News and/or Media

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Insta-Scandal!

Hat-tip to Jeff Porten for this one:

(Click on the graphic above to watch hilarious video that backs up my oft-mentioned Gaffe Machine meme).

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The Gaffe Machine claims its latest victim: Miley Cyrus

OK, seriously? I saw a passing headline on the train this morning about Miley Cyrus posing nude in a magazine, and I couldn’t believe it when I saw the actual photo. This is considered a nude photo? This is even considered risque? Or even remotely inappropriate? I realize different people fall at different places on the prude-o-meter, and I mean no disrespect, but seriously – don’t we see more of Miley (and just about anyone else) when they’re wearing a swimsuit? On a public beach?

What we have here is another manufactured story, churned out by the Gaffe Machine, so reporters can fill their column inches or air time with another celebrity “Gotcha!” Everyone wants Miley to do something scandalous, so they can news catalog her with Brittney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.

Don’t believe me? Every news article I read about this so-called scandal contained at least one paragraph that mentioned Brittney and Lindsay. Let’s think about this seriously for a minute, shall we? Between the two of them, Brittney and Lindsay have been drunk drivers, on drugs, married and divorced several times, in rehab, involved in legal and sometimes violent altercations with both family members and members of the press, and more. Miley Cyrus posed for a picture by a world-famous, well-respected photographer that exposed her bare back. On what planet is this considered even remotely similar?

The ultimate irony, though, was the quote from Disney Channel spokesperson, Patti McTeague:

Unfortunately, as the article suggests, a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines

<smacks forehead> Wow. The Disney Channel is criticizing someone for exploiting Miley Cyrus in order to make money. Wow. Just….Wow.

Categories: News and/or Media, Words about Music | 5 Comments »

Clinton Sleeping and Romney Rapping

It was a productive Martin Luther King Day for the Gaffe Machine, as two prominent political figures were caught doing embarrassing things on Monday. And since one of them involves sleeping, my Google Analytics stats are already showing search queries about it, so I figure I better mention it here.

Here’s Bill Clinton falling asleep during an MLK Day church sermon while having the misfortune of being seated right behind the pastor:

Then there’s Mitt Romney, who took a picture with a bunch of African American kids (get it? MLK Day and he’s with African American kids? Subtle, huh?) and said “Who has the camera?” followed, rather unfortunately, by “Who let the dogs out? Whoo! Whoo!”

Just for the record, I don’t think either of these things are a big deal at all. As I mentioned when I coined the term Gaffe Machine, I think our media-glut, youtube-enabled, short-attention-span culture takes life’s little embarrassing moments and spins them up into center stage, double spotlight productions. Those who seek to embarrass these men will use these clips for that purpose, but they don’t say anything (positive or negative) about the men themselves.

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Mitt Romney Impersonates Al Gore

According to Chris Kelly at the The Huffington Post, earlier this month, Mitt Romney said this:

I saw my father march with Martin Luther King

Chris then decides to fuel the Gaffe Machine as follows:

So, well, that’s that. Except, according to a report in the Boston Phoenix, it turns out that depends on what your definition of “saw” is. And “march.” And “with.” And “Martin Luther King.”

Because it never happened.

“A spokesperson for Mitt Romney now tells the Phoenix that George W. Romney and Martin Luther King Jr. marched together in June, 1963 — although possibly not on the same day or in the same city.” … Romney spokesperson Eric Fehrnstrom suggests that these two were part of the same “series” of events, co-sponsored by King and the NAACP, and is thus consistent with Romney’s claim that ‘I saw my father march with Martin Luther King.'”

And so now we have an Al Gore “I invented the Internet” moment. Gore, of course, will go down in history as the person who handled situations like this as badly as any human possibly could. Let’s see how Mitt Romney does:

“When we say, ‘I saw the Patriots win the World Series, it doesn’t necessarily mean you were there — excuse me, the Super Bowl. I saw my dad become president of American Motors. Did that mean you were there for the ceremony? No, it’s a figure of speech.”

Ouch.

Good rule of thumb: when you’re trying to clarify something you said that confused everyone, it’s helpful not to have to make corrections during your correction. Not that anyone who is actually listening would have trouble deciphering what he said, but those (like Mr. Kelly) who are striving to turn the whole thing into a race-changing Gaffe will use it to reinforce the “he’s hiding something” meme.

It seems clear that what Romney meant to say (should have said?) was this:

I [was inspired by] my father march[ing in solidarity with] Martin Luther King[‘s ideals].

Because even the so-called “evidence” cited by Chris Kelly supports that statement. Also, it has the added benefit of making the point that Romney was trying to make before a helpful writer like Chris Kelly did his best to distract us all.

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Random Acts of Blogging III

Lots of little things today:

1) 2007 Top 10 Finalists – Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest (Hat tip: Lisa Fiorenzo)

2) Soundboard.com – 78,000+ sound files, broken down into 6,000+ “Soundboards.” Find “soundboards” from your favorite movies, tv shows, celebrities, etc. It’s the YouTube of sound clips…

3) Just when you thought Britney Spears was as messed up as she was going to get:

• Her 16-year old younger sister, Jamie Lynn Spears, is three months pregnant.
• Jamie Lynn is the star of “Zoey 101,” a show on Nickelodeon that’s popular with preteens. Or at least she was. Nickelodeon says the show has already wrapped it’s “fourth and final” season. I’m guessing the writers’ strike wasn’t the issue here.
• She says the baby’s father is her “long-time” boyfriend, Casey Aldridge, who is 19 years old. Just how “long-time” could this possibly be?

But here’s where it goes beyond messed up to just plain weird:

• Britney and Jamie Lynn’s mother, Lynne Spears, was under contract with a Christian book publisher to publish a parenting book, tentatively titled, “Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World.” The publisher calls it “a parenting book that’s going to have faith elements to it.” It had been set for publication on Mother’s Day in May 2008, but is now on hold indefinitely.
• Jamie Lynn gave an interview about her pregnancy to OK! magazine and, according to TMZ.com, OK! has offered her $1 million for an exclusive photo shoot after the baby is born

This is wrong on so many levels, just the thought of typing it all up makes my head hurt.

4) Time’s Person of the Year for 2007 is . . . You again! No, just kidding. It’s Vladmir Putin. The title of the article is “A Tsar is Born.” Clever title, although I think he wins for being infamous as opposed to famous. Yet another contest Al Gore could have won but didn’t, me thinks. At any rate, this site is kind of cool. It shows you the covers for all the Person of the Year issues, dating back to 1927, and lets you view them by category – US Political and Military Leaders (30), International Leaders (31), Business and Technology (5), Science and Medicine (5), Religion and Philanthropy (3), and Concepts (7).

5) Finally, a quick Instapundit roundup. Glenn was chock full of blogabble stuff today:

  – Did you know that 70 Senators, including 22 Democrats, voted to extend the Iraqi war funding by $70 million on Tuesday? Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that Democrats were vowing to end the war? The 2006 Congress marked the “end of the rubber stamp Congress,” right? Maybe this had something to do with it.

  – Did you know that printer ink costs roughly $8,000 per gallon? And that ink monitoring software tells you the cartridge is out of ink when it is an average of 20% full? The worst offender, by the way, is Kodak’s EasyShare 5300 which would have you waste an astounding 64% of the ink! I’ve never understood why people don’t just turn off those ink monitors and print until the printouts start degrading (always keeping a spare cartridge handy, of course). That way, you know you haven’t wasted any…

  – Did you know that the free market seems to be doing what the Kyoto treaty could not do? Some fascinating stats, comparing 1997 (the year before Kyoto was signed) to 2004 (latest available data):
    – Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
    – Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
    – Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
    – Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.
    – Emissions from the U.S. grew slower than those of over 75% of the countries that signed Kyoto.

That’s all for now…

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Continued Improvement Plagues Iraq War

Two weeks ago, the Washington Post called good news about Iran’s nuclear weapons program A Blow to Bush’s Tehran Policy.

Today, Instapundit pointed us to this set of Iraqi war statistics. Some samples:

The site also points out that we’ve found (and cleared) almost 6,200 weapons caches so far this year, up from less than 2,700 in 2006 (and just over 1,700 in 2004).

So, two questions:

First, why isn’t this front page news? It was certainly front page news when the numbers were going in the other direction, or when every politician and their mother was running to a podium to declare the “Surge” a failed strategy before it even began. Is the war only a story of national interest when it’s going badly?

Second, and especially for the Bush-haters out there, isn’t now the time to call out the President on the original purpose of the Surge? If I remember correctly, our goal was to control the violence so that the Iraqi government could take the political steps necessary to maintain their own security, so that our men and women could come home. Why isn’t President Bush using this golden opportunity to publicly hammer the Iraqi government about showing demonstrable progress? For that matter, why isn’t Nancy Pelosi doing the same? Or are we only interested in bringing our troops home when things are going badly as well? I’m sure as Christmas approaches, they and their families would disagree.

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Bush Administration Beseiged by Good News

Power Line points us to this Washington Post article about the recent NIE finding that Iran halted it’s nuclear weapons program in 2003.

The title of the article is A Blow To Bush’s Tehran Policy.

Here’s a sample:

The new intelligence report released yesterday not only undercut the administration’s alarming rhetoric over Iran’s nuclear ambitions but could also throttle Bush’s effort to ratchet up international sanctions and take off the table the possibility of preemptive military action before the end of his presidency.

Iran had been shaping up as perhaps the dominant foreign policy issue of Bush’s remaining year in office and of the presidential campaign to succeed him. Now leaders at home and abroad will have to rethink what they thought they knew about Tehran’s intentions and capabilities.

This could possibly be the most twisted logic I’ve ever seen in a mainstream news article. Basically, they’re saying that Bush and Co. were gearing up for war in order to stop Iran’s nuclear program, and now that we’ve learned the nuclear program has stopped, the whole “gearing up for war” plan is a miserable failure.

By “failure” here, they could just as easily have meant “success.” The point is not (nor is ever) to go to war. I realize that those seeking to paint the President as an indiscriminate war hawk say that over and over again, but in the real world, the point is to promote the best interests of the United States. If our actions (both our military actions in Afghanistan/Iraq and our diplomatic saber-rattling regarding Iran) helped convince Iran to stop pursuing nuclear weapons, then the policy worked, and we’re happy to achieve our goals without military conflict. To declare something a failure because the contingency plan you had in case of failure had to be scrapped is twisted logic indeed.

National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley tried to say as much:

The White House said the report vindicated its concerns because it concluded that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program until halting it in 2003 and it showed that U.S.-led diplomatic pressure had succeeded in forcing Tehran’s hand. “On balance, the estimate is good news,” said national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. “On the one hand, it confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons. On the other hand, it tells us that we have made some progress in trying to ensure that that does not happen.”

Hadley disagreed that the report showed that past administration statements have been wrong, noting that collecting intelligence on a “hard target” such as Iran is notoriously difficult. “Welcome to the real world,” he said.

Indeed. In fact, the big risk now, as I see it, is what happens if this intelligence estimate is found to be wrong. After all, we were pretty convinced that North Korea had given up their program after signing a treaty during the Clinton administration, only to find out later that they’d been continuing in secret. If we find out two years from now (or heaven forbid, just before the 2008 election) that Iran still has a nuclear weapons program, will statements made today be held up as evidence for “Bush lied, people died?”

Our leaders certainly deserve a great deal of criticism of late, mostly for not modifying their approach in the face of new information. When they do acknowledge a new direction, dragging them through the public square for it seems rather hypocritical.

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The Imus Chronicles

Now that this seems to have played itself out, let’s review Don Imus’ last year, shall we?

April, 2007 – Imus makes an insensitive remark about the surging Rutgers Women’s Basketball Team.

April, 2007 – Civil rights activists, chiefly Rev. Al Sharpton, feed the Gaffe Machine, and get Imus kicked off CBS Radio and MSNBC Television.

Soon after April, 2007 – CBS Radio gives Don Imus $20 million to refrain from publicly commenting on the incident.

April – November, 2007 – Don Imus enjoys an 7+ month vacation, complete with $20 million in pay.

December, 2007 – Don Imus resumes his daily radio show, this time at WABC radio in New York, the most listened to talk radio station in the country, and where he originally earned his “shock jock” moniker. (Hat tip to Mike Starr: Imus got his big break at WNBC, not WABC).

December, 2007 – Rev. Al Sharpton has no comment, except to say he’s “waiting to see.”

Is it me, or does it seem like the only people that were hurt by this whole affair was the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team? And, as I said before, they by Rev. Sharpton much more than by Don Imus?

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