Category: Media

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I am torn between being amused or horrified by this Huffington Post article about whether you should engage in sexual intercourse in front of your dog. Wow. This is something I haven’t given much thought to.

I am mostly amused because the idea that your dog thinks about anything about your sex life is funny.

Why is Spot starring at us while we canoodle? What is Spot thinking? Is this causing Spot irreparable damage? Perhaps Spot views this like we view a nature film — so this is how they have sex, interesting.

On the other hand, it is so empty a subject that half of the space is taken up with discussion of dogs licking other dogs genitals. There is not much there there. The idea that Spot is so concerned with his owner that he has feelings regarding his owner’s sexual trysts is the height of narcissism. I must know what Spot is thinking while he watches me have sex. I suspect other than keep it down I am trying to sleep. Spot isn’t think much at all about you having sex.

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I saw the following post from Stephen Green on Instapundit, a Conservative/Libertarian Blog. A man asking why do women who write disparaging headlines about conservatives “always” look like this (see woman in circle). When you are reduced to commenting about somebody’s looks, it says an awful lot about your argument. You don’t have one. Scott Adams did make racist’s comments and lost most of the distribution for his highly successful cartoon. Disgraced seems like the appropriate word here. But then Green wasn’t saying there was anything wrong with the headline he was going after the woman’s looks.

Or was he? Green is just coy enough in his words to be able to shrug his shoulders and say you were the one assuming I was making a negative comment about the woman’s looks. I didn’t say there was anything wrong with the woman’s looks. I was just saying why do they always look like this and posting her picture for you to see. What an asshole.

I would prefer to link directly to the post but Instapundit doesn’t give me the ability to this. You will find this on the Instapundit blog for January 13 posts made after 2:40PM.

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Quentin Tarantino bad mouthing Paul Dano bothered me for some reason. Tarantino has every right to criticize someone’s work. It is part of the risk artist takes. Critical feedback is a gauge of how effective the artist is so I am not opposed to criticism per se. Tarantino’s criticism, however, was unnecessarily mean spirited. He sounded like he wanted to hurt Dano more than let a colleague know how to improve his work.

More worrisome is this has become the environment we live in. I disagree with you has become more than a difference in opinion or taste. If I didn’t like your performance, you didn’t get it wrong, you are a bad actor. Or a stupid person. Or an evil person. The press eggs this on because it loves a disagreement and have a gleeful willingness to spread the absolute worst thoughts that people have to their readers and viewers. So if a famous person burns another famous person, you can bet your house that there will be a reporter sticking a microphone into the burn victim’s face asking for his response. Retaliation is inevitable.

I wish I was above it all but, I have to confess, I am right in there slinging mud with the best of them. I try to be conscious about it but I fail. Almost all of the time, I fail. A simple a thing as a Trump supporter with a misspelled protest sign is enough for me to forward to Facebook and Instagram so everyone can see how Trump supporter’s are so dumb. I am laughing at one person’s mistake and implying that all Trump supporters are the same which means they all potentially are bad spellers. Uneducated and stupid, right?

The problem is that in a few minutes, I will receive a post from a someone showing a misspelled sign from a left winger. Am I supposed to make the same sweeping assumption about all left wingers based on the one left winger who can’t spell? Of course not. It is just one person’s mistake. The question, for me, then what was I hoping people would think when I sent the post about the bad spelling Trump supporters? It was unfair of me to provide this false depiction of Trump supporters.

Making fun of people is all a lot of fun when you are speaking with people who agree with you but, in the social media world we live in, we no longer have this luxury. Everyone, including the people we are making fun of, can read your thoughts and know what you really think of them. People rarely change their minds if you are calling them stupid. Yet we keep calling each other stupid. Quite loudly at that. How then can we expect people to listen?

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I love Bill Maher’s response to Karoline Leavitt’s defense of Trump calling a reporter piggy. Leavitt thinks it is good that Trump is so honest and frank with reporters. Maher took her up on her defense of being honest and frank and called her a bitch. Good for him.

Trump is nearly 80 year old man. He knows that he crossed a line when he called a woman he has a professional relationship piggy. Anyone, as Trump has been, involved in the business world of the last 50 years knows it. The woman deserves an apology but won’t get one because Trump, in that warped little mind of his, thinks that apologizing is some form of weakness and he is so worried about being perceived as weak that he will never deign to apologize to anyone.

This isn’t really the worst problem this little foot-in-mouth incident exposes. Getting an apology is between Trump and the reporter. What is troubling is that Leavitt and other Trump lackeys aren’t willing to call him out for it. No one is willing to remind him of the hard truths of living in the 21st century and how he should conduct himself in his professional relationships.

Yes, she wants to keep her job but this would seem like a good opportunity to help the boss out. An apology would end this relatively minor dust up. Now he looks like an asshole when he could look like less of asshole, sorry he will always be an asshole in my eyes, with a simple I’m sorry. Since Leavitt isn’t saying that an apology is order, it speaks volumes about Trump’s management style. You can’t speak honestly with him even when the stakes are low.

This is a terrible person to be in charge of a business and potentially disastrous person to be running a country. But hey ho at least those Commie Democrats aren’t in charge.

The good news is I think every reporter in the White House pool should feel free to address him as President Fatso. I mean just to be honest and frank with him. He clearly values that kind of honesty.

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The above question is the problem. Someone has to win and someone has to lose.

Compromise, or at least as I understand the word compromise, requires that both sides give a little and take a little. Both sides get something out of the deal. That’s why they call it compromise.

The nightly breathless reporting of who is winning and who is losing the shutdown makes compromising extremely difficult particularly in the present circumstances. Trump needs to look like a winner and the Democrats are trying to look like fighters. Neither wants to look like a loser so all pretense of looking for a compromise has been abandoned because there is a battle going on and somebody has to win.

American democracy, unlike most other democratic countries, depends greatly on compromise due to the cumbersome federal system our forefathers created. There has to be a general agreement across an executive, two legislature bodies (one of which requires a supra majority) and the Supreme Court. It is extremely difficult to get things done through this system even in the best of times. These are not the best of times.

It is clear that it isn’t in the best interest of the press for there to be a compromise between the two parties. Indeed compromise is decidedly boring and unlikely to engage the press who prefer mudslinging, name calling and they particularly like winners and losers. Because the press needs to have winners and losers, they are framing the present struggle between the Republicans and the Democrats in the most unhelpful way. The press wants one side to succumb to a more powerful winning side who will then stand on the loser’s lifeless body and gloat for even more good press. All anybody wants to know who is winning the shutdown

Well, sadly — no one.

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Whoops, I made a mistake I changed an already published blog. Mostly because I was trying to get out more content because my readers are so demanding. I accidentally looked at this published article and made some changes. I come from a publishing background and vowed to myself that I would never change an already published article’s content and, up until this moment I have lived up to this commitment.

Any way it happened. I am sorry but it is really your fault. Stop asking for this endless supply of new bon mots from me. I am just one man. I am trying my damnedest, but you always want more. So really, dear reader, you only have yourself to blame if I make these mistakes. All right. End of lecture. Go back to what you were doing.

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A few months back I read an advice columnist on Slate that shook me. I wanted to say something about but what exactly I wanted to say was still coalescing. The shooting of Charlie Kirk reminded of this column and what I wanted to say.

A bride had asked a friend to wear a piece of clothing that would piss off the bride’s MAGA loving in-laws. At the time, I thought why would anyone want to deliberately piss off their new in-laws and his family. On her wedding day no less. The bride said that the new in-laws were constantly disrespecting her and her fiance never supported her.

First, and most importantly, this marriage sounds doomed and not because of politics either. This woman expects support from her man and isn’t getting it. So pissing off his family is going to change this how? If he doesn’t support you now, while he is still in the wooing stage of the relationship, what makes her think he is going to get better at it after a brawl at her wedding. He has shown his character and she is on her own with his relatives.

Then, there is a big difference between people bringing up their politics independently of your prompting and you waving a red cape at them and expecting them to sit quietly while you taunt them. Maybe you would get along better with your MAGA loving in-laws if you didn’t try to piss them off. I know it is a stretch but maybe give it a try.

I have a strategy that works every time I am with people whose politics I disagree with. I avoid politics altogether. We can chat endlessly about the weather, sports, movies, children, and so forth as long as we tip toe around politics. Which is a surprisingly easy strategy and almost always successful. If politics does come up, I have found saying something like “I don’t think we agree on politics so maybe lets not talk about it” works well to defuse the situation. I have found people, on the whole, prefer civil conversations as opposed to knock out drag out quarrels over Donald Trump.

Which brings me to Charlie Kirk. So many people want to both acknowledge the wrongness of his assassination and still make a point about how horrible a person he was. You really don’t have to say he was horrible person. It is irrelevant to the present situation. All you need to say is nobody should be shot for what they say and I am sorry his family has to suffer through this. Then do the easiest thing of all keep your God Damn mouth shut.

There is a time for political quarrels. This isn’t the time. You may have a lot to say about Charlie Kirk’s politics. It will keep and you can raise it again when the time arises.

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I don’t know who the genius behind the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ads is but surely this person deserves a raise. They created a significant amout of buzz. A lot of people are talking about it. Hell, the ad might being getting more buzz than Donald Trump the king of manipulating the media for buzz.

The ad is both ambiguous enough for American Eagle to continue to use it and controversial enough for people to debate the true meaning. Even if American Eagle is force to withdraw it at some point, they got their money’s worth. Being a strictly Levi’s guy myself and not much of a shopper, I now learned all about American Eagle — a brand of jeans that I knew nothing about before I saw Sweeney struggling to pull up her pair of “good” jeans.

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I am not sure why the word female was added to this Daily Beast headline. Shouldn’t it read ‘Drunk’ Delta Pilot? The gender of the pilot is an unnecessary addition and it makes the whole headline awkward. Read it out loud and compare Drunk Female Delta Pilot and Drunk Delta Pilot.

I took a photograph of the headline because I am pretty sure it will be taken down but here is the link.