Day: July 29, 2003

L. Brent Bozell at His Worst

It’s people like L. Brent Bozell III who pretty much prevent me from ever characterizing myself as a conservative. Frankly I agree a lot of the time with the Media Research Center, but then Bozell goes off with stuff like this criticizing Bravo’s recent spate of homosexual-oriented programming,

Such programming “may be acceptable for that element in our culture that’s already earning an advanced degree in Sin Acceptance,” he wrote. “But it’s also acceptable to the gang at NBC, and the suits upstairs at General Electric?”

Sin Acceptance? Ugh. Look, I just want lower taxes so I can better afford my sinful cable bill. All that social conservative nonsense is so 1982.

Source:

Gay-Themed TV Gains a Wider Audience. Bernard Weinraub and Jim Rutenberg, New York Times, July 29, 2003

From My Blog to John Leo’s Column

Update:

After I wrote this, John Leo sent me a nice e-mail apologizing for not citing me. As I responded to him, this article was actually written semi-tongue-in-cheek. I realize that professional journalists don’t always have time to track down who was the first to point out this or that error.

Henry Hanks sent me an e-mail today alerting me that John Leo had picked up my report about the BBC’s convenient editing of stories at its web site.

Leo writes,

The BBC, probably the most relentlessly anti-American organization in Britain, recently altered a transcript of one of its own stories, thus misquoting itself. The story dealt with Park Jong-lin, a 70-year-old veteran of the Korean War who “served in the North Korean army fighting against the imperialist American aggressors and their South Korean accomplices.” In the altered version quote marks now surround “imperialist American aggressors” and the BBC’s reference to “accomplices” was changed to “allies.”

Prediction: Because Internet bloggers now watch the wayward BBC carefully, more touched-up transcripts will come to light. The BBC, by the way, falsely reported the Jessica Lynch rescue as a made-for-TV special faked with U.S. soldiers firing blanks for the cameras. (Change that transcript!)

This is the fourth or fifth time something I’ve blogged about here has wound its way into a national story which is kind of cool. But come John, if bloggers are doing such a good service how about throwing us a little love with a link or at least a mention when you incorporate our scoops into your column?

I’ll even make it a quid pro quo and promise to always link to your column when I incorporate parts of it into my blogging.

Source:

Mangled quotes take on a life of their own. John Leo, Universal Press Syndicate, July 27, 2003.

Family Reunion Time

This weekend Lisa and I went to the family reunion of my father’s family. Okay, family reunions probably aren’t that big of a deal to most people, but due to the odd circumstances that followed after my parents’ divorce, these were people I hadn’t seen in 25 years or so.

Then out of the blue I get a call from one of my Great Aunt’s asking if I’d like to come to the family reunion. A paper flier ensues and the next thing I know I’m uncomfortably trying to make small talk with people who for a number of reasons I didn’t really spent too much time with as a child, and then not at all since around the time I was 13 or so.

The really odd thing about being in the middle of this sort of situation is how people perceive you. I happen to have a very close relationship with, shall we say, the instigator of our little family feud, and people tend to assume that must mean I agree with or at least have some sympathy with this person’s antics, which could not be further from the truth.

My Great Aunt was apparently a bit concerned that she might not get a friendly reception when she called me.

Anyway the lesson is that family feuds really suck, especially when you’re just one degree from the epicenter of the confrontation. Unfortunately, sometimes people who create these situations really are irreasonable and intractable and there’s not much you can do about it.