Arkansas Blog

"The Colbert Report" and "The Daily Show" may report the news with a satirical spin, but they still report real news. They don't change the facts just to make them funny. It seems to me some folks just can't fathom that approach.

Maybe a joke is just easier to remember.

The problem with humor is its honesty. Fair and balanced is more interested in making it sound self righteous.

I think you've got it right, Student. I also think that soft-peddling, spin, overkill and obfuscation, a la Faux, etc, make the names and the news they make harder to remember.

More and more people care about less and less. To qualify as news these days, it has to have large boobs.

Only 69% surveyed knew that Cheney was the VP? That's almost as scary as the fact that he is.

I get the news from NPR, internet news sites, and of course, TDS and TCR. One of my favorite aspects of the "fake" outlets is how their writers and researchers put together news clips that show the lying liars saying one thing at one time, then the opposite some time later. It's hard to argue with that.

Besides the stories that the AT blog breaks and reports, our thoughtful and resourceful community is great about sharing other links and stories.

I get only a small amount of news from the TV.

Amazing to me is how many people in this state don't really see how the Ark. Democrat operates (editorially, anyway). It's one thing to get the obituaries, the funnies, and the crossword from there, but to swallow their editorials is another altogether. Just look what they are doing with the LR school controversy.

I think there's a need to differentiate between fake news of the Daily Show variety and fake news of the Dem-Gaz variety.

The first takes reality and makes it funny. The latter takes reality and makes it disappear.

Speaking of Faux News...I watched a hour-long special about the infamous Sandy Burger. (OK, I was flipping channels and came across the crash.) I can only imagine how difficult it was to produce an hour-long tale about a nut who stuffed documents in his clothing. It was so bad, it was almost funny. There was even a bit that tried to demonstrate the difference between documents accidentally falling into socks or purposefully being placed in em. Now who in the hell thinks that documents can accidentally fall into your socks? Nonetheless, it's stuff like this that demonstrates what a non-news joke Faux News is. Old news Sandy Burger stole documents and got an hour-long show about his sins. Big whoop...compared to the crimes of today's White House residents he's barely a blurb.

I am, however, anxiously awaiting another riveting segment of Fox's Daily Show imitation. I think it's good for the public to see Limbaugh/Colter together.

Ben of Ben & Jerry's/True Majority has a great new video posted. It lets you drag $10 billion Oreo cookies around to show you YOU would like to distribute the federal budget, then you can e-mail your suggestions to your congressman and senators with just a click.

http://truemajority.org/oreos/ustack/

You only need your nose to find out where the cat is crapping. So each day I wake up and start my day with the NY Times online. Then I look for state news on the AT Blog.

Thru the day I'll check rawstory.com, crooks & liars.com, Atros, Huffington, and sometimes truthout.com. While dinner is a-cookin wifey and I watch Countdown with Keith Olbermann. One Sundays I Tivo the main 3 talking head shows and 60 Minutes.

4 nights a week we watch The Daily Show and Colbert and that pretty much covers where we get our news. However, if anything thru the day or week catches my eye, and if it is not sited, I'll Google to see if the facts are straight or cooked. Though lefties are less prone to lie, they do at times and I try my best not to further a lie by spouting it myself.

The best place on TV to find out what is the most important news story of the day, is The Daily Show and Colbert. Amazing but true. Once you watch those shows to find what's hot, then waste some time and brain cells by getting on the Internets and checking the facts.

Lazy people and old people rely on network news and unfortunately this ain't the time to be trusting them. It takes work to dig things up and it takes work to make sure you're not being fed a lie. We live in a time where there is as much dis-information as there is information. That's not accidental, I might point out. Bushies got where they are today with skillful handling of dis-information. Beware!

Stephen Colbert is best thing to grace the airwaves in decades. His approach works because it's unique, and in your face. His character's blind loyalty to the conservative views of the Republican Party is hilariously pitch-perfect. Colbert's facetiousness is the finest in the nation, and audiences will continue to love laughing at it for a long time. Even from the standpoint of mockery, people respond well to intellectual and personal ingetrity. Besides, re-gurgitating squirrel into a UPS envelope to be sent to his bald eagle "son", Stephen Jr, is maybe the funniest damn thing I've ever seen in my life. Brilliant.

I never cease to be stunned to the point of being staggered when I see Jay Leno go out onto the streets of LA and interview people about news events and national personalities. The ignorance that is exhibited is appalling.

Some of the "Jaywalkers" profess to be college students, but it's obvious they've never read a textbook, a newspaper, or heard a newscast. I once thought this segment of Leno's show was a prank, but I've become convinced that it's the real deal . . . that young Americans actually are as stupid and/or disconnected as the appear.

My screensaver is the New York Times. It is updated every 10 minutes. I get national and international news on CNN (Lou Dobbs can't be beat) and the BBC, thanks to satellite radio. I quit network "news" in total disgust long ago. Local television "news" (limited to murders, fires, and bank holdups) is absolutely awful, not only in Little Rock, but also in Houston, Memphis, Phoenix, and DC where I often find myself.

In re television

Countdown with Keith Olberman..particularly the first half hour of the show.
CSPAN
Daily Show and Colbert Report

Internet
AR Times Blog
Firedoglake
TPMemo
dkos

Most of all..the internet allows one to get facts or verify facts.

TPM and The next Hurrah (Emptywheel and Kagro X) are doing an amazing job with the DOJ fiasco and the analysis needed to get the whole picture..So are Christy Harden Smith and Emptywheel at firedoglake.

Firedoglake has the best roster of posters and commenters who doggedly (no pun intended, really) pursue the facts as well as have a combined wealth of knowledge and experience like nowhere I have found on the internet..

AR Times blog is quite simply, liberating, in it's excellent role as a lone window to the inner workings of AR politics. I cannot thank you all enough for what you do.

If only the readers were as interested in what happens in their political world as they are in sports. /mini rant

In addition to the NYT I find it interesting how magazines like Vanity Fair, New Yorker, and Rolling Stone provide better in depth news than 98/99 percent of the newspapers in this country.

News . . . the worst kind . . . 20 shot dead at Virginia Tech. What in God's name is happening to this country?

cnn.com
ARTimes blog
NPR
Salon.com
Channel 11 for Ed's weather
weather.com
kthv.com
thelogcabin.net
The occasional Daily Show and Colbert Report
Sunday Demo-Zette (online)

CNN is on ALL DAMN DAY in my office (my fault), so I getta hear that. But I get the real news from Jon Stewart and Colbert later every night. And, to get the skewed side of things, I try to listen to Limbaugh (Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Republicn Studies - truer acronyn). It hurts, but it helps to know what the Maroons are gonna say.

"The first takes reality and makes it funny. The latter takes reality and makes it disappear."

Excellent.

I left out NPR. And I guess I better turn on the TV and find out about this shooting in Virginia...22 dead so far, 17 being treated.....so far.

I just wrote a big piece on the fantasy of doing violence to Bush & Co., I can't seem to make myself post it. Unlike a Bushie who has no feelings of guilt or remorse.....I'm sickened that I would feel such a thing.

I wasn't raised like that! But looking at my kids and then looking at bloody parts of what's left of kids in Iraq..........it sure messes with one's patriotic feelings. God I miss the 20th century.

NPR, AT and AT Blog, DoG, Salon.com, Washington Monthly (Kevin Drum), assorted other bloggers, CNN, MSNBC.

It's a tragedy...but I won't be watching any TV news while they kill the victims another thousand times and drag their families through this hell for months on end.... after the crime itself the MSM /TV saddens me...

I'm watching CNN and it's endless repeating of the tiny bit of news they have....same comments from different people. They're saying now the death toll is up to 32 now.

I'm sure Fox News is already linking the shooting to El Kiter........Sure not a great time to be living, but the alternative is so damn permanent. ....

Speaking of news...

NEWS ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal
April 16, 2007

The Wall Street Journal won Pulitzer Prizes for public service for its probe into backdated stock options and for international reporting on the adverse impact of China's booming economy. The New York Times and the Boston Globe each won an award. Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution won for commentary. Lawrence Wright won for general nonfiction for "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11."

----------------
What? No Pulitzer for Paul Greenberg's annual tribute to Robert E. Lee's beard grooming and horsemanship as the traitorous general threw in the towel at Appomattox?

Today I caught CNN on a lunch break as the news about VT was breaking, and I quickly realized why I quit watching TV news. I can't stand it.

Just like DBI just said, same little tidbit over and over - different camera angle or voice or tagline. I left the room and said, "I gotta find a print version of this information so I can get what I need and filter the rest."

I did just that - went on-line and found the AP coverage and read what I wanted to know.

For me:

NPR - daily - national news and great local reporting too

AT Blog - daily - state news and whatever else is here

Jon and Steven - I catch up on them usually on the weekend for national news because I can't stay up that late. Sad, I know, but I need my 8-9 hours a night.

thecabin.net - for my local news usually daily but sometimes only occasionally.

Love the blog; hate the sad news today.

take this short pew poll and compare yourself against other americans..for knowledge of the news.

link at my name

It's a pretty easy quiz if I get all of them right.