Comments Posted By Tony Lafauce
Displaying 21 To 26 Of 26 Comments
CARNIVAL OF THE CLUELESS #35: THE "HOW FAR THEY'VE FALLEN" EDITION
Rick: While most everything you say is true, it is not wholly the reasons that the wire services fell from greatness. The hiring policies of AP, UP and INS were inbred. That is they hired almost exclusively from the ultra liberal eastern Ivy schools. While most people are extremely aware now of just how liberal Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown etc. this has been a problem for years. With the inbreeding of the wire services hiring policies, it is no stretch of the imagination to deduce that the elite schools turned out elite graduates.(affectionately called the "creme de la creme") Not that eliteness in itself is bad but attitudes were that they -as now- knew just what was best for those of us from poorer universities and the general public. Ergo: We didn't get reporting as "eye witnesses" we got what the wire services wanted us to see and hear. The advent of high speed internet and satellite communications, caused the wire services to rapidly became second best in reporting the fast breaking stories. Short cuts became necessary and truth and accuracy sometimes became second to speed. TV made a major impact on the news. In order to bring the news each day, speed again became the most important factor and again accuracy came in a distant second. As if that weren't enough diversity reared its ugly head, in a mad scramble to hire racially diverse journalists, standards that once were considered noble were lowered to meet a he new diverse workforce. All these components led to the Jason Blairs and other not so reputable journalists. The fall of the once exclusive news clubs, the Hemingways and the Pyles, the reporting giants of the WWII days have logically morphed into hundreds of internet wizards that research stories from a hundred sources and "webblog" has changed the face of the news because news items are cross checked by a hundred different sources. We witnessed the result from "Rathergate" We are no longer subjected to the NYT version of the war in Iraq as we were during Vietnam, we no longer have to accept Dan Rather's opinion of Geo. W. Bush, and we no longer have to accept the pap once dished out by the Associated Press and the United Press. God has invented the Blog.
respectfully
Comment Posted By Tony Lafauce On 9.03.2006 @ 09:25
T.L.
Well fellow 24 watchers and continuity police, maybe the show has a few loopholes and inconsistencies but I don't know anyone who isn't glued to his chair each Monday nite and anxiously awaiting the next thrilling chapter in the Perils of Jack Bauer. Still as our author has astutely pointed out the threads thicken. If it gets any more convoluted, it will go the way of X-Files where as we know the writers got backed into a corner with no way out. Ergo: series end: And if it's action you want, as quickly as a thread opens another is solved. Curtis acted nobley at the hospital and defused a near catastrohpic situation only to have another canister planted in CTU. One for Curtis and now it's Jack's turn. How will he manage the next crisis. Who amongst us is not anxiously awaiting the resolution of the current enigmas? It's fun and exciting to speculate on future issues and it's fun to hash over the previous one. Maybe that's why we have this thread and await RWNH recap on Tuesday following.
Comment Posted By Tony Lafauce On 7.03.2006 @ 13:51
WHY I'M NOT WATCHING THE OSCARS
How about this; The Hollywood elite meets a couple of times a year (three if you count the Emmies) anyway, the Hollywood chosen throw a gala party complete with red carpet. They all attend this self aggrandizing extravaganza where they parade before the adoring public in borrowed gowns, jewelry etc. The festivities include all the social comment (that they are only qualified to address) and what they feel should be the route of their cultural hegemony. The cause celebre includes everything from homosexuality to how to successfully run the government.
Comment Posted By Tony Lafauce On 7.03.2006 @ 09:11
For three plus hours they thank each other and praise each other as if from their perches atop the peaks of Mt. Olympus and they after they have thoroughly gourged themselves on lavish praise and adorned themselves with the borrowed seductive trappings of God's selected few, they have an elaborate dinner party complete with champagne and caviar, so the love fest continues only now without our participation.
The irony of the entire situation is that after all this, they sell the "show" to a network and have them pay for their evening of mutual adoration. So therefore you won't catch me watching this bachanal.I refuse to encourage them any longer to make horrible movies with horrible plots and with horrible actors and then to throw a party and allow us to see the results of their misdeeds.
Thanks to the "Deus ex Machina" Jack does find a short cut out of the bunker and consequently out of harm's way. My heart does go out to the Hobbit though. Whether pressure of the job or his unlikely solution to the problem of the lost CTU ID and the likely blackmail or rather ransom or both for that matter, I kind of feel sorry for Lynn. Yet he dared cross swords with the seductive Audrey (the female alter ego of Jack Bauer) and therefore must come to some reckoning with DOD and Audrey's father, the immutable William DeVane. Can't wait for this confrontation. (Aside) the character of McGill has given another dimension of intrigue to the saga of Jack Bauer.
Like it or not, Monday TV is the one high point of an otherwise bleak TV season. One possible exception. Dr.House the cantankerous curmudgeon of a hospital catering to the impossibly sick.
Can't wait for next weeks double episode of 24.
Tick, Tick, TickTony Lafauce
Comment Posted By Tony Lafauce On 28.02.2006 @ 14:40
CIA PLOT TO DESTROY THE MOONBATS
I'm surprised that the name of Che Guevarra was omitted from the Political Cooperative lise of fallen activists.
T.L.
Comment Posted By Tony Lafauce On 28.02.2006 @ 14:48
Gentlemen: After reading your review of last night's episode of "24" all I can say in defense of the show is that it reminds me of the reply I received trying to buy a fancy window for the front of my "build it from the ground up" shed. The really hip counter man at the local lumber yard intoned, "For God's sake, it's only a shed!" Similarly (chuckle) "It's only a TV show" and it's free, and it's in HD and with theater like sound. Don't be so critical it's bad for the digestion. (Aside) Also if it moved faster, we devotees of Jack Bauer would have to wait until next January for the next crisis, and would be stuck with watching Celebrity Ice Skating. Groan.
Sincerely
Comment Posted By Tony Lafauce On 7.02.2006 @ 08:47
T. L
