CNN grabbed a handful of undecided Iowa voters, gave them a rotary dial and threw them in a room during the Republican debate Wednesday.

If a candidate said something the voters liked, the voters would turn their knobs to the right, indicating a positive reaction. If a candidate said something the voters didn't like, the voters would turn their knobs to the left, indicating a negative reaction.

Then, CNN mashed the real-time responses with the video and fed it to us as news.

Check out the negative reaction to Alan Keyes.

Labels: media, politics, polls

I'm a huge Ron Paul fan. Watch John Stossel drool when asking Ron if he'd even let the state's legalize heroin.

Labels: media, politics

I guess I complained too early about the media name-dropping the Nebraska mall shooter.

Now, we're getting video footage of him walking into the mall and cocking his AK-47. Is our media capable of any restraint? Am I a moron to think this encourages other "troubled teens" to go psycho in front of security cameras?

Politicians and the media are always competing for my hatred. I never thought I'd say the media were winning that battle.

Labels: media, politics

Another young guy went on a crazy shooting spree. Then, way too many news outlets plastered the killer's name and face on TV.

When will the morons running our media learn that immortalizing these guys' names encourages future behavior in like-minded people? We don't need to learn about the killer's sad poems or video games habits. I don't care that he never got laid.

Yes, there are lessons to learn from these shootings. But making a man famous, who could never get noticed without a gun, teaches a pretty solid lesson to future shooters. Treating these killers like nameless, faceless assholes is a necessity.

Labels: media

Fat kids could stay fat and have bad hearts when they get old.

Luckily, ABC News has created a graphic for those literate enough to get to a news site, but not literate enough to read a story based on common sense.


Check out this brilliant quote from a pediatrics professor:

"Children who have been obese for much of their childhood will enter adulthood with chronic health problems that will only continue if their BMI remains high."

So, if they stay fat, the problems they got for being fat will stay with the fat? OMFG! I never saw it coming! How is this news?

Labels: fatties, media

Johnny Rowlands, Kansas City's eye in the sky, drives an Escalade with the license plate "CHOPPR9" (for NewsChopper 9). He pulled into a Sonic near my house this morning.


I'm no Rowlands hater, but this pushes me in that direction. Piloting the coolest traffic copter in Kansas City isn't enough. He has to have a giant arrow, in the form of a personalized-plated Escalade, pointing him out on the street? What an egomaniac.

You sicken me Rowlands. And Sonic? Blech. Toppings have no place on the bottom bun.

By the way, I don't know what kind of dirt you have on Micheal Mahoney, but apparently it's enough to keep him from out-stache-ing you at work.

Labels: egomaniacs, media

Mike Huckabee keeps trying to trick everyone into thinking he's the Republican, less orally pleased Bill Clinton. He'll really be pushing it once he starts playing guitar on the modern day version of Arsenio Hall (Ellen?).

Labels: media, music, politics

America's been hankering for a Rosie fix. And we might finally get it.

Under one scenario, Ms. O’Donnell would be given the 9 p.m. slot each weeknight on MSNBC, where she would go head-to-head with two heavyweights of cable talk: “Larry King Live” on CNN and “Hannity & Colmes” on Fox News.

That's right, you'll be able to see the three ugliest faces on television at the exact same time.

Labels: media, tv, ugly people

Labels: media, tv

I just got done watching Matt Lauer interview Larry Craig. I don't think Larry really won too many points with the interview, but he didn't really hurt his case either.

Matt tried to put his "I'm a legitimate newsman" face on, but it just didn't take. You could tell he was trying to catch Larry Craig off guard with some of his questions. Matt's best line was when he told Larry that Larry's dad probably didn't take gay bathroom sex into consideration when he told his son to work hard when he grew up. I also thought Matt might get him when he said "what if you're bisexual instead of gay?" Larry was too quick on his feet for that one.

Overall, I thought Matt wasn't exactly Mike Wallace, or even Andy Rooney for that matter. Call me for some tips next time, Matt. In fact, here's a freebie question you could've asked: "Senator, is it possible that at some point in your life you accidentally did a bunch of drugs, had gay sex, and forgot about it?" I bet that one would've got him.

Labels: media, police, this is america

Thanks to media portrayals of Kansas, I now hate The Wizard of Oz.

I was watching the K-State-Colorado game this weekend, and the broadcast relied heavily on The Wizard of Oz for its "about town" footage. I would've preferred footage of Manhattan's Applebees, that's how much I'm sick of the Wiz.

Apparently, we haven't done enough as a state in the nearly 70 years since Oz debuted. Everyone unfamiliar with Kansas thinks we all encounter tornadoes as much as people in Florida deal with hurricanes.

This is bullshit.

Labels: media, state of kansas

Remember SARS? Remember waking up in a cold sweat at 3 am after nightmaring that you got infected with SARS after a visit to Chinatown?

SARS was far weaker than the Bird Flu. Sars mortality rate was at about 10 percent. About eight thousand people got it, about eight hundred died. Bird Flu got 199 people out of 327, at a 61 percent mortality rate. SARS was more contagious, as people tend to associate with other people far more than they associate with birds.

Aren't we due for another "general freakout" story. Shouldn't a new illness come out of the woodwork? Or is the mystery disease storyline dead? Come on, Asia, we're counting on you.

Labels: media, RIP

USA Today's got me on a roll. Maybe I should just start an anti-USA Today blog. But, then I'd have to read more USA Today.

"Yet another music format is merging onto the infotainment superhighway, and it may help force the CD player down a one-way street to the eight-track landfill."

What is this absolute wonderment of infotaining, CD-slaying goodness? The MVI disc, of course. The "format poised to succeed the fading DVD-Audio and SACD." Yup, you heard right. Your precious DVD-Audio and SACD discs are approaching worthlessness.

MVI lets you get audio and video off the disc. It plays in DVD players (good), computers (even better), but not CD players (confusing and inconvenient).

Yes, the record labels are trying to invent new technologies to get you to buy ALL of Yung Joc's Hustlenomic$, not just choice selections like "I'm A G." Otherwise, Yung Joc won't be able to justify the dollar sign as an "s" in the title. Help a G out, will ya?

Idea: put more than three good songs on most albums, and people will buy them. For years, consumers were forced to buy an entire album just to enjoy the few good songs there. Labels milked it as long as they could, even to the point of forcing listeners to get music illegally in order to get it the way they wanted: digitally, and per song (free helped). Find a way to move your content online, because the audience you're trying to capture with this new format lives online. As of this writing, there's not even a Wikipedia entry for MVI.

Labels: media, music, usa today

I know, I shouldn't be reading USA Today.

A grade schooler would've been proud had they written the front-page story in today's Money section: "People buy small cars even though they can be deadly."

The gist of the story: madmen everywhere are buying more small cars, despite their horrifying safety levels, just to save a dime on gas.

Just look at this devastating chart:



This means, that if you're in a small car, you have a 0.0108 percent chance of dying in a car accident, versus the much safer 0.0055 percent chance of dying if you're in an SUV. This chart should be titled: "Foolish cheapskates and their small-car death wish."

When you're talking "deaths per million," and the highest number barely cracks 100, you probably don't have enough to write this particular scare story.

To further kill the story's validity, USA Today includes this chart:



Thank God they put that drastic 0.2 percent jump in small car sales in bold, otherwise I might've seen that 4.2 percent increase in SUV sales. Why did that number go up? Where's my "People buy more SUVs even though they can't afford the payments or gas" story?

Come on, USA Today.

Labels: media, usa today