The Daily Mail is a lousy rag
My US news sources — Fox and Drudge especially — are linking to the Daily Mail more and more, as their default UK news source. At a glance, they have a similar right-of-center populist editorial viewpoint.
At second glance, though, the Mail turns out to be a really shitty newspaper.
Leave aside the way they report upcoming plot-points on popular TV programs as if it were real news. Overlooking the endless celebrity trout-pouts, baby bumps and unflattering shots of famous people caught with no makeup and their eyes half closed. All this is down in the shallow, stupid end of journalism, but it’s not wrong.
Then there are the endless, breathless, ZOMG one-armed drunken lesbian benefit scroungers with knives headlines — which often aren’t supported by the story inside. This gets tiresome. It’s bad journalism, but it’s not really wrong.
But — via my chicken-keepers forum, of all places — comes a link to a story about the Mail engaging in first-degree just making shit up.
It’s a long blog post. Worth a read, if you’re interested. If not, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:
In 2003, this woman moves to the country with her two kids, is contacted by a Mail freelancer doing a story on people who leave the city looking for the good life. Woman is starting a PR company in a new town, thinks this would be a bit of harmless publicity.
Story comes out, it’s titled Sex & the Country — a reaction to Sex in the City coming back on TV — and it’s a bunch of made-up shit about her dating life, including totally made-up direct quotes. She’s horrified and humiliated. She contacts the other people in the article — same deal for them, but the Mail laughs them off and nobody can afford to sue.
So the original lady, she spends two years in court trying to get an apology out of them. In the end, the judge rules in her favor (meaning she wins the right to carry it forward to a jury trial) and the Mail offers to settle. Which she does.
I realize there’s a lot of this kind of thing goes around in journalism — especially with this fluffy Lifestyle junk that seems to be taking over newspapers — but I’d like to think there’s a leeetle less poison in my information well.
Anyhow. Be careful who you link to. You might get some on you.
February 1, 2011 — 10:19 pm
Comments: 26
Flap harder, Hillary! You’ll make it!
A brief moment of amusement. Oh, c’mon — you didn’t expect me to let this one go. Me?
I went to the Rhode Island School of Design, which is built on the side of a steep hill. One morning on my way to class, I hit a rain-slicked manhole cover and went down.
I didn’t so much fall as come in for a landing. My left foot went out from under me, my drawings went airborne and I instinctively attempted the save — ran sideways for about twenty feet, gradually lower and lower, until I slid full length into Angell Street.
First class of the day, so hundreds and hundreds of my peers looked on. I had people coming up to me for weeks afterwards.
There. My moment of solidarity with Hillary Clinton is at an end.
January 13, 2011 — 7:27 pm
Comments: 16
And other things that don’t make sense
Can anybody explain the hunger strike to me? Why they ever work, I mean.
You’re in prison, say. A political dissident. Your government would like to be rid of you, but doesn’t dare execute you. So you announce you’re going to starve yourself to death.
I’m thinking that’s a win for everybody.
Oh, well. Bunch of students in Texas are hunger striking in favor of the DREAM act, AKA the petite amnesty. L’amnestita.
Yeah.
Thanksgiving week, and a bunch of kids 18-20-something will go entirely without food. Uh-huh. My experience of that demographic is, they’re an assortment of insatiable appetites on legs.
Anyhow, travel safe. Don’t let Janet Napolitano mess with your bikini area. Hug Grandma for me.
I’ve got a pumpkin pie to make. I have to tell you, the stuff I scraped out of that pumpkin doesn’t smell ANYthing like familiar old pumpkin pie.
I suspect the chickens’ll have it.
November 24, 2010 — 9:24 pm
Comments: 41
The giant melting head of Kim Jong Il
Yeah. I’m not really going anywhere with this. I got this image stuck in my head and I had to get it out. It’s like an itch. An art itch.
I’m fascinated by the train wreck that is North Korea. I’ve read a bit about it, but I don’t pretend any special insights. This is more of the same old posturing, at a guess. Kim always gets such fabulous prizes when he behaves badly.
I don’t for a minute imagine it’ll be any different this time.
November 23, 2010 — 10:01 pm
Comments: 18
You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh…
I know, I know…going to hell. I’ll leave the light on for you.
Actually, it sounds like Jimi Heselden was a damn decent guy who gave millions to military charities.
But…honestly.
Drove his Segway off’n a cliff into the crick.
Okay, I’m still sore about the way they introduced this thing in 2001. Remember? For days (weeks?) leading up to the announcement, there was all this bullshit marketing blag about how the new whatever-it-is was going to change human civilization FOR-EV-ER.
Then they rolled out this expensive goofy-ass two-wheelie mong-scooter.
I admit it — I experienced a little rage bubble. You know, that brief, sudden snap that makes you hoot like a monkey and fling out-of-date food items at the teevee.
September 27, 2010 — 7:07 pm
Comments: 41
Random
Ettore Boiardi — Chef Boyardee — was a real person. I guess I knew that, though I was too young to have seen him in the commercials (click the picture for a YouTube).
I gather from paddling around the web that he was a famous and splendid chef, and his mass-produced food was actually very good — when he made it.
He sold the whole outfit to a food conglomerate in 1946, though, and that must have been when some accountant cried, “wait! This food needs more suck!”
Canned pasta. Yuck.
He’s the reason I never voluntarily ate pasta (or anything pretending to be Italian) until I was in my twenties and tripped over the real thing.
My chicken has a black eye. And a bloody comb. And a couple of scabby patches on the side of her head.
It looks like she flew full-tilt into the mesh and rode it down on her face. The two don’t fight, beyond a little belly bumping, so that’s surely exactly what happened.
Eh. She’ll be fine. Both well otherwise.
And about this Journolist thing. The attempted spin seems to be “who’s surprised that lefty opinion writers have lefty opinions?” Not so fast, sonny. There are many delightful nuggets in there.
■ The Listers are such utter douchenozzles.
■ They weren’t sharing opinions, they were building consensus on how best to spin — warp the reporting of — news for partisan advantage.
■ If I employed any of those bozos, I’d be pissed. They are paid for original work, not copypasta. Though all their bosses are liberals, so they’re only going to be pissed at the embarrassment.
■ How many more people are going to wreck their careers before it is generally understood there is no such thing as off the record??? I knew it in the days when ideas were written on paper. Didn’t you? Now that words fly around at the speed of electrons, no one should EVER type ANYthing he wouldn’t want to see under a blinking siren on the Drudge Report.
This scoop must be a godsend for Tucker Carlson, working to get a new site off the ground. So I totally understand why he’d dribble it out day by day. But I do so wish this one had gone down like the CRU emails dump — released in one big go for busy webmonkeys to crawl all over.
Breitbart offers a $100,000 reward for the archive and doesn’t get it? And Tucker does? I wonder how much he has and from whence it came.
Hey, I got a fabulous spotted dick for anyone Lister who leaks the archive to me.
July 22, 2010 — 10:50 pm
Comments: 26
Bits…
I was going to lead with a really stupid photo, but that looked awful sitting on top of 9/11 Atrocity Man. So I’ll go with this mildly stupid photo and three quick observations on the news.
First, that story about the oil tanker hijacked by the Taliban in Afghanistan. They hijacked the boat [ummm…tanker TRUCK, I’m told], ran it aground [got it stuck in the mud] accidentally (I guess) and then told the locals they could have the fuel. Meanwhile, NATO called in an airstrike and we blowed it up. Bingo, dead civilians and a huge stink.
Ummmm…isn’t “salvaging” oil off a stolen tanker what we call looting? And isn’t the traditional response to looters in time of war to shoot on sight? What exactly is NATO apologizing for? Surely the lesson is for Afghanis: don’t steal shit, even if your buds in the Taliban say it’s okay.
Next, the ACORN story. I was shocked to watch the undercover video shot by Giles and O’Keefe. I had no idea the pair were a couple of clean-cut young white persons. Heartwarming. We’re surely in a better place than we knew, vis-à-vis race relations, if our mostly-of-color urban community organizers will cheerfully help a couple of middle-class white kids set up their house of prostitution and illegal immigrant child sex ring. Colorblind society, here we come!
Finally, that terror raid over the weekend. Did you (like me) breathe the teeny-tiniest sigh of relief to read the words al Qaeda in the story? As in, thank Christ it wasn’t some dimwitted bubba from our side out to water him some Tree of Liberty.
September 14, 2009 — 6:38 pm
Comments: 22
Ain’t it GREAT to have them Bush goobers out of the White House?
Ain’t it great to have college folks in the White House agin! People who talk purty and have all that book-larnin’ about the sophisticated big-city ways of international diplomacy and sech like.
Okay, there’s no big color version of this one. I lost interest before I worked out all the picture problems, as we call them in the drawin’ trade. Frankly, I think it was freaking me out spending time polishing Her Majesty’s T and A.
Happy Friday, ever’body!
April 3, 2009 — 7:18 pm
Comments: 45
Shut up with the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ scary monsters already
You know, I don’t like it when our side talks shit any more than when the other side does it. The ‘Fairness Doctrine’ is a busted flush, and everybody playing Scary Monsters with it should just shut up already.
You want the whole history of the Fairness Doctrine, go to Wikipedia. The Cliff’s Notes version: the Fairness Doctrine was a law that forced broadcasters to air both sides of any controversial issue. The effect was, broadcasters wouldn’t go anywhere near controversial issues. Reagan, in a series of maneuvers and vetoes, killed the Fairness Doctrine and the result (so the story goes) was Rush Limbaugh. Bring it back (so the other, bullshit story goes) and Rush Limbaugh goes away again.
The was law was ruled not to violate the First Amendment because it only applied to broadcast media. See, there are only so many broadcast frequencies, so it seemed okay to exercise a little government control over what they could say.
Pff! Broadcast media! Remember them? The rabbit ear dealie on the back of the tv with the aluminum foil enhancement? The coathanger jammed in where your car aerial ought to be? Broadcast TV and radio only. Oh, and teletext (ZOMG, they’re trying to take away our beloved teletext!)
Cable, satellite and the Internet? Untouchable.
Okay, okay…most of us still rely on broadcast media at least a little — particularly radio in the car. So let’s call the new Fairness Doctrine the Finally Making Satellite Radio An Imporant Accessory Doctrine. Or the More Political Podcasts Available on iTunes Law.
The last guy on earth this would affect is Rush Limbaugh, who signed a contract for a sum sufficient to bail out Fannie Mae. Broadcasters’ll damn sure find a way to protect their investment and keep that bad boy on the air, you betcha. The small fry will just have to blaze a path to new media a little faster.
What the hell? Go for it!
October 21, 2008 — 9:36 am
Comments: 111
Vampira: really, REALLY dead this time
Behold, Maila Nurmi (1921-2008) — Vampira — who died last week in her Hollywood home of unknown causes. She was 87, so there’s a possible cause right there. You may know her from…well, probably just Plan 9 from Outer Space, unless you grew up in California. Her main gig was hostess of several TV creature features on the West coast.
I’m surprised she lasted as long as she did; I don’t think she could squeeze a sardine past that corset.
Maila was born in Finland, but moved to the dark, old world atmosphere of Ashtabula, Ohio when she was two. She arrived in Hollywood in 1938, where she did a lot of modeling and, probably, ‘modeling’ as well. She wore a gown inspired by Charles Addams to a costume ball in 1953, where she was spotted by a television producer. And the rest, as they say, is footnote.
In addition to Plan 9, she also had roles in other premium Hollywood productions, such as I Passed for White, Night of the Ghouls and Sex Kittens Go to College.
Fare thee well, Vampira! Let us hope — just once before she died — she had the strength to open her eyes, bolt upright in bed and scream, “psych!”
January 18, 2008 — 8:21 am
Comments: 13