Category Archives: Opinion

Huffington Post Presents Advertiser’s Commercial as News

by Editor

I go over to The Huffington Post, a site that defines the words ‘mess’ and ‘indecipherable’ better than any dictionary could, looking for some news, and I come across a story entitled Secret Oil Rigs in Los Angeles Uncovered.  ‘Ho ho!’ I thought.  ‘Here’s something interesting and probably full of nasty secret pollution and damage to our health by oil companies!’  And of course I went stumbling right into the fake news trap.  Watch the ‘documentary’ above.  Notice how the young fellow doing the talking and walking is dressed kind of down with his jeans and boots.  Notice how the camera has a tendency to swoop to his feet.  To show the boots.  A lot.  The documentary, which purports to uncover the hidden oil rigs pumping crude from underneath Los Angeles, is presented on Huffington as being by Palladium Boots.  Unless you click on the link, you don’t realize that Palladium Boots is not the name of a fantastic little production outfit making cool films, but rather a boot company selling… boots.

So now we’ve got a major news and political opinion site putting up an article that looks like news about hidden oil wells in an urban center, but is really an advertisement.  The implication is that we are going to see the documentary confront issues surrounding these wells.  Issues like how many children would die if one of these things blew up next to their schoolyard.  Or how many people each year will get cancer because of oil wells nextdoor.  Instead we get a guy tramping around LA asking insipid non-questions and only hinting at darker possibilities.  We get a smattering of LA history and a lot of amazement at how well-hidden the wells are.  Frankly, if you’re in LA for more than 48 hours and don’t know about the wells, you are hopefully just passing through on your way to Orange County.  The real problem here is that a film produced as a corporate advertisement cannot confront real issues because the producers don’t want to create any real disturbance.  So they dodge all the important questions.  You’d think, after watching this ad, that oil drilling in LA is something just dandy.  Wonderful!  They’re pumping oil from under junior’s school!  Lovely!  We’re all better off for it!

But we’re just watching a boot commercial.  That’s it.  It’s not a cool citizen news report or hip internet filmmaking.  It’s just a company hawking its crappy boots to nitwits who think they are learning something.  A simple illustration of why this is so bad is to imagine your reaction if you found out that I had been paid by this boot company to write this very blog post.  You would never trust me again.  So what does that tell us about the Huffington Post site?

A smarter idea for this fake-news documentary would be to film a barefoot reporter who walks into the oil company executive’s office and politely asks him if he’d like to sit his own children down next to an oil well for a few years to see if they drop dead of cancer.  When thrown out of the oil company’s offices, the barefoot reporter would stagger down the street begging for a pair of shoes.  He’d end up with a pair of pink stilettos that fit him perfectly.  Just like Cinderella.

That would be my fake-news commercial.

Publishers Doomed by Predatory Book Pricing? So what?

by Editor | 6 Comments

John Grisham on NBC’s Today Show discusses his new book, writing novels versus short stories, and so-called predatory book pricing by large retailers like Walmart, Target and Amazon.com.  I like Grisham in this interview.  He’s a good interview and he seems sharp.  He talks about how it’s much more difficult to fix a problem in the middle of writing a novel than to do so with a short story.  So he advises writers to ‘not have a problem.’  The trick is to thoroughly outline your entire novel before you even start to write it so that you know every single thing that happens along the way.  Pretty sound advice in most cases.  Not all.  Some of the greatest novels in the world were written by writers who had absolutely no idea where the novel was going from page one.  It depends on what kind of book you’re writing.  I think his advice is perfectly good for most books that are intended for sale in a grocery store.  Certainly.  But writers should never listen to famous writers.  They’re full of crap.  You write what makes you sweat and drink lots of coffee late into the night and bang your fingers on your keyboard until they hurt.  Or not.  Whatever.  I hate outlines.  Especially in word processors.  Awful things.  They destroy good minds and belong mostly in PowerPoint presentations for corporate managers.  I’m not sure what the hell Grisham is talking about quite frankly.  But then again, I’m not selling thrillers in the grocery store either.

But what mainly interests me in this interview is the discussion about ‘predatory pricing’ by the giant retailers.  Apparently, if you listen to publishers, this spells doom for publishing and book selling as we know it.  When asked what he thinks about his latest book being available for nine dollars at Target, Grisham says:

It’s shortsighted. Short term, they know what they are doing, I think. But if a book is worth $10 then suddenly the whole industry is going to change. You are going to lose publishers and book stores, and though I’ll probably be alright, aspiring authors are going to find it difficult to get published.

Yeah? So what.  So we lose publishers and book stores.  Who cares?  The key in Grisham’s statement is where he says, ‘…and though I’ll probably be alright.’ He means writers will be alright.  The big scary fact of the matter is that we simply don’t give a tiny damn whether or not a publisher prints a book or an author does.  Publishers read, accept, edit, design, print and promote books.  At least they used to.  I don’t care what anyone tells you, but we do not need the editors.  Writers can do that.  You write the book and you edit it and you’re done with it.  Readers are getting used to reading writers without editors.  That’s why blogs are so popular.  No editors.  If you have an editor poking around in a blog, trust me, it’s not a blog.  It’s a corporate front-end.  A writer can also design and print a book.  And sell it.  Writers are publishers.  No reader cares about Penguin.  They care about the guy holding the gun.  The guy holding the gun is put there by the writer.  Writers will make guys, guns and gals forever.  It’s what they do and it’s what readers want.

I don’t care if the guy with the gun says, ‘I’ve been looking for you for a long time, Mr. Peabody.  Smile, because it’s the last thing you’ll ever do.’  Or if he says, ‘I’ve been looking for you.  Smile.  It’s your last.’

The writer can pick.  The editor can go watch Kitchen Nightmares.

There is absolutely no excuse for a writer to work hard on a story, hammering it into existence from nothing, polishing it and making it exactly what he or she wants it to be… and then sit around to wait for some agent or publisher to get back via the U.S. mail so that said writer can be allowed to move on and send out yet another plea for acceptance.  This is old technology.  Twentieth century.  It’s gone.  In this century a writer writes and edits and publishes and sells.  His book can sell in Target for nine dollars or three dollars.  Magnificent.  Literature available to people who don’t make lots of money.  What a novel idea!  If you’re griping about Target selling books for nine dollars, you must not be buying books.  Go watch His Girl Friday and pretend that typewriters still make newspapers.

And you know something else?  The guy with the gun doesn’t care.  He’ll always be there.  He’s not going anywhere.  All the publishers and book stores could burn and all the editors could go to their early graves, and you know what?  The guy with the gun is still gonna getcha.  He’s going to find you wherever you go.  He’s alive.

Reverend Billy Wants New York City and He Can Have It

by Editor | 2 Comments

This is a short documentary called The Gospel According to Reverend Billy, from an outfit called Syndicate of Human Image Traffickers.  This guy looks like a preacher but he’s decidedly against what most preachers seem to be preaching in our angelic little country.  He’s Reverend Billy and he’s running for mayor in New York City.  He thinks Mayor Bloomberg is a corporate Wall Street guy who represents the takeover of the monoculture.  He’s right.  I lived in New York for eight years in the 1980s.  I remember it as being rough, exciting, nervous, overly work-oriented, and dirty.  I visited just a few months ago.  It’s now an open-air mall with a Starbucks and a Gap.  Gee, thanks Rudi Guiliani for your cleanup.  Micky Mouse would feel right at home on Times Square.  New York is also home to the several thousand creeps on Wall Street who are personally responsible for trashing the U.S. economy and running criminal scams on a worldwide scale.  Well, at least we know where they all live, right?  When I lived in the city I worked with many different types of people in many businesses.  I would always give the same advice to my friends and acquaintances who were looking for jobs: Never Never Never work for the money people.  They are vicious and very poorly educated.  I recall working for one of the biggest real estate investors in all of New York.  He owned some of the famous big buildings.  He was also prone to throwing insults around and yelling at employees.  He spent eight hours per day for a full week having meetings in his office about the design for his new closet at home.  On Friday at about 1:00 pm he emerged to ask me about a pile of papers I was supposed to have finished that week.  I had put them all untouched in a pile that I labeled ‘Complete.’  He picked them up and riffled through them for several minutes.  Then he threw them at me and screamed, ‘What the f— do you think you’re doing?’  I picked up the phone while giving him a giant smile and called my employment agency.  I said, ‘I’m going to put you on the phone with Mr.____ and I’d like you to tell him to kiss my ass.’

As I walked down the hall, he was screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘Don’t you people ever even think about sending an a-hole like that over here again!’

Yep, that’s the kind of New York SOB I was back in the 80s.  And I haven’t learned a thing.  I’d still do it on any sunny Friday afternoon.

New York has about as much cultural energy now as Dallas, Texas.  It’s like a zombie apocalypse in Manhattan.  Everyone looks like they’re trudging to the office on a Sunday.  The East Side – Woody Allen’s favorite – is the land of strange men in khaki dockers who buy baskets in small stores.  I’m not sure why Reverend Billy would give a damn about being mayor of a dead city but he’s got my vote of confidence if he wants it.

As for the preacher bit, I’m not sure I like it.  It’s some kind of a joke or then again maybe not.  He likes the vocal patterns of the preacher for sure, but that’s not all of it.  Couldn’t he borrow the vocal technique of the preacher without the costume?  Oh nevermind, that would be Bill Clinton.

Via Coilhouse

Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder

by Editor | 1 Comment

Famed Charles Manson prosecutor and three time #1 New York Times bestselling author Vincent Bugliosi wants former President George W. Bush indicted for murder.  Bush and his vice-president Dick Cheney misled the nation into a brutal and needless invasion of Iraq which has resulted in the deaths of nearly 4,000 American soldiers.  They should both be indicted by a Grand Jury and tried for murder.  Absolutely no question about it.  The string of lies that they told in order to accomplish an invasion and put a sovereign nation under the control of a private corporation is the equivalent of what Nazi Germany was doing in the buildup to World War II.  It was a criminal act against both Iraq and the United States.  It amounts to treason and is punishable in the severest sense.

We need more people like Mr. Bugliosi around.  Everybody’s afraid.  Afraid to offend.  Afraid to be angry.  Afraid to make nasty comments on a web site.  What’s up with this country?  Bugliosi’s aggressive and sustained argument for prosecution is exactly what is needed.
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Cellphones are Destroying People

by Editor | 4 Comments

WareNewYorkerLook at that cover.  Look at exactly what’s going on there.  Makes you almost cry, doesn’t it?  It better.  Because if it doesn’t, then baby you’ve got it coming.  Chris Ware, one of our finest cartoonists did this cover for the New Yorker and made a comic strip for the issue.

I see people crossing streets while typing on their ‘devices.’  I see them driving and sitting in fine restaurants with their dates and they’re answering email and texting.  Makes you want to walk over and plant a big kiss on some guy’s date right in front of him while he texts his mother.  Would serve him right.  People are not even remotely aware of other people anymore.  They drive right through stop signs while texting or chatting on a cell phone.  They wipe out entire families on freeways because they were trying to type, ‘OMG Heeee’s sooooo hot!!!!’

These people are simple dark abominations.  They are fools who understand only how to be dead, dried husks that resemble human beings.  They think they are part of the information overload and that they are multitasking through life.  They’re just obliterating themselves.

Let me put it this way: if somebody sees you using your device, you’re not using it properly.

Sometimes I see a woman in the grocery store answer her cell phone and say something like, ‘Yes, honey,  I’m in the grocery store.  I’m looking for those little pepper things now.’

Do you know why the guy calls her there?  I do.  It’s because he thinks she’s cheating on him because he knows she wants to because he’s a total flaccid drip.  That is why 99.9% of all cell phone calls on the planet are placed.  That is why the cell phone economy works.  It’s nervous people checking up on their significant others to make sure they’re still around.

You know I’m right.  You’ve done it too.  Haven’t you?

But look at this cover illustration and think about trying not to do such an awful thing to your kid this Halloween.  Try hard, because that kid will never forget that little screen in your face.

Message to Pittsburgh Police: We’re All With The Press

by Editor

The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania police have arrested a 41-year-old man for using Twitter to post messages about police movements during the recent protests surrounding the G20 Summit.  Also, FBI agents entered the man’s home in New York City and confiscated computer equipment.  The man is charged with directing others to avoid apprehension.  The police declared the entire protest in Pittsburgh illegal, giving themselves the apparent freedom to charge anyone who helps the protesters.  But anyone could have read the Twitter postings anywhere in the world.  It was a public announcement about what the police were doing in plain sight.  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has stated that if this were happening in Iran or China, it would be condemned as a human rights violation.  It most certainly is.

Police movements are public knowledge.  Posting to Twitter about the whereabouts of police during a protest is simply the publication of public information.  There is absolutely nothing illegal about it.  If I stand on a street corner with my cell phone and Twitter about the movements of police cars, I’d be doing exactly what this man was arrested for.  If those cars happened to be on their way to intercept a criminal, could the police come and arrest me for aiding that criminal?

The problem of police brutality and illegal actions against protesters is wildly out of control all over the nation.  In Los Angeles you have the police violently attacking a peaceful gathering of immigration protesters in MacArthur Park.  The riot police beat up television journalists and smashed their cameras.  Later, the department had to pay over fourteen million dollars to private citizens and has even more to pay to the journalists they attacked.  In Minneapolis the police burst into a home containing the organizers of a peaceful group planning protests for the Republican National Convention.  The police held the organizers at gunpoint, tied-up on the floor for hours, just to keep them away from the convention. These were young highly-educated people with attorneys present on scene being held at gunpoint by a police force with no other intention than to prevent the exercise of their right to free speech and public assembly.

Look at this video from the G20 protests in Pittsburgh.  Pay special attention during the arrest and assault on some protesters at the 5 minute and 12 second mark.  What do you see?  It’s a press photographer clearly wearing some sort of credential on his chest.  He saunters through the melee without concern.  He’s carrying a camera.  The cops ignore him because he’s got that press credential. Then at the 6 minute and 15 second mark you hear a cop arresting someone and he says: ‘You’re with the press?  Who are you with?’  Presumably, he’s going to let a member of the press go instead of arresting him.

I think this video is fascinating because it shows who the free press really is.  Look at what the protesters are doing. They are using cameras against the police. Everywhere you look someone is trying to point a camera at the police.  The press is the people with all the cameras pointed at the cops.  The credentialed press photographer is walking around with his credential.  He’s filming nothing at a moment when protesters are being abused, beaten with sticks, and pepper sprayed.  The press is the other people.  The ones with the cameras who are being chased and beaten.  That’s the press.  We are the press.  We film bovine imbeciles with sticks and helmets and we upload our movies to YouTube.  There’s always something to film when a cop’s got a stick in his hand.  Everywhere you turn someone with a camera is catching some jackass cop murdering or beating someone.  It’s a war.  Cameras against cops.  And the big one hasn’t hit yet.  It’s coming.  Something will snap and when it does it will be covered by the free press on the ground live in the struggle right up close in a cop’s face.

The fact of the matter is that most of these G20 protesters are highly educated literate people. They are vastly more intelligent than the cops. The cops actually know that. It irritates them and they are itching to beat people up.  It’s universal to all police forces.  When you get a crowd of these people in body armor with sticks and guns you have an extremely volatile situation on your hands.  The masks confine the cops’ breathing and vision, increasing anxiety and tension.  These cops don’t think well and they are far more dangerous than the crowds they are trying to control.  I’m all for sticking cameras in their faces.  And Twittering about their movements.  It’s legal.  It’s free speech and it’s protected.

And yessir, Mr. Pittsburgh cop, we’re with the press.

We’re All With The Press.