The whiteness of McCain eludes media

It isn't just Advocate staffers who are fascinated with Obama's race. Consider the lead on the Washington Post's racist report on his nomination:

Sen. Barack Obama, the first African American to lead a major-party ticket, accepted the Democratic nomination for president Thursday night, sharply criticizing Republican John McCain and casting the election as "our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive."

In the interest of balance, it should also mention McCain's whiteness - for instance: "... criticizing John McCain, life-long white person, and casting ..."

On Thursday 8/28/08, Associated Press referred to Obama's color in the first sentence of its racist report on his nomination. On Friday a report by GNS, whatever that is, ran at the top of the Advocate's page one. The first sentence of that racist report referred to Obama's color.

In that same edition on page one is where the Advocate published its racist article on how "black community members" feel about Obama.

I asked in Advocate on-line comments: Will the Advocate have a story on the whiteness of McCain? How proud whites are that he's a candidate? Nobody is whiter than McCain. Do you think you're doing blacks a favor by keeping the race issue up front? Will there ever be a time when media will let America forget the various colors of skin, none of which, by the way, are black or white?

If media can't let go of the race issue, let them at least be fair enough to mention whiteness at every opportunity. News reporters obviously feel the need to keep people aware of how important is the issue of skin color, but they should have the decency to direct their racism at more than just "blacks."

EDIT: Here's a comment I added in my Advocate blog to the above text:

I don't think this is a conscious attempt to be unfair. It is a tradition that needs to be broken so we can become Americans, rather than folks who supposedly belong to "black communities" and the remainder of citizens who don't. Just this kind of media blather is what keeps "black communities" separate and somehow different. The inspiration for the news reports I quoted, I think, is to sort of praise Obama for his achievement in spite of his "blackness." He doesn't need that crap and neither should anyone els

We need tight regulation of futures markets

I've insisted in many journal entries that rules of supply and demand cannot be driving the price of gasoline. I've urged that competition be restored among energy producers and that big media would get over their stupid resistance to digging out the story, such as the con job presented by Associated Press 5/25/08. Look up my references to these observations by entering "energy" and "gasoline" in the search box at the top of the page.

Among ways the federal government is manipulating this market and others is by allowing the giant casino called "futures market" to continue unchecked - where trillion-dollar hedge funds cause prices to rise and fall at the behest of the trillionaires who are calling the shots for profit and more profit.

That such markets should be allowed to dictate prices I pay for gasoline, bread, and other essentials is nothing short of criminal. That these economic forces are not being fully regulated and/or secretly regulated is even more criminal.

On 5/29/08 the Huston Chronicle wrote about the fact that the regulators of oil traders had told the public about an investigation into the cause of abnormal oil prices. Read it here.

And yesterday, 6/6/08, the Washington Post wrote about that subject again at this link.

Citizens interested in regaining the advantages of a free marketplace - meaning, for example, affordable gasoline - should demand reform and tight regulation of futures markets from Washington.

Another con job on the price of gasoline

It was almost as though Associated Press set out to answer "Big Media and Big Oil - are they one and the same?" which was my question here 5/20/08.

AP wrote, and the Advocate reproduced 5/25/08, an article under the headline "What makes up the price of gas?"

The most interesting thing about this piece are the sources used by AP: There was Jim Ritterbusch, whose firm does consulting for oil companies; there was "the federal government;" and there was the American Petroleum Institute and that's all.

The article took up most of a full page and all it said was, in effect, prices are a function of the open market. What else might one expect from AP?

As though the "open market" can operate freely when a few gigantic, multinational corporations own the Bush Administration and its rule-making machinery, just as farmers own the agriculture regulators, and the drug companies own the FDA.

Instead of settling any question about whether Big Oil and Big Media are one and the same, AP wrote yet another con job on oil prices, and it served only to make my question more relevant.

Generations of valor

Click on this link and be grateful.

Dems belly-up; AP smiles

Here's how Associated Press hid the Democrats when they bellied-up on Bush's Iraq war.

"WASHINGTON — Democrats may have lost their fight with President Bush over a timetable for ending the war in Iraq, but they won billions of dollars for farm aid, hurricane victims, veterans and health care for poor children."

PA-Lease. They didn't WIN anything. The federal government reels off billions of tax dollars like toilet paper. Those dollars are not "won." They are taken. Ripped off. Stolen from taxpayers. More pork, more bull crap. $17 billion in add-ons to a $120-billion war-funding bill. Still no release from a war we don't want.

And still no relief from government's grip on mainstream media.

News writing 101: don't drown readers with keyboard effluent

Newspaper editors believe readers prefer featurized, frilly news reports; that somehow verbosity adds entertainment value; that murky substance equates with depth. They are losing readers.

What readers want is easy and fast reading. Journalists long ago developed the skills to provide that kind of material. Then USA Today came on the scene and other editors tried to imitate its look and feel, particularly its vastly overwritten feature items. Likely the USA Today style seeped to the J-schools as well. At least that's the only way I can explain what happened.

Whatever, these days you can scarcely find a well-constructed news report. Check a few typical lead sentences from the past couple days:

"Weight loss. Smoking. Public speaking fears. Nail biting. Insomnia."
"Newark boys basketball coach Jeff Quackenbush could not pinpoint the exact time when he knew this season was going to be special."
"It struck Mary Ellinger the Newark Surgery Center was different than other facilities where she had been treated."
"If cats indeed have nine lives, someone should check whether the Ohio State men's basketball team drinks milk from a saucer."
"Heather Puryear's 2-year-old son, Jaliek, looked out the window Tuesday and said he wanted to go outside and play."

If the people in charge of today's newspapers would ever read the crap being offered up as news reports, they'd get a clue about why they are in a dying business. They're trying to make insipid material seem interesting and important but it only amounts to a waste of time. Insipid material is insipid material, no matter how cute you think you've dressed it.

As a small step toward survival, news executives, go back to basic news writing and then go find some news.

AP credibility takes a hit

When an Associated Press mini-editor played a recent power game with Paris Hilton it proved only that reportage isn't taken seriously.

Editor & Publisher on February 28, 2007 reported the incident this way:

"AP Entertainment Editor Institutes Ban on Paris Hilton Coverage

"The Associated Press decided to give up a major vice last week: its addiction to stories about Paris Hilton. In the past year, Hilton has appeared on the wire an average of twice a week.

"The wire service's entertainment editor Jesse Washington sent a memo to staffers on Feb. 13 that said, barring any major events, the AP would not run any mention of Paris Hilton on the wire, according to the memo, which was obtained by the New York Observer.

"In the Observer article Washington was quoted as saying, 'There was a surprising amount of hand-wringing. A lot of people in the newsroom were saying this was tampering with the news.' Washington added that one editor's response was: 'This is a great idea -- can we add North Korea?'

"The AP was largely successful in the experiment, but Washington said that, unfortunately, her name did pop up in a couple of stories."

If Mini-Editor Washington can get away with whimsical gate-keeping, while peers such as the Observer and E&P wink at each other about it, imagine what's going on at AP with the big stuff - like what's causing the gasoline rip-off, for instance.

If one little "entertainment editor" can simply send out a memo and put a certain category of news off-limits, then try to conjure memos at the AP offices when the really big wigs send out memos about their limits to news reports.

Now, imagine the ignore-this-type memos moving through offices of other, even less-respected mainstream media. Meanwhile they're wondering why readership/viewership/advertising is sinking