Saturday, July 16, 2011

Mulitply 365 Day 197 - TITIT #14 An unplanned rant

 

Just sitting down to blog a little because as I am typing some nonsense is on TV once again. “Who Do You Think You Are?” is on, a boring bit of tripe if every there was one. The premise is pretty simple, a celebrity goes in search of their family's past, a past that before was so important to them that they didn't bother with it until TV cameras were involved. Someone wake me when they air my favorite show, “Why Do You Think I Fucking Care?”


Well then, I guess that is as good a way as any to kick off a blog entry. Don't worry there is more, so much more.


Signs of the apocalypse; 4 women in the last three weeks say that I am losing weight, one even compliments the goatee, I kiss a lesbian in my local watering hole and it is July 16th and the Pittsburgh Pirates are not only 4 games above .500 but are in first place to boot. The last time they had a record this good this late in the season was 18 years ago, which was the last time they posted a winning record. Perhaps the Mayans were right, 2012 is just around the corner.


For all of the outrage over the Casey Anthony trial, there has been little detailed analysis over the News of the World/Rupert Murdoch scandal here in the states that may be a far more outrageous story. To break it down in a nutshell here is what happened. The News of the World is a Murdoch owned tabloid style paper in Great Britain. In an effort to scoop their competitors, the NOTW began hacking voicemails of some people. Some of the hackings, despite being illegal, would seem harmless enough in the grand scheme of things, such as finding out minor scuttlebutt among the royals and what not. But the story takes a turn for the far, far worse when it was learned that one of the phone being hacked was that of missing teenager Milly Dowler. Dowler's phone was allegedly hacked and the voicemails removed by people working for the NOTW, which created a false impression that the murdered teenager was in fact still alive and receiving messages when that wasn't the case at all. And the information in the voicemails became more fodder for the paper itself. Other victims of crime, such as family members of the 7/7 subway bombing and families of slain school girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, as well as phones to family members of dead UK soldiers were also hacked to feed the tabloid beast. While this would seem to be primarily an across the pond type of story, Murdoch has significant media holdings in the United States as well, including the Fox Network, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post to name a few. If it turns out that some of the phones being hacked were in fact people that were in the United States at the time of the hacking, celebrities here for shooting a movie and what not, we have a brand new ballgame in the realm of spectacle, because now you are violating the laws of two different countries and if there is one thing we can do with aplomb here in the states it is spectacle. In an effort of damage control, the head of the Wall Street Journal has already been fired, but that may be akin to putting a band aid on a bullet hole if this all breaks the wrong way. And I am thinking, couldn't happen to a nicer guy.


And since I mentioned the Casey Anthony bit in the previous paragraph, can we stop with the outrage over the verdict already? I get it, most people believe she killed her daughter (as do I) because having a baby interfered with her party girl lifestyle she wanted to lead. But at the end of the day we lock people up for what they did do, not what we think they did. And the prosecution in this case did an absolute horrendous job in providing any evidence in linking Casey to the death of Caylee. Sure, they did a great job of creating speculation, but that isn't evidence. I could speculate that the moon is made of cheese, that doesn't make it so, at some point I have to go to the moon, grab me a moon rock and bring it back and make a sandwich out of it or something to show that it is in fact cheese, otherwise I am just talking out my ass, which is pretty much how the prosecution played its proverbial hand in this case.


Another miscarriage of justice along the lines of stupid prosecutions would be the Roger Clemens steroid trial that seemed to get thrown out of court almost as fast as it arrived. In pretrial motions submitted to the judge, the judge made it clear that the wife of Andy Pettite, a former teammate of Clemens, could not be a witness for the prosecution in court because what she claims Clemens told Pettite who then relayed it to her would amount to hearsay testimony. So what does the prosecution do in day one of the trail but play a video and in the video are mentions of the very same testimony that the judge already ruled inadmissible. Check please, that's a mistrial and we are done here. When I mock “government work”, sure sometimes it is just a play on words, but when you see federal employees drop the ball this egregiously it sure makes phrases like that stick.


Well hell, if I didn't know better I think I just thought stuff.


3 comments:

  1. First, turn off the television and walk away. I have the radio on playing music. I'm working on my novel, uploading photos and making a cup of hot tea. I've stopped watching the news because it pisses me off too much. When ever I see it I get pissed at stupidity. Suggestion is to live in oblivion like me. Even rainy days are a surprise to me. Well that's a little bit of a bummer but I can't stop the rain if I knew so no big deal.

    Meanwhile, awesome that you have become a girl magnet of some sort. Don't ask questions, just say thank you and walk away so they can admire the view.

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  2. I usually don't watch much TV, all told this week I would be surprised if it was on more than 10 hours in 7 days (usually watching track and field or volleyball on Universal Sports). I tend to have on one of three things when I am blogging; Pandora, the stream of Fox Sports Radio or my latest guilty pleasure 977fm.com where I bounce between the 80's, 90's and alternative channels.

    As for being a magnet, I wouldn't go that far but at least I am not leper status either, lol.

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  3. Hey you are working it. Take what you can get. I learned that a long time ago. Hey I agreed to spend the day with a guy I dated a year ago and ended up having a great date yesterday. It turned into one of those 11 hour long dates that would have possibly turned into a weekend but he had guard drill today and tomorrow. If anyone would have told me I would even talk to him again after the break up I would have thought they were nuts but he waved a white flag. Maybe you are working your way to babe magnet. Play it while ya got it.

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