Category: news

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Bill Maher walked out of a hotel with Noor Alfallah and the media goes wild reporting it.

This headline appeared in the Daily Beast, a serious news site, I read every day, when I stumbled upon a headline talking about Maher’s exit from the Chateau Marmont. Who, other than Bill Maher, Noor Alfallah (the woman Maher walked out with), and Al Pacino (Alfallah’s boyfriend), cares. Why did the Daily Beast give it an all important Top Cheats headline that directs people to read it? Wait, why did they put it into their site at all?

Here is the bit that caught my attention, “Paparazzi mobbed the duo early as they left together in the same car, Page Six reported. It is unclear what the duo were doing at the establishment together, and representatives for both have not commented on the appearance. Just hours earlier, Alfallah was snapped alongside Pacino at another Los Angeles restaurant, Chez Mia, in West Hollywood.”

OK it is gossip. People love to read gossip. But way too much time and energy was spent on this particular bit of gossip. The Paparazzi mobbed the duo. Mobbed. Dear God, how many photographers spent hours of their day waiting for Maher and Alfallah to leave the hotel? One would be one too many. This also means that some news outlet is willing to pay for photographs of the couple leaving a hotel. Keep in mind that is all they were caught doing is leaving the hotel. No one knows what went on in the hotel nor are the two explaining.

To be fair to the couple, there isn’t anything about their actions that suggests that their meeting was even good gossip. A man goes into a hotel and later leaves with a woman. Yes, it could mean that they were sleeping together but it also could mean that nothing went on at all other than he picked her up at a hotel. I have picked up many a woman from their hotel rooms without sleeping with them. So if someone were to ask me later what I was doing with that woman in her hotel room, I would gleefully reply none of your fucking business.

Think about it.There is a presidential election campaign going on, a war in the Middle East, a war in the Ukraine, a hurricane disaster with over 200 people dead and still counting, and another hurricane on its way to Florida. For a supposedly serious news site to spend any time on speculating who Bill Maher is shagging is a total waste of space. I repeat and in caps to emphasize my outrage — BILL fucking MAHER.

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The media was aghast at British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s gaffe in a speech. His big mistake was saying sausages instead of hostages. So what? Any person who gives speeches in front of the public is going to occasionally make a mistake. Starmer caught it immediately and corrected it.

As far as being newsworthy, not so much going on there. It could have been mentioned in a report about the speech but the headlines are screaming gaffe which made his mistake sound like much more than a mistaken word choice. So, readers thinking that Starmer must have really screwed the pooch here, read the damn thing thinking this must be good.

It wasn’t. It was a mostly an article about a mundane political speech at a Labour Party conference. The only thing newsworthy I got out of it was Starmer’s gaffe which should hardly even counts as a gaffe. What troubling circumstances occurred because of this error? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Starmer was momentarily embarrassed over a small mistake. Yet headlines everywhere were talking about it like something earth shattering occurred.

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Cheryl Hines is married to Robert Kennedy Jr. Because Kennedy is bat shit crazy and has thrown his support to Trump, Hines, according to some people, must disown him, divorce him or something to show that she doesn’t agree with her bat shit crazy husband. And immediately too. She can’t think about what she might say about her husband, she has to tell us now that he is bat shit crazy and she wants nothing to do with him. Give me a break. This is ridiculous expectation for the following reasons:

  1. Where do you stop? Trump is the candidate of the Republican Party. Around half the voting population of the United States supports Trump. I am sure that a number of these people are married to people that disagree with their spouse’s support of Trump. Do they all have to disown their spouse?
  2. Why does she have to say anything? Really. A wife isn’t responsible for what her husband says. If people have a problem with what Kennedy says, they should take it up with Kennedy and not Hines. She didn’t say it and she doesn’t have to publicly reprimand her husband because he is talking bull shit.
  3. What is the hurry? This just happened over the weekend. Maybe she is thinking about what she wants to do and needs time to sort it out. Silence isn’t agreement and there is no reason to rush her.
  4. She is married to the man. Even if she were thinking the worse case scenario — divorce — she still has to negotiate an exit. Her publicly denouncing him could ruin any civil divorce and add more acrimony to an already difficult situation. Why is it necessary for her to quickly tell the world her husband is bat shit crazy?
  5. Why can’t she handle this in private. She is married to the man, she has children with the man, and, because of that, she will probably have to deal with the man for the rest of her life. It is unnecessary for her to publicly reprimand him or, for that matter, privately tell him off. It is her business and her business alone.

This is a terrible look for Democrats. She was in a difficult position in the first place. Kennedy made it more difficult by supporting Trump. She, personally, has done nothing wrong, nor is she a public official. She has a right to her own thoughts on the matter and is under no obligation to inform the public what those thoughts are. She can handle it the best way she sees fit as it is nobody’s business what she says and does about it.

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The other day I was getting worked up over Oklahoma requiring Bibles in every classroom. Then, I began to think why. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a bad idea and we should try to stop it. On the other hand, as bad ideas go, it is far down the list on what is important. Some religious people think that the mere presence of the Bible in the classroom will somehow magically change the children forced to sit in a room with it into Christians.

I am betting this won’t happen. If I seriously thought that these proponents of the Bible in the classroom could create an effective educational program that incorporated the Bible I might be worried. They really have no ideas beyond prayer and patriotism and if they tried to do anything more they would begin to fight among themselves. Christians, if you recall, have violently argued with one another for centuries about Christian Doctrine. Indeed, this was the main reason why the Founding Fathers wanted a religious neutral government — Christian sects have a tendency to rumble if it is possible to get an upper hand with another Christian sect.

So why is this meaningless gesture getting me so worked up? Because it is headline news. The press is only interested in controversy. Controversy brings in readers which brings in ad revenue and so the press will search for controversial issues to feed to the American public. They aren’t feeding the public anything that is particularly nutritious either. It is more like a table filled with desserts that we can’t help but pile onto our plates and finish them off in one sitting. Until we make ourselves sick.

It is an easy enough bon bon to make too. Anything to do with religion in public schools was sure to piss of every secular humanist in the country while getting the full fledge support of fundamental Christians. Some editor somewhere decided to fed this particular controversy to the American public because they knew their readers would lap it up and then raise their fists ready for battle. Sadly, they were correct.

What is so annoying is that I know this is the game. Sensationalism is the only consistent menu item and I keep falling for it. There is a good chance that the Bibles in every classroom will never happen or it will be slowed down in the courts for years to come and, after a few years of squabbling over this, and realizing that it is way too difficult to make it happen, the combatants will move on to something new to argue about.

More worrisome, is it illustrates the Media’s focus on divisive topics. Anyone looking at education would think that the most important topic in American education is the treatment of Trans children because a lot of people are talking about it. In reality, there are 73,000,000 people in the USA under the age of 18.. Of those 73,000,000, 42,000 of them have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and only 4,200 of these children have started hormone therapy. This means that when people are talking about this, they are talking about .00005 % of the student population.

The treatment of Trans children in public schools and religion in the public schools need to be addressed but that it dominates any discussion regarding education in the 2024 campaign is out of all proportion to how it affects the vast majority of public school students. It is there only to instill rage and division which is all really great fun for the Press but does very little to improve public schools.

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Donald Trump apparently calls Kamala Harris a bitch. In private. So what? Why is this a headline? Why is this shocking?

  1. It is private behavior. He can say what ever wants to say in private including calling Kamala Harris a bitch.
  2. Donald Trump has a history of bad mouthing almost everybody including members of his own party. Is it really that shocking to discover that he calls a political opponent who is presently besting him a bitch? And, least we forget, he did it in private.
  3. What are people supposed to do with this information? So Trump calls Harris a bitch? Yes it is sexist but so what? Bitch sometimes is the right word. I mean would bastard be better? If I am mad at someone, I might call them a bitch. I find it hard to condemn a man for doing something that I might do particularly if it is done in private.

The only interesting thing about this little tidbit is that someone close to Trump wants to screw him over and they are talking to the press. Now that is interesting to me.

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J.D. Vance was overheard telling his son to shut up about his Pokemon passion the other day. Of the many sins of Vance this is way down on my list of something to be concerned about. In fact, it puts him in a relatable situation the many parents might experience — their children being annoying while he is trying to get something done. Maybe he could have handled it a bit better but when a person is busy and a child is pestering him about Pokemon, it seems like a reasonable place to snap. Shut the Hell up seems about right. This is an unremarkable bit of justifiable annoyance. It doesn’t make him a bad parent and it is certainly unworthy of a top position on the Daily Beast’s top 10 Cheat List.

Nor do I care much about Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’ husband, having an affair while he was married to his first wife. To be clear, I wouldn’t care even if he had been having an affair while being married to Harris. If Harris and Emhoff have made their peace about it, it is none of my business. Wait, let me expand on that thought. Even if they still were fighting about it today, it wouldn’t be any of my business. And I really think it’s ballsy for Republicans to leak this bit of news to the press when Donald Trump, a frequently unfaithful husband, is their standard bearer.

However, I don’t blame the political operatives dredging up such nonsense though. They are just doing their jobs. They are paid to find dirt and to publicize it. They are hoping that some piece of dirt might influence voters to decide for them.The problem is the press and selling newspapers. They can print the dirt or not. Dirt sells newspapers, so the press will headline any and every personal indiscretion in the hopes that this bit of salacious gossip sells more newspapers. Sadly, it must work or else the press wouldn’t be spending so much time talking about these trivialities.

This doesn’t excuse the press in the least. It is comparable to a parent feeding his child only sweets because that is all she will eat. A diet of chocolates would damage the health of the child. They aren’t getting the fruits and vegetables required for a healthy diet. Just because the American Public buys bull shit doesn’t mean you have to serve bullshit. Every headline taken up with Doug Emhoff’s first marriage and J.D. Vance’s snappy parenting, is space taken away from topics that really matter — things like homelessness, or immigration, or inflation or the situation in the Middle East.

Thanks for the information though I am sure I will find it helpful on November 5.

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Given the absence of any credible information about why Thomas Crooks took a shot at Donald Trump, I would like to offer my opinion. Could it be not political but Trump was close at hand. Crooks wanted to shoot someone famous and Trump was near by. He may not have had a political agenda but a personal one.

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The Media’s coverage of Trump’s assassination attempt gives a prime example of what is wrong with the media. They immediately reported the assassination attempt with the announcement when it happened. While this is a good start, it is also, sadly, the high point of the day for reporting on what is actually going on. Then there is a lot of nothing because the news is so fresh that there is no new information. The cops are busy with the problem at hand, but for be it for Media to let something as minor as a lack of information to stop them from talking.

Thus begins the endless repetition of the video of the assassination attempt — showing it as it actually happened, showing it in slow motion, trying to determine if they can figure out anything new with this frequent viewing of the video. They rarely can. So then they interview people who were there and they know little that is new and their stories are remarkably similar. This leads to bringing in experts who then review the videos of the assassination attempt in order to find something new to talk about. they rarely do. Then one interview is interrupted by another interview of someone who is slightly more important than the present interviewee in the hopes that this new person, because they are more important, knows something new. They don’t.

Stuck with a captive audience and nothing to say, the Media then begins to report on what famous people are saying about the assassination attempt. It starts out reasonable enough. We have to tone down the political attacks. Know that in a democracy, our political opponents are good citizens with different opinions and not our enemies. Talking heads shake their heads in agreement about the sad state of political affairs. This isn’t the way the USA should operate. We all agree.

But that doesn’t stop one of the famous people from saying something controversial because the best way to get another call from the Media the next time is to be able to supply interesting sound bites that bring in viewers. The best sound bites are controversial, so eventually some famous person, who doesn’t know anything about the assassination attempt, is going to speculate about some conspiracy or another.

So now other famous people and experts are talking about conspiracies based on no credible evidence other than famous people talking about conspiracy theories. So the Media, purely in the interest of getting the truth out, must report on the conspiracy even though, as far as verifiable information is concerned, the Media has learned nothing new and certainly nothing that would suggest a conspiracy. But why should that stop people from speculating.

The urgency to fill empty air time is more important than the accuracy of information. Keep the audience watching at all costs. Ironically, after dozens of political leaders urging to tone down the rhetoric and the public knowing little more than they did on Saturday, the air is rife with speculation and anger. Fingers are carelessly pointing this way and that. Fortunately, the ever present Media is there analyzing and reporting on this sad sad situation and wondering how did it come to this awful state.

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Donald Trump is somebody I enjoy making fun of. He is a pompous buffoon. He says whatever comes to his mind and it is invariably nasty mean-spirited drivel. He deserves every insult that comes his way for those things. But falling asleep during court isn’t one of them. Anyone who has ever been to court knows that the most difficult thing about the whole process is staying awake. It is boring — filled with a lot of instructions, explanations, points of law and other things that are mostly obtuse and uninteresting. Staying awake is a real challenge for any non-legal person.

It is petty to point it out and certainly doesn’t do him any damage with his supporters. In fact, it humanizes a person whose large personality makes him difficult to humanize. The gleeful reception that his opponents greeted his dozing with is out of proportion to the crime committed. Let’s not get sidetracked by minutiae because if you wait long enough, Trump will provide plenty of real fodder for his critics to chew on.