A Liberal Agenda

The other day I was listening to Colin Cowherd (yes, that's his name) on ESPN Radio. Pretty decent show. Entertaining, especially when you consider the rest of the programming across the network.

Cowherd (it's ridiculous) was making 3 points over and over that ranged from completely correct to completely incorrect. The first point was, and pardon me for paraphrasing, "women's basketball is boring..." True. Yes. It's very boring. Fundamentally sound, but unbelievably boring.

I was fortunate enough to be talking to Gavin Maloof for 8 seconds in Las Vegas at last month's Ultimate Fight Night (UFC) at the Red Rock Hotel and Casino. Maloof started telling UFC President Dana White about the Sacramento Monarchs of the WNBA, and their run towards the title. Wow! Really? Does he really care? I know he owns the team and all, but seriously? Watching White feign excitement over this was unbelievable, truly. But Maloof was genuinely interested.

If you look at him you can tell he's never thrown or caught a ball in his life, and maybe that's why he can find excitement when it comes to women's basketball. But in truth, it's a total bore. Yes, it's good for women to play basketball, and probably helps those who do on certain levels. Watching it, promoting it, pretending it's not the lamest thing of all time, different story.

Cowherd's second point (don't worry, we'll get to the reason I'm writing this) was that "Notre Dame is back...deal with it..." He couldn't have said it more times if he wanted to. So, is Notre Dame back? And of course we mean the Fighting Irish Football squad. Notre Dame is definitely back from mediocrity, there's no question about that. Charlie Weis has made the difference for sure.

Weis is currently operating with the same type of recruits Ty Willingham and Bob Davie had: high level. Brady Quinn was a top QB in the midwest/country when he left Ohio for Notre Dame. Weis has made him better. Many of the other players, of course, were bigtime recruits. This is afterall, Notre Dame. So are they back? Yes, they are back from a place they never should have been. BUT, will they be this succesful once Brady Quinn leaves? Tough to say. Is Weis that incredible? Ummm, doubt it. If you use ESPN.com you'd think Weis could turn any Pop Warner team into national champions on the collegiate level. HE'S THE GREATEST COACH EVER! EVAH!!!

Will Jimmy Clausen, the nation's #1 QB and overall recruit take the reigns from Quinn and comtinue the Notre Dame success story? Could happen. But I'd like to see the Irish get through THIS season without 3 losses. If they lose 3 games, are they still back, Colin? I say they lose at least 3 games, the first of which will be this saturday versus Penn State. Georgia Tech, giant killers for years, are just another average team Notre Dame had serious problems with. The other Top 10 teams in the country, IMO, would have rolled them. This concept that teams are historical "giant killers" is ridiculous to me. Every year teams have new players, and new coaches, so regardless of the uniform they're wearing, I don't buy that programs are "giant killers." The same way I don't believe you never draft a Penn St running back. I think someone put that to rest...

Notre Dame, good team, definitely Top 10-20, maybe better...but the fact that they're back is irrelevant. They've always had the talent; it's the coaches who have sucked.

Oh, and btw, Notre Dame would still get smoked by Ohio State tomorrow. I'll take Ohio State's improving/reloaded defense and offense versus Notre Dame's great offense and still shitty defense any day.

Finally, and this is the reason for the post, we need to touch on Cowherd's commentary about the media. That's right, stepping out of the box, here is the sports maniac: "The media has a liberal agenda...deal with it...that's why Rush Limbaugh and Hannity are so successful...because there's a liberal agenda...because 80% of the media votes Democrat...I'm a fiscal conservative but a social moderate..." Ok, big guy, relax. Too much is coming out the mouth all at once here. Needless to say, the fiscal conservative/social moderate thing is the greatest comment a jackass could ever make. Paraphrased: "I'm really into my money, think racial and social inequality would be great if it fixed itself, but really don't want to have a lot to do with changing any of that. I'm doing just fine. How are you? Oh, that was just a rhetorical question since I don't really care...but I do like my money..."

There's too much here. I'll just stick with the media aspect.

There's not a liberal "agenda" in the media. In fact, there's a conservative "agenda" within the media. Huh? What? Seriously? Yeah, I'm dead fucking serious.

What does exist is a libeal "bias" in the media, but not an intentional one. The conservative "agenda" has given us FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, Bortz, Savage, and the rest. That's an "AGENDA." An agenda is a "plan." An agenda is an "outline." An agenda is "a plan to be acted on intentionally." A bias is something completely different. But what an agenda is, and a bias isn't, is more severe, more omnious, intentionally, and in this case, it's meant to deceive...at least when coming from the mouth of a jackass, and in this case it is.

When I say there's a liberal "bias" I do not mean to justify Bernard Goldberg's crappy book about why and how he didn't get a job. That there are liberals up and down the news media chain, and being a conservative like Goldberg, that's bothersome. I'm not saying that. I am saying there are a lot more democrats working in the print media than there are conservatives, and that only makes sense.

For all the intelligent people who goto college, get degrees, and then head out to the world to find jobs there's a few who take a really hard, challening, sometimes rewarding, but rarely financially, job working in the print media. These people often care about discerning the truth. Discerning two sides to a story. Discerning who is right or wrong, even if writing that Huge Chavez is helping his own people, while George W. Bush is fomenting a coup to overthrow a democratically elected President (which of course HAPPENED).

Now I'm not saying I'm a fan of Chavez, or Bush, or anyone else. It's just an example. But it's more likely than not that members of the print media aren't driven by profits. If they were they'd take their dedication to hard work and place it on Wall Street, or in some sales department. But they don't. They try to serve a higher purpose. Many times that higher purpose is uncovering the lies and the bullshit perpetuated by corporations and Wall St itself. Even if the issue stretches all the way to a war in Iraq, you can still bring it back to profits on many levels. Most of the people in the print media become counters to those working only to make as much coin as possible. The two, somewhat naturally, become opposed. This is where you find your "liberals" in the media, and the reason you do. They serve as a balance, a reality check, to what is often the dishonest, or just greedy motives of a corporate culture.

Don't get me wrong, for I'm not saying all who are motivated by profit are greedy, dishonest, etc. That could not be further from the truth. However, the people in the print media are not driven by that motive and are therefore more likely to uncover the truths of a story. It just so happens that the truths, when not blinded by profit motives, often fall to the libearl side of things. For example, every liberal and conservative knows that if you were to quadruple education spending in the inner cities, reduce class sizes to 5 kids per room, and pay teachers more, you'd end up with a MUCH BETTER education system. However, that would be extremely costly, and few would be willig to pay for it, especially "fiscal conservatives..." But if a print media person reports this story that person is now a "liberal..." Afterall, the journalist's bottom line isn't changing whether he/she writes the story, or not. But by writing it the person clearly falls into the "liberal" category.

A journalist may have a liberal bias, sure, because that person is a human being, and happens to be more liberal. The person's choice to be in the media is a product of who they are. But to say that person has an "agenda" is completely dishonest. Usually the people who say that are the types of people who actually do have "agendas," and that agenda is usually the desire to keep more money. FOX News was created WITH AN ACTUAL AGENDA to "balance" out the media. Hannity and Limbaugh serve an audience that's concerned with only God and money (and racism). They have AGENDAS. Reporters dont' wake up every day and say, "today I'm going to convince the world that we need to feed the homeless..." No, they don't. They wake up and cover a story that a profit-motivated person would never care to hear about. On the other hand, Limbaugh does wake up every day to tell people why we shouldn't feed the homeless. That's HIS AGENDA and his bias.

If the media truly wanted balance it should happen naturally. All the people concerned about it should be writers. Of course, this doesn't pay enough, so they're not. That would be the natural progression towards balance. Instead, you have good-hearted/good-minded people in the print media, and many happen to be Democrats. The media serves as a balance to the corporate world. The media itself should not be balanced, especially unnaturally, which it is with the likes of conservatives getting "equal time."

I could go on...but you get the point.

The irony of it all when it comes to this is Republicans/Conservatives always call for balance in the media. At the same time they've never been for equal rights in the work place. They've never been for EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYMENT. Best person gets the job is how they live. So if that's the case, why is it they believe there should be "balance in the media?" If there are 5,000 writers who are Remocrats, and 50 who are Republican, why should 25 from each group get a job? Afterall, this is against everything the conservative believes. Ahhh, but you can never discount the most important of all conservative beliefs: selfishness. It trumps all.

If a balanced media helps preserve the conservative self, they are all for that thing, whatever that thing may be.

Funny how that works.

(not editing right now)

KSM revealed to us...

"KSM told us about another...KSM connected us to...KSM revealed to us..." KSM? Hmmm. Who's that? Oh, of course, that's Khalid Sheik Muhammad! This is fantastic listening to Bush read about the puzzle connecting one terrorist to another terrorist, which of course gives him the right to use illegal means to interrogate anyone he wants, and listen to anyone's conversation. That's right, your phone could be tapped because you could be the person that leads the government to get to a man who was involved in planning 9/11. Yep. That's right. You need to hear this.

As the President reads it to you he to is learning about it for the first time. He has not a clue. It's soooooooo painful.

Basically, the President is trying to convince Congressfolk and ordinary Americans that what they do is necessary, even if it's legal. He's bringing down to the regular folk. He's simplifying, if you will. He's telling America that there are a lot of really smart people who have spent their lives studying, analyzing, reading, and understanding things that he has no clue about, and therefore you shouldn't either. Why? These people need to be ignored. These people pay attention to laws and rules and writings and analysis and Constitutions. These people are called judges, and lawyers, aka, the people qualified to ascertain whether or not we are following the laws. Whether or not the terrorists have won, since they're managing to make us trash our own Constitution. This is REGULAR TALK! GUY TALK! And gosh darnit, I'm going to give speeches...even if I have no fucking clue what anything I'm reading truly means. I'm your President. I'm George W. Fucking Idiot.

Btw, rest assured. A small group of selected congress people and CIA officers have been overseeing everything. That should make you feel confident.

The Big Difference

There's a big difference between a Bush speech and a speech given by any other President in American history: It's not believable.

That's right. I'm not talking about the words, etc., but just the fact that he's delivering the speech. We all know every politician has speechwriters, but when a speech is delivered you usually believe the person speaking COULD HAVE written it. I'll throw in every congress person as well. You believe the person MAY HAVE written the speech, or was at least involved. With Bush, no chance. That's the BIG DIFFERENCE.

Politicians don't write their own speeches for a host of reasons, one of which is they don't have time to sit there and pen them out. Some actually do this, or are actively engaged, i.e., John Kerr, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan. But not Bush. He just delivers the speech. What makes it worse is he actually does have the time! While every other President seemed to be working non-stop, this guy spends more time on vacation than any President in history. Of course he does this during a period when Americans are working harder than ever, and taking less vacation. The same way everything else in life has been handed to him, so are his speeches. It's just so embarrassing since you know he could never have written any of them.

How do I know this? Listen for the words he uses when he answers ad hoc questions. Simple, short, often time not making sense. Then listen to his speeches, with the grandiose terms and declarations. It's just one more thing that makes this whole Bush Presidency an utter embarrassment for the country. And it's just another reason not a word he says seems truly honest. In fact, it was a speechwriter who added the term "Axis of Evil" to his post 9/11 speech. Not only did Bush not read it, vet it, etc., but he didn't even realize the ramifications of the term, or the fact that the term doesn't even make sense.

It's just beyond already...