Are they keeping this stat? How many times has Eli Manning followed an "Unstoppable Eli Manning Eco-Drive" commercial with an interception or a sack?
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Ho Ho Ho
I'm Jewish, and I've been fortunate to learn about Christmas from wonderful friends, who welcome me into their celebrations, teach me about their faith beyond the popular public stereotypes, and understand a little better how gentle and kind the holiday can be.
In fact, from what I've been able to gather, the phrase, "final clearance" doesn't even appear in the Gospels. Nor do they mention the Beverly Center's "Hunky Santa and the Candy Cane Girls". The report is courtesy of the Los Angeles Times, or more specifically, from their "Health." (I know, I know, strip-aerobics is an exercise thing, I'm a prude, yadda yadda.)
Maybe I'm being offended on behalf of my friends, and maybe they're not offended at all. It's just that, it's one thing to try to make every last dime on the holiday; it's another thing entirely to turn a sacred celebration into a festival of soft porn.
And I can tell you this: if they were pushing "Passover Pin-Ups," I'd be picketing.
Crawling Toward Oblivion
To the Cable News and Sports Networks:
To tell a story, you have to make choices. Every day, at every moment in the world, there’s an infinite number of stories are taking place.
The human brain can process, give or take, about 1 story at a time.
If you decide to simply fling at me all the pieces of “information” you’ve got at once, I’ll end up with a bunch of unrelated bits swimming randomly in my head. And I'll be no more aware or informed than I was before switching on your circus.
To tell a story well, you have to focus on that story.
Most of us have made the concession that, okay, you’ve resolved to run a crawl at the bottom of the screen. So that, while you’re doing a story about pandas, the bottom of the screen will tell us about a severe winter storm in the Ural Mountains.
But, at least, you could make the decision that some stories don’t belong on the crawl. And that some stories that you cover shouldn’t have a crawl beneath them.
Somehow, watching your coverage of the Mumbai (Bombay) terrorist attacks, and the suffering and the destruction, as it was happening, I felt that perhaps at a moment like this, I don’t need to know who is BFF with Lindsay Lohan.
To tell a story, you have to make choices. Every day, at every moment in the world, there’s an infinite number of stories are taking place.
The human brain can process, give or take, about 1 story at a time.
If you decide to simply fling at me all the pieces of “information” you’ve got at once, I’ll end up with a bunch of unrelated bits swimming randomly in my head. And I'll be no more aware or informed than I was before switching on your circus.
To tell a story well, you have to focus on that story.
Most of us have made the concession that, okay, you’ve resolved to run a crawl at the bottom of the screen. So that, while you’re doing a story about pandas, the bottom of the screen will tell us about a severe winter storm in the Ural Mountains.
But, at least, you could make the decision that some stories don’t belong on the crawl. And that some stories that you cover shouldn’t have a crawl beneath them.
Somehow, watching your coverage of the Mumbai (Bombay) terrorist attacks, and the suffering and the destruction, as it was happening, I felt that perhaps at a moment like this, I don’t need to know who is BFF with Lindsay Lohan.
Perhaps, I don’t need to know which pro athlete has been offered a three year extension on his contract, or which Las Vegas venue will host a special episode of a TV show. Yet, I saw such stories rolling over and over again at the bottom of your terrorism coverage.
How you cover stories, what you cover, and what you emphasize, are the three most important factors in establishing who you are as a news network, and whether you perform a valuable service to society. If you can’t make these choices, you’re no better than the randomness of the Internet world.
About 20 years ago, Andy Rooney wrote, about the dismantling of his company’s news operation, "CBS, which used to stand for the Columbia Broadcasting System, no longer stands for anything." How about you?
How you cover stories, what you cover, and what you emphasize, are the three most important factors in establishing who you are as a news network, and whether you perform a valuable service to society. If you can’t make these choices, you’re no better than the randomness of the Internet world.
About 20 years ago, Andy Rooney wrote, about the dismantling of his company’s news operation, "CBS, which used to stand for the Columbia Broadcasting System, no longer stands for anything." How about you?
Not I, Said the Duck
It’s in the back of your mind. Something else is still bothering you about these hundreds of billions of dollars going to banks, car companies, or anyone else. It’s not the greed, or the mismanagement, or the smug attitude of the suits coming to pick up bales of bailout money.
It’s not the spa retreats, the ruining of pension plans, or the uncertainty that all this bailout money will achieve its intended purpose. It’s not even the fact that, already, we don’t know where the first couple hundred billion went.
Nope. The thing we don’t talk about is, these companies hire large staffs of tax lawyers and accountants, who spend every waking moment trying to figure out how to pay the fewest possible dollars in taxes.
In the case of the car companies, this money could have gone toward developing a family vehicle that’s more fuel efficient than a Sherman tank.
We all try to limit our tax bill, but most Americans agree, we need to pay our fair share.
But the banks, the mortgage companies, the car companies, want money from a fund they didn’t kick in to.
They violated the Little Red Hen rule. You don’t plant or harvest or grind the wheat, you don’t bake the bread, you don’t even get a crouton.
We’ve gotta somehow pump money back into the system anyway. But I feel a little better figuring out what that other outrage was, scratching in the back of my head.
It’s not the spa retreats, the ruining of pension plans, or the uncertainty that all this bailout money will achieve its intended purpose. It’s not even the fact that, already, we don’t know where the first couple hundred billion went.
Nope. The thing we don’t talk about is, these companies hire large staffs of tax lawyers and accountants, who spend every waking moment trying to figure out how to pay the fewest possible dollars in taxes.
In the case of the car companies, this money could have gone toward developing a family vehicle that’s more fuel efficient than a Sherman tank.
We all try to limit our tax bill, but most Americans agree, we need to pay our fair share.
But the banks, the mortgage companies, the car companies, want money from a fund they didn’t kick in to.
They violated the Little Red Hen rule. You don’t plant or harvest or grind the wheat, you don’t bake the bread, you don’t even get a crouton.
We’ve gotta somehow pump money back into the system anyway. But I feel a little better figuring out what that other outrage was, scratching in the back of my head.
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