Medium Happiness

I thought I was mostly done blogging on WordPress, having decamped for the lazier, instantly gratifying, and more-heavily-commented-on pastures of Facebook. But then today I read a hilariously bad oped from Michelle Malkin, one of Fox News’ finer hate spewers, regarding the shooting in Tucson and I couldn’t help myself.

For those of you who don’t know her, this thing pictured below, although small and harmless looking, is Michelle Malkin, one of FoxNews premium newsman.

Backstory

Rightly or wrongly, some news outlets have been leveling some of the blame for the Tucson shooter’s actions at the hyper-intolerant views Fox News and their brethren tend to promulgate. Conveniently, this has created a nice opportunity for the Foxies (including Malkin) to put a new spin on the old sayings “mainstream” or “liberal” media, as they’re now calling it the “Blamestream” media. LOL rolling on the floor. So keep that in mind for this next part, Fox News has a viewer base that actually likes the neat little packaging of dumbed-down language like “Blamestream.” *

*These are the same people who criticized the outlandishness of ebonics 15 years ago, too.* But contradiction and irony and sanctimony are ideas these people do not acknowledge.

Anyhow, the other day Michelle Malking publishes an OpEd titled: Idiocracy: Conservatives who say “job-killing” are spreading hate. Apparently, Malkin likes to use the phrase Idiocracy as a sort of shroud for her pieces, using it after a colon and before the full headline.

As I said before, hypocritical awareness and sense of irony are not the strong suit of your average, frothy-mouthed Fox newsperson, so I am not surprised by Malkin’s clueless invocation of the word Idiocracy. My research leads me to believe the first use of the word Idiocracy was in the title of Mike Judge’s film, Idiocracy, put out in 2006. Even if Malkin was aware of the word’s provenance her use of it is still dubious. Idiocracy was a film that was meant to be an on-the-nose idictment of the very kind of congrats-for-being-stupid culture outlets like Fox News are spawning. In the movie we see what life might be like if indoctrinating noise and propoganda, underwritten by mega corporations, one day ruled our lives. It’s a depiction of a world in which words like “Blamestream media” would be accepted and repeated by mindless minions.

Don’t listen to these people.

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Last year my predictions for a cold and snow drenched winter sort of came true. I got the snow part right, but where it wound up falling, I got wrong. The mid-Atlantic got hammered and we in the Northeast didn’t get all that much.

This year, my predictions more or less fall in line with AccuWeather’s, which, from what I’ve read, are the same as the Farmer Almanac’s. Anyhow,  here’s what they’re saying:

I’m not quite sure what to make of Wintry Battle Zone. It could mean not a lot of snow and just a lot of cold; kind of a raw deal. I love the winter because of snow, take it away and it kind of sucks. I guess that’s why people who don’t enjoy snowsports usually don’t like winter.

Here are my official predictions for the North East:

-A really cold Thanksgiving

-The whitest Christmas in a long time

-Frigid January and February with moderate snow amounts

When I read something in the news that’s indefensibly bad and gross, I usually track down the offending writer’s email address or Twitter feed, and let them know why they stink.

This morning Carly Baldwin, a writer for the traditionally decent Metro US-New York edition subway paper, found herself in the crosshairs of my rebarbative, media watch dog invective.

Here’s what got it all started (checkout the highlighted text box), followed by my email:

My email:

Dear Ms. Baldwin,

Michael Cesari