Category Archives: Media

24-Hour No-News Nitworks

Homeland Security, Journalism, Media, Terrorism

A pattern has emerged in cable TV malpractice. As critical as I am of the channels as the mouthpiece of neoconservatism, Fox News and Fox Business are the only channels doing news. They diligently cover the major stories of the day. The coverage is news driven. New job numbers, new Obamacare cancellations, counter-responses from the administration, Ukraine, The Issa-Cummings tiff: it’s all there.

Of the two hardcore left-liberal, agenda-driven networks, CNN and MSNBC, the latter will cover a smattering of news, always from a vociferously anti-Republican stance. However, MSNBC will then blow up one or two anti-GOP “scandals,” like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s involvement in the George Washington Bridge closure. Like a mollusk, MSNBC will stick to this one story and not let up. I am convinced they hardly have any viewers left because nobody cares about Christie and his Bridgegate.

CNN, which used to pride itself on its news coverage, no longer pretend to do news. Instead, its anchors wait for the Big Story du jour, or entrust Don Lemon and Anus Anderson with finding a human-interest story that matters most to them, but is not objectively newsworthy. These flavors of the day they use as a shield to ward off the necessity of covering the bad dream that is Obama.

Even though the 24-Hour no-news nitworks have used the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 as a cover for their lousy news coverage, only today, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal, did the first substantial bit of news about Flight 370 come to light. (The “scheduled passenger flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China,” disappeared en route, above the Indian Ocean.)

The report focuses on sabotage.

Aviation and industry officials suspect two different systems were shut off after the plane took off last weekend, one shortly after the other, people familiar with the investigation said. About an hour into the flight, the plane’s transponders stopped functioning, making it much more difficult for air-traffic control personnel to track or identify it via radar.

In the ensuing minutes, a second system sent a routine aircraft-monitoring message to a satellite indicating that someone made a manual change in the plane’s heading, veering sharply to the west.

Such a turn wouldn’t have been part of the original authorized route programmed in the flight-management computer that controls the autopilot. Those system-monitoring messages are suspected to have been disabled shortly afterward, according to some of these people.

“Increasingly, it seems to be heading into the criminal arena,” said Richard Healing, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. The latest revelations about the investigation, he added, “indicate the emphasis is on determining if a hijacker or crew member diverted the plane.”

Despite the efforts to hide the location of the Boeing 777 with 239 people on board, the plane kept broadcasting its location hourly via a satellite communication system for five more hours, according to several people familiar with the investigation. The last of these transmissions was sent from high above the Indian Ocean, according to two of these people.

The international search has drastically expanded its mission westward, with the U.S. Navy and other nations now searching for the plane in a 320,000-square-mile rectangle west of the Andaman Islands.

An official criminal investigation hasn’t been opened, and an international team of investigators hasn’t ruled out the possibility that some type of catastrophic event, pilot error or mechanical malfunction was the cause of the plane’s disappearance.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has looked into the backgrounds of the passengers and pilots, a U.S. official said, but hasn’t found any ties to terrorist groups or other indications they may have tried to hijack or sabotage a plane.

Still, as details emerge an accident appears increasingly unlikely. The first loss of the jet’s transponder, which communicates the jet’s position, speed and call sign to air traffic control radar, would require disabling a circuit breaker above and behind an overhead panel. Pilots rarely, if ever, need to access the circuit breakers, which are reserved for maintenance personnel.

A physical disconnection of the satellite communications system would require extremely detailed knowledge of the aircraft, its internal structure and its systems.

“Everything so far makes it seem as though someone was controlling the airplane” and attempting to fly it somewhere other than its intended destination, said Robert Francis, another former NTSB member. The longer the search goes on, he said, the less it seems to be “what you would expect from a civil-aviation aircraft in trouble.” …

… It’s also possible that the satellite communication gear, rather than being disabled, stopped sending pings because the plane had crashed some time after the final transmission.

MORE.

Uncle Sam Aggression Is The Only ‘Good’ Kind Of Aggression

Foreign Policy, Media, Military, Neoconservatism, Russia, War

Unless you are the United States of America, “… you just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests,” said Secretary of State John Kerry to the chronically incurious David Gregory, on Meet The Press.

OK, Kerry did not disgorge the first 8 words not in quotation marks. But they are implied, given the historical facts. So I added them.

Another correction: Unlike the Russian government, the US government does not do anything that is in the interest of its people—although the think tank industry and the media-military-congressional complex would argue otherwise.

Agree or disagree with him; like it or not, Putin’s goal is “to protect Russian-speaking people in Crimea or other parts of Ukraine.” Which American community was Genghis Bush and B. Hussein protecting when they decimated Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and the droned-upon countries?

To reiterate the question asked and answered in “The Warmongers: Not Looking Out For Us,” “More than anyone, who benefits when America goes to war? Those who ‘function within the nimbus of great power’ in D.C. and around it—the media-military-congressional-industrial complex.”

You see, the chattering and political classes cannot conceive of greatness outside the state because they are part of the state apparatus and depend on it for status and income. Conversely, individual Americans—who have nothing to gain and only losses to sustain from war—should never conflate their interests with those of the government and its emissaries, who have everything to gain from the great theatre that is war.

Late Night Loser

Celebrity, Gender, Media, Pop-Culture

As you enjoy the musings of Kerry Crowel, do consider a one-time contribution or a regular monthly contribution to Barely A Blog, where we nurture like-minded young talent. (The PayPal buttons are to your right). Posting pieces by new writers means editorial WORK for yours truly. Show your love.

Late Night Loser
By Kerry Crowel

Sadly, late night talker Jimmy Fallon is the perfect specimen of modern Western man: emasculated, silly and willing to break into an embarrassing jig at a moment’s notice.

Since his Tonight-Show takeover, in Feb., this year, Fallon has stuck to the script with his ultra-safe and unfunny monologues; has danced his way through the history of Hip-Hop “music,” and, as if further proof of his buffoonery was needed, waged a lip-sync battle with actor Paul Rudd, covering Tina Turner, Queen and Foreigner.

Apparently this is high humor! Cutting-edge stuff.

But really, what would you expect from the guy who secured his spot as a Saturday Night Live cast member with an impersonation of his idol Adam Sandler? Yes, the same stupid Adam Sandler who at one time commanded $20 million a picture. The same Adam Sandler whose success is not a testimony to his talent, but rather an indictment of society.

Grimacing and making goofy sounds will get you far in show business.

Western culture was dealt a blow in the fifties when kids everywhere were exposed to that lunatic in war paint, Little Richard. How we went from the subtle charm of The Glenn Miller Orchestra to the tribal screams of “Wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom” is one for the ages.

Soon, the supposed enforcer of past oppressions, the most evil entity to walk the planet, the dreaded white man, most often of the W.A.S.P persuasion, had to atone. When livelihoods are at stake and, more importantly to some, the threat of being labeled an old-fashioned outcast—artistic principles tend to crumble. For proof, all one has to do is tune into a red-carpet event, where, for a living, grown men, giddy as schoolgirls, quiz J-Lo or some other Low, as to which designer she’s wearing .

Perhaps I should clarify my opening statement. Jimmy Fallon represents perfectly the prototypical man of the West whom media like to promote. Nonthreatening, neutered, eager to please all people, and obsequious—as if to acknowledge, if not by his words then by actions, his own deficient coolness quotient (which explains the all-black band, the Legendary Roots Crew).

Like his predecessor, and, hopefully, his replacement Jay Leno, the presence of an all-black band gives the show, in Jay’s own words, a “more urban feel,” never mind that a typical Tonight Show audience is whiter than a farmer’s market in Vermont.

As when a new James Bond movie is released, any talk of The Tonight Show will ultimately revert back to reminiscing about past glories. Over the last twenty years, baby boomers, the most self-important generation ever, have elevated Johnny Carson to near-deity status. Exhibiting no sign of real talent, Carson was nothing more than a failed magician, who morphed into a late-night court jester, often donning drag as Aunt Blabby, and on more than one occasion taking a pie in the face. So, when you think about it, Fallon fits the mold perfectly.

I’m sure he’ll make it in spite of himself; he knows all the right people, kisses all the right rings and says all the right things, which is nothing much at all.

That’s entertainment!

*****

Kerry Crowel is as of yet an unsigned screenwriter with an interest in political and social satire. And will probably get a guest spot on the Tonight Show.

Don’t Believe State-Department & Media Brief On Ukraine

Foreign Policy, Media, Russia

The division of Ukraine is impending if a political solution is not negotiated, with one part cleaving to Europe; the other to Russia. Also upon us is the second Cold War between the US and Russia, says Russian historian Stephen Cohen of The Nation.

Cohen is the only learned voice among the media monolith currently expatiating on the Kiev riots.

“Preposterous” is how Cohen has characterized Vice President Joe Biden’s demand that the democratically elected Ukrainian President Yanukovych withdraw forces from Maidan Square. Equally outrageous is the Obama Administration’s demand that the democratically elected president step down before elections are held next year, a demand with which the Stupid Party agrees.

Listen to the Cohen interview on the John Batchelor Show.