Local Tint

John Archibald rocks my sh*t

This is why.

Update: This is also why (h/t Kathy).

P.S.  Stay tuned for for upcoming announcements of other things, places, people, and experiences that rock my sh*t, as well as a change of address notice.

It's almost like I was there

As I've griped elsewhere, The Birmingham News is pretty staid (not to mention, at times, just plain wrong), but occasionally their too-often-muzzled bulldog columnist John Archibald will hit a home run. His column on the "Top 10 Dumb Things" said at a Birmingham mayoral candidate forum was excellent. Witness:

• "'I will help the people of Birmingham if you elect me governor,' said Willis Hendrix" (who also denied the existence of racial discrimination in the city).
• Carole Smitherman: "'Birmingham needs a proactive leader,' she said. "'We don't need any more plans, we need solutions. My plan is ...'"  Excellent.
• Bernard Kincaid: "'In the city of Birmingham, if it bleeds, it leads,' Kincaid said. It's not crime, but 'perception of crime' that's the problem." As though Birmingham's shameful murder rate is just a  confabulation of the News's metro desk.

A forum like this could probably provide material to fill a special promotional insert; I'm sure Archibald showed considerable restraint culling it down to a mere 10.

About time

In addition to his columns, John Archibald is now wielding his mighty (well, significant) pen at Archiblog.

House rules

Salon.com: The Beautiful Hospital

My biggest objection to medical shows is not that the doctors on television do their jobs brilliantly, but that they do everyone else's jobs, too. And my objection to doctors in the real world is a little like that. I sometimes wonder just how much doctors know about what goes on over the course of a day in their patients' difficult lives -- how many people are involved, how much we need each other.

...

The medical show I really like is "Scrubs." It's full of chaos, anger and fear, and no particular brilliance at all. Just struggle and good intentions and richly imagined fantasies of lust and revenge. Like my world.

Sallie Tisdale, RN wrote the above in an article at Salon.com bemoaning the beautiful and brilliant doctors who dominate TV medical dramas. I feel her. As a nurse myself, I see patients and their family members arranging their schedules to wait anxiously for the moment every day when the doctor comes in, hanging immense hopes on his or her slightest inflections and wording, sometimes misunderstanding prognoses, test results, and planned courses of care (misunderstandings I have the unfortunate task of correcting as I overhear them relayed to third parties). Important questions will occur to them long after the doctor has gone.

Shaaaaame

I'm looking right at you, Birmingham News.

I give you today's front page:

New Fun Toy

John Howard of Upon Further Review pointed me to the "You're On Notice" sign generator.  Go make your own! Alas, there are only 8 slots. But on the upside, you needn't wait for those indolent child laborers in Bangalore to crank it out.

Attention fellow anglophiles and general curmudgeons:

Your snubbing of American MSM just got easier. G24 was introduced by Guardian Unlimited this past week, and it's a dandy. Their top stories are collected into 10-to-12-page PDF documents, updated every 6 hours or so, and posted to the website. They're an excellent alternative to printing your favorite articles individually (or, as I do to save paper, copy-and-pasting several into one Word document for printing). There are separate PDF's for Top Stories, Media, World, Business, and Sport.

During the past month or so, my dietary sources of information have changed dramatically. I now exist primarily on BBC and Guardian podcasts and streaming radio, with my favorite blogs and "The Daily Show" filling me in on domestic stories.  I can't even look at the CNN logo anymore without wanting to throw up. It's great!

Where old men go to gripe

Say what you will about Lifetime: Television for Women. On its worst day, it's twice as reality-based and not half as shrill as this.

This has to be fattening

This morning, Salon's "War Room" has a notice pointing to Think Progress's post on the severely irony-impaired supporters of generally-acknowledged criminal Tom Delay.

It went like this, see: Stephen Colbert interviewed gadfly filmmaker Robert Greenwald (of Outfoxed, among other projects) about his upcoming movie The Big Buy: Tom Delay's Stolen Congress. In the course of the interview, Colbert asked questions such as "Who hates America more, you or Michael Moore?," which Delay's demented supporters failed to appreciate for the comedy it is. So invigorated were they by Colbert's 'attack' on Greenwald that they issued an email (if you only click one link today...) citing Greenwald's "crash and burn" under the pressure of Colbert's questioning.

Absolutely delicious.

CNN Headline News gambles on new format

You may have seen the moderately annoying ads on CNN Headline News for this show, set to start sometime soon. "I don't care if they're Democrat or Republican, I say vote them all out!" Glenn Beck bellows coyly. Enter the exhausting sarcasm: "Hey, here's an idea: DO THE JOB!"  Somebody put a muzzle on this pitbull.

After seeing the ad a few times, I form a cursory opinion: "Jon Stewart for Dummies," which is reinforced when I read from CNN's press announcement "At Headline News, 'Glenn Beck' will air out of New York and be an unconventional look at the news of the day featuring Beck's often amusing perspective." "Unconventional?" "Amusing?" I grow slightly queasy. Oh, I'm convinced it will be both--in that soulless, corporate, whitebread way CNN has.

But I couldn't stop there. Since these personality 'news' shows both repulse and fascinate me, I Google the guy. This article at FAIR sends my "Jon Stewart for Dummies" construct into the toilet.

• Beck, best known for setting up Clear Channel's pro-war Rallies for America shortly before the Iraq War, once described how much he loathed anti-war presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (WABC-AM, 3/16/03): "Every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames."

• In 2004, Beck called Michael Berg, whose son had been beheaded in Iraq, "despicable" and a "scumbag" because the elder Berg criticized George W. Bush in the wake of his son’s death (Mediamatters.org, 5/17/04).

• On September 9, 2005, speaking of Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans: "And that's all we're hearing about, are the people in New Orleans. Those are the only ones we're seeing on television are the scumbags--and again, it's not all the people in New Orleans. Most of the people in New Orleans got out! It's just a small percentage of those who were left in New Orleans, or who decided to stay in New Orleans, and they're getting all the attention."

So I was way off the mark. What we have is a right-ring radio host--a self-styled everyman--given his own TV show on a 24-hour news network, the title of which prominently features consists of his name. Now that's unconventional.