Category Funny

Pompous is funny—Fox News proves it

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Talk about looking for excuse to pile on!  Fox News Channel found one and did, and Jon Stewart was there to skewer them.

On last night’s The Daily Show Stewart used the coverage of a recent contretemps involving NASA (full disclosure: I work for a NASA contractor) to ridicule Fox’s anti-anything-Obama  attitude and its religious intolerance.

Yeah, yeah, I know, “We report, you decide,” and the news shows versus the opinion shows, but still…(and don’t bail out before he cracks America’s News Mommy, too.)

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I once thought Fox just hoped the rest of us weren’t paying attention, but now I realize they don’t care about that.  They have faith, my friends—faith that eventually, each of us loyal, God-fearing, right-thinking Americans will come around and agree with them, and the lack of fairness and balance won’t matter.  In the meantime, cha-ching!

(All in all, sort of the same attitude that ESPN has, as demonstrated by having finally put their last shard of editorial integrity into a blind trust.)

USA 234, HIPRB! 1

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Happy 4th of July, all you American patriots…the rest of ya, too.  I’ve got a gift for you, even though you’re not the one turning 234 years old: I invite you to remove your shoes and stroll barefoot among the new tabs at the top of the page, up there under the site title (I gotta get a better title).

For almost a year I’ve been using this page to show off my ideas, but mostly to practice putting one word in front of the other on a regular basis again.  When I discovered that there can be more than one page here, I knew how I wanted to use them.

For years I’ve been saving quotations that appealed to me.  Some I saved just because they were so well written but most of them are ideas I agree with, expressed more ably and eloquently than I am capable (of).  (See.)

Choose from ideas about American law and government and politics, thoughts about my first post-college profession, a section of funnies, and a collection of philosophical takes on life.  I hope you enjoy them, and offer your comments pro and con.  I’ll be adding to the sections as new material is discovered.

So, what did you get me?

Headline by Abbott & Costello

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What was the point of this?

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

The photo caught my attention when I read the story in Friday’s Houston Chronicle—as it was meant to.

Cade family

Now, I get it that when you run a story about some people, you want some art.  But do you ask these people each to hold a photo of their murdered relative?  What, like they all carry that around with them all the time?

Read the story, and what do we have: a man disappears, no trace; his family searches and hopes he’ll be found, but authorities identify a body as that of the missing man, who was the victim of a homicide.

The story is at the top of the local news section, and so I’m looking for the news.  It’s not that a man disappeared—that happened in 1988.  It’s not that a body was found—that happened in 1989;  and although the body was found only a few miles from where the man was last seen, the news does not seem to be that authorities couldn’t put two and two together, either.

The news isn’t that the body was just identified—that happened three months ago.  And the news is not that the killer has been found—no one’s been arrested; heck, the cops have no suspects.

The news here is…what?  Thanks, Houston’s Leading Information Source…all too typical performance.  Like the graphic for today’s business section story analyzing the local economy during the first three months of the year:

Chron Quarterly graphic

That’s right: the Q-U-R-R-T-E-R-L-Y.

The future of journalism…yesterday

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

I stumbled across this yesterday and haven’t stopped giggling.  This is a real book, circa 1965:

yourcareerjournalismcover2

“The journalist enjoys good standing in his community. He is even likely to be held in awe.”

“The story that a reporter worried and sweated over will be read by thousands and perhaps millions of people who will be informed, enlightened or amused. … He has prestige and influence that most persons can never hope to attain.”

“The day may not be far off when a city editor will say to a reporter, ‘Check your space gear. You’re going to the moon.'”

This is about a half-a-generation before my time; the journalism I went into in the 1970s was kind of “All the President’s Men” with a touch of “The Front Page,” and then I added a radio station to it.  I wouldn’t have been intrigued by “Ward Cleaver covers the school board,” especially if that had been a true characterization, and I’m having a hard time imagining who would have been.

Just how innocent was this country 45 years ago?  Was it common practice to lie give kids such a sterilized view of the world they were moving into?

More frightening: do we still do it?  (Hey, you parents: whaddya say?)