, saying: “It’s something you hear.”
Coulter spinning on Foley scandal

Wow!

Brian Ross, who broke the story on Friday on ABC (US), is not one to report hearsay. More than one page has come forward and there are reports that pages were warned about Foley when they started their assignments.

Fox News is trying to spin the scandal like when they claimed that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was nothing more than Fraternity hazing.

So I guess we can add Republicans to the list of those who get a free pass on child abuse – along with Catholic priests.

President Clinton hands Fox News its ass

The buzz in the political pundit arena today is the interview former President Bill Clinton had with Fox News’ Chris Wallace.

It was suppose to be about Clinton’s work on his Global Initiative project which includes the support from Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch. Wallace instead tried to ambush Clinton about the current myth spinning in conservative pundit land – that Clinton didn’t do enough to kill Osma Bin Laden during his presidency. Republican pundits – with help from the conservative media like Fox News – have used the myth in an effort to deflect criticism of President Bush and his failure to capture or kill Bin Laden.

Instead Wallace had the tables turned on him and Fox News. It was lovely to watch. The website Media Matters has the full run down of the interview including video but here are some highlights:

CLINTON: Let’s look at what Richard Clarke said. Do you think Richard Clarke has a vigorous attitude about bin Laden?
WALLACE: Yes, I do.
CLINTON: You do, don’t you?
WALLACE: I think he has a variety of opinions and loyalties —
CLINTON: That’s right.
WALLACE: — but yes, he has a vigorous opinion.
CLINTON: He has a variety of opinions and loyalties now, but let’s look at the facts. He worked for Ronald Reagan. He was loyal to him. He worked for George H. W. Bush. He was loyal to him. He worked for me and he was loyal to me. He worked for President Bush; he was loyal to him. They downgraded him and the terrorist operation. Now, look what he said. Read his book and read his factual assertions — not opinions — assertions. He said we took “vigorous action” after the African embassies. We probably nearly got bin Laden.
WALLACE: Well, wait —
CLINTON: I authorized — now, wait a minute —
WALLACE: You launched a few — you threw a few cruise missiles.
CLINTON: No, no. I authorized — I authorized the CIA to get groups together to try to kill him. The CIA was run by George Tenet that President Bush gave the Medal of Freedom to. He said he did a good job, setting up all these counterterrorism things. The country never had a comprehensive anti-terror operation until I came there.
Now if you want to criticize me for one thing, you can criticize me for this: after the Cole, I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and launch a full scale attack/search for bin Laden. But, we needed basing rights in Uzbekistan, which we got after 9-11. The CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin Laden was responsible while I was there. They refused to certify. So, that meant I would have had to send a few hundred Special Forces in, in helicopters and refuel at night. Even the 9-11 Commission didn’t do that. Now, the 9-11 Commission was a political document, too. All I’m asking is: If anybody wants to say I didn’t do enough, you read Richard Clarke’s book.
WALLACE: Do you think you did enough, sir?
CLINTON: No, because I didn’t get him.
WALLACE: Right.
CLINTON: But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried. So, I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted.
So, you did Fox’s bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit-job on me, but what I want to know —
WALLACE: Now, wait a minute, sir, I asked a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate question?
CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question. But I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you’ve asked this question of. I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, “Why didn’t you do anything about the Cole?” I want to know how many people you asked, “Why did you fire Dick Clarke?” I want to know how many people you asked about this.
WALLACE: We asked — we asked. Have you ever watched Fox News Sunday, sir?
CLINTON: I don’t believe you asked them that.
WALLACE: We ask plenty of questions of —
CLINTON: You didn’t ask that, did you? Tell the truth, Chris.
WALLACE: About the USS Cole?
CLINTON: Tell the truth, Chris
WALLACE: With Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s plenty of stuff to ask.
CLINTON: Did you ever ask that? You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch is supporting my work on climate change. And you came here under false pretenses and said that you’d spend half the time talking about — you said you’d spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7 billion-plus in three days from 215 different commitments. And you don’t care. But,
WALLACE: — and all I can say is, I’m asking you in good faith because it’s on people’s minds, sir. And I wasn’t —
CLINTON: Well, there’s a reason it’s on people’s minds. That’s the point I’m trying to make. There’s a reason it’s on people’s minds because they’ve done a serious disinformation campaign to create that impression. This country only has one person who’s worked against terror, from the terrorist incidents under Reagan to the terrorist incidents on 9-11. Only one: Richard Clarke.
And all I can say — anybody is — you want to know what we did wrong or right, or anybody else did? Read his book. The people on my political right, who say I didn’t do enough, spent the whole time I was president saying, “Why is he so obsessed with bin Laden? That was ‘Wag the Dog’ when he tried to kill him.” My Republican Secretary of Defense — and I think I’m the only president since World War II to have a Secretary of Defense from the opposite party — Richard Clarke, and all the intelligence people said that I ordered a vigorous attempt to get bin Laden and came closer apparently than anybody has since.
Wallace falsehood: said in Clinton interview that he asked Bush admin officials “plenty of questions” about failure to catch bin Laden

Clinton is right. The same right winger’s taking him to task for not doing enough to get Bin Laden back in 1998 and 1999 were the same ones who claimed he had launched the cruise missile attacks back then to distract from his sex scandal. President Bush did nothing about Bin Laden for the first 8 months of his administration even after the FBI and CIA reported in early 2001 that the Cole bombing was the work of Bin Laden and his group.

As Media Matters reports, Wallace asked about the lack of focus on Bin Laden to someone from the Bush administration only once – back in 2004 to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. No one in the Bush White House was asked about it before or after that.

September 11, 2006April 18, 2020

9/11 still powerful after 5 years

The media has begun their observances of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This weekend I watched some of the documentaries on some of the channels like PBS and CBS and the images and feelings are still very powerful.

I still vividly remember what I was doing that morning in 2001 when the first reports came in, I was noodling on the computer. I had just come home from my night job and I had the “Today” show on in the background while I decompressed before going to bed. After seeing the 2nd plane hit the tower I didn’t go to bed until around Midnight the next day.

I wrote my thoughts into an essay posted on my iHumanism website.

September 11: A Humanist Response

I read on some website that non-theists didn’t speak up when the event happened, giving the impression that they didn’t care about the tragic event. That is just a myth. We just don’t put out press releases about how we feel. Even if we did we couldn’t afford to have it published.

The only real thing that I am still upset about is our present government officials are fear mongers. President Bush took the opportunity to give a speech the other day about “our” fight against terrorism. In one speech he claimed we were “safer” but faced increased threat of terrorism and that the war on terrorism includes Iraq (even though before we invaded in 2003 Iraq was not part of 9/11 or the war on terrorism).

The Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows and claimed the administration was doing “a hell of job” on security.

“I think we’ve done a pretty good job of securing the nation against terrorists. You know, we’re here on the fifth anniversary (of the 9/11 attacks). And there has not been another attack on the United States. And that’s not an accident, because we’ve done a hell of a job here at home,” Cheney said in the broadcast interview. “I don’t know how much better you can do than no, no attacks for the past five years.”
Cheney Defends Hardline White House Role

But he and the administration have not been questioned as to why the leader of the group that attacked the World Trade Center is still at large 5 years later. Or why a military solution has not defeated al-Qaida either abroad or closer to home.

Besides we’ve heard it before. Remember, Brownie was doing a great job as head of FEMA after Katrina and we know how that turned out.

September 4, 2006April 18, 2020

Good Luck Katie

On Tuesday, September 5th, Katie Couric will begin as a sole anchor of the CBS Evening News.

Couric spent 15 years on the fluff news show “Today” on NBC so some have complained that she won’t succeed on a “hard” news show. Some have said she wouldn’t because of being on “Today” while others say it because she is a woman – they still think a woman can’t deliver the news.

Yes, the Today show is mostly fluff but when there was hard news to cover Couric did well. I remember watching her on Today during the beginning of the 9/11 attacks. I think she know when to be serious and when to be light. Besides Tom Brokaw, the former anchor of NBC news, worked for several years on Today in the late 70’s and he did okay moving to the anchor chair.

The critics says she hasn’t had enough hard news experience. My view is she is just reading the news – she doesn’t have to find it. That is what the staff does. She paid her dues as a local reporter and as a correspondent.

As to those who complain that she won’t do a good job because she is a woman – all I have to say is look at Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. They have a large number of women anchors of their various newscasts and no seems to complain about them. Couric will be doing the same thing those women do only she will be on CBS.

The only thing I hope Couric does do different is not throw softballs at anyone she interviews like a political leader.

Other than that I wish her good luck. I know I will watch at least once.

August 31, 2006April 18, 2020

Cowtown Qube

In an earlier post on the history of MTV I mentioned that the idea evolved from a successful music video program on the Qube network in the late 70’s.

Qube was the first try at interactive television and debuted in Columbus in 1977. It was a demonstration project from Warner Cable (now Time-Warner Cable).

The subscriber used a large remote box that plugged into their set-top cable box and allowed them to pick from the 30 channels available and it included 5 buttons for the interactive part. Programs on Qube could ask poll questions and users would pick their answer and the results would be collected then displayed during the program.

Qube had a live local component that originated from a studio in Columbus. I remember that local TV personality Flippo the Clown had a show on Qube. When Qube was installed in other cities (like Dallas and Cincinnati) there were shows that were shown nationally like Sight and Sound (the prototype of MTV) and Pinwheel, a children’s program that evolved into the Nickelodeon channel.

For a more geeky version of the history of Qube check out the following link:

When CableWent Qubist