I just want to clear the air of something that is on one hand funny, but also sadly representative of the conservative movement in this country. I’m talking about the ultra right-wing’s dissociative behavior where its members continue to prove how out of touch they are with reality. FOX “News” is leading the pack with its slander and blatant lies, but more importantly the fuel it is giving to comedians everywhere. For anyone under the age of 35 who attended university or for anyone else in this world under about 30 years old (or for that matter with half a brain), the term “tea bagging” is a familiar one. FOX “News” thinks it has something to do with protesting taxation, but they better think again. Keith Olbermann, the MSNBC commentator and former sportscaster, is certainly familiar with the term and wrapped as many euphemisms as possible into this 10 minute piece the other night (so to speak).

But first, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the definition of tea bagging, here are two options to consider thanks to UrbanDictionary.com:

First: Tea bagging

The act of lowering one’s balls onto someones face, or into their mouth while they are laying down. Kind of resembles dipping a tea bag into a hot cup of water.

Second: Tea bagging

A horribly misguided attempt by the most extreme of the American conservative right to find some basic form of party unity by lashing out against everything that the Obama administration has done since entering the White House.

“The Republican tea-bagging of the White House is a glorified waste of time and effort propagated by the Fox News Network in order to boost their TV ratings.”

“Hey Bob, did you go to yesterday’s Republican Tea Bagging Protest?”

“No I didn’t, Joe, because I have a legitimate understanding of the way the economy works.”

See also: “grasping at straws”

See also: “immature hissy-fit”

UPDATE: I’m sorry, but this has just gotten the best of me and I had to include Rachel Maddow’s discussion with Air America correspondent Ana Marie Cox (really, that’s her name):

UPDATE II: I’m just so, so sorry! I have to up the ante once again as we show how Stephen Colbert Tea Bagged the Alamo or Glenn Beck or not at all… This whole thing is starting to feel like a party that Eliot Spitzer might have hosted at this hotel (but please take note that “in and out privileges are for registered guests only.”

The Huffington Post has two stories running right now discussing the child stars of Slumdog Millionaire. One of them starts like this,

“Two of the kids, Azharuddin Ismail and Rubina Ali, have returned to their homes in the slums (from their appearance at the Oscars). They have also gone back to their English language school, the tuition of which is part of their film payment.

On Friday Ismail was photographed getting hit by his father and as of Sunday, had taken ill, vomiting and with a temperature of 103 degrees…”

It goes on, but I won’t because, as you’ll see shortly, I refuse to on the principal that this is essentially poverty pornography. This first article was written on March 1st and currently has over 1,040 comments.

In complete contrast, Jim Luce is the founder of Orphan’s International who, for more than a decade, has done tremendous work to help exactly the type of children featured in this film. Luce has written an admirable piece describing exactly what must be done to rectify the conditions described (and pictured) in the first post. His post is from yesterday, the 3rd, and has one comment: from this blogger. A shame, for sure…

Movies make money and can, with the proper direction, shed light on an otherwise underserved cause. Photographic and written journalism can be wonderful tools to open the world’s eyes to the plight of others as well, but none of these should be used to take advantage of the impoverished as many seem to do so often. Luce sums up his argument as such:

“If the filmmakers do not help do more with their millions to transform the lives of Mumbai’s dirty and begging children than pay the pitiful amount to endow ten kids, they have failed miserably. Slumdog would truly be the pornography of poverty.

Slumdog and those who profit from it — including its adult stars Dev Pate, Freida Pinto, and Anil Kapoor — are called to do bigger and better things. When they do, they will find that nothing they have ever accomplished will give them so much personal satisfaction. I know.”

My hope is that the mainstream media will pick up on this issue from Luce’s perspective, instead of the sensational stories which seem to sell more advertizing. I have emailed Rachel Maddow with the hope that perhaps she will interview Luce for his input, as she is one of the only ones I can see taking a fair approach to the subject at this point.

Lesley Stahl, of 60 Minutes fame, has posted an interview she conducted earlier in the week with Rachel Maddow of Air America and MSNBC fame. I have respect for Stahl and what she has done with her career, but I often find her interviews to be a bit soft and idyllic. Rachel Maddow, on the other hand, is an intellectual tempest in sheep’s clothing. A force to be reckoned with, this former Rhodes Scholar, AIDS activist and lover of labs (read the interview) is scary smart and a joy to read, listen to and watch.

The volley for serve between these two strong personalities was an entertaining, if at times fluffy read, but there was one comment that concerned me. Stahl asked,

“What about your competition, Fox? …Everybody thinks MSNBC is moving in that direction. …That people there are trying to make you into the un-Fox network, the liberal place to go.”

Maddow’s response discussed the intent behind the creation and shaping of each network and that this intent was of more importance in shaping each network.

“Well, if you think about the way that Fox was founded, though – Fox was founded by Roger Ailes. It was created from his perspective as a political operative. His background was as a Republican activist of the highest order. There’s no equivalent on MSNBC. I think MSNBC is trying to find hit shows.”

While I agree the two networks were founded on different principles, I wish Maddow has discussed the difference between commentary and news reporting, as it relates to any perceived “network agenda”. This line has become so blurred over the last decade that even the good journalists see themselves more as commentators rather than reporters and this has a detrimental affect on how news is reported and perceived.

On the other hand, one of the better parts of the interview was when Stahl asked Maddow about what she’s called “fake balance” in news shows.

LESLEY: … What is that and are you saying that your show is real balance?

RACHEL: I’m not saying that my show is real balance. But I think that the idea of fake balance is worse than not trying to be balanced at all. And what I mean by fake balance is to take any given political or factual issue, a news issue, and to approach it as if there’s a yes and no, pro and con, left and right take on it. On the issue of global warming, for example, that is something that interest groups on one side, as a political issue, tried to make that there was a real debate about the facts. And there really wasn’t a debate about the facts there. And to have a debate about the facts was sort of, at its root, dishonest, because it’s scientific information and, you know, fighting about the interpretation of what we ought to do about it them and whether or not the science is important and all of those things, absolutely fine. Fighting about whether or not we agree with the facts is an argument that is designed to reframe, and for the benefit of one interest group.

LESLEY: … The one you raise about global warming is really interesting because I’ve had to grapple with that myself. When you have the vice president of the United States, Cheney, arguing that global warming, whatever he said – I’m not quite sure he went so far as to say it was a crock, but close. Isn’t there some kind of a newsperson’s obligation to present that view when someone at that high a level is propounding that position?

RACHEL: … But then I think the news story is – the vice president of the United States is propounding radical ideas that are disproven by the facts. And he has taken a position, in contravention of what is known about this issue, which is a radical and counterfactual position and this is something that we should be talking about, about the vice president. The fact that he, in the position that he’s in, is taking that stance, itself becomes a story.

Like I said, Maddow is scary smart and really good at what she does. The interview is enjoyable and can be read in its entirety here.

Douchebaggery, according to Urban Dictionary:

1)The philosophy held by douchebags, holding that no one other than themselves (or perhaps their close associates) matters in the least bit, and thus that other human beings can and should be treated like complete excrement for little or no reason (and often for selfish reasons).

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has never been on my favorites list of TV talking heads, so I’ve often just thrown him into the lazy, self-loathing bunch of bobble heads and not thought much of it. I think this was a mistake, because as a blogger, I’m learning, apparently it should be in my blood to hate the guy. Well, these things sometimes take time and if Matthews continues to make comments like the one he made last Thursday on his Hardball show, then I’m inclined to think Tweety (as the blogosphere calls him) really is the douchebag most bloggers make him out to be.

First, take a look at the Matthews’ bashing from exactly a year ago in relation to the New Hampshire primary and Hillary Clinton’s win there. How quickly and widely this was spread throughout the media world, both online and off, came as a surprise to many. Media Matters wrote a great synopsis of it here, but one of the interesting parts is the description of Rachel Maddow’s role in her screenmate’s downfall in the blogging world.

“…Maddow’s on-air tag-team partner that night, right-wing pundit Pat Buchanan, announced that Clinton’s strong showing in New Hampshire, despite the torrent of predictions about her demise, meant that voters had “body-slammed” the press corps. Maddow saw her opening:

MADDOW: You want to know who they’re blaming for women voters breaking for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama? Who they’re blaming for this late showing in a big vote for Hillary Clinton? They’re blaming Chris Matthews. People are citing specifically Chris as a — not only for his own views — but also for as a symbol of what the mainstream media has done to Hillary Clinton.”

Now lets take a look at last Thursday. As you’ll see in the clip below, Matthews asks Liz Benjamin of the New York Daily News, for an explanation as to why Caroline Kennedy withdrew herself from consideration to the NY Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton.

“Did she withdraw because of a personal problem perhaps involving her marriage to Ed Schlossberg or did she withdraw because she got word from the vetters (yes that she had a tax problem or a nanny problem? Which was it, of those two?”

Benjamin responded to Matthews’ question by stating rumor and speculation from unnamed sources inside the governor’s (Patterson) office that it could have been a tax or nanny issue, but that there were also those “affair questions” being circulated on blogs. Before she could finish her sentence, Matthews interjected and said, “let’s stick to journalism. I don’t do that here. If it’s just blogging, let’s drop it. OK? If you have anything to report that’s hard, then report it. Don’t give me blog stuff here.”

Now to be fair, you can’t tell anyone with a byline at the New York Post ‘just the facts, ma’am’, but Matthews should have known that… But why bang on the blogs? Hasn’t he learned his lesson? He asked the question about an affair issue in the first place, didn’t he? Chris Matthews (here’s his own blog) might say he doesn’t discuss blogs, but they certainly discuss him. Oh, and why would he lie about “not doing blogs here”? How many times has Matthews reported on a news story first broken by bloggers? I know of many instances where I’ve seen him discuss news stories first broken by blogs, especially considering there are just as many political blogs on the Internet as there are technology blogs. One of these days he’ll come around.

I get all of my news and forms of digitized entertainment from the Internet. I have done so now for close to eight years. This isn’t to say I don’t watch television programming, I just choose to do so online. I don’t have cable and currently I don’t even have a TV. I have a couple of very nice laptop computers and a 10MB broadband connection which serves my needs more than adequately.

You might be asking yourself how on earth someone who writes about and discusses the state of mainstream media in this country is actually able to do so without cable… Well there is really a very simple answer to this: All of the news that is actually newsworthy on TV is also available on the Internet, without any of the other crap that comes along with the TV news. In addition, news almost always breaks online before you even see it on TV, read it in the newspaper, etc. (despite a couple of networks’ reassurances they have the “Breaking News”), I’ll decide for myself if it is “breaking”. Any of the associated commentary I want to see, I can do so online after the fact.

There are a couple of TV channels who actually work quite well with my method for information gathering and I appreciate them for it. Even with the embedded advertising (I don’t mind, as long as it isn’t intrusive and the volume raised), these networks are able to provide their content online: MSNBC and Comedy Central are the two that come to mind first. Because I spend a lot of time outside of the country, it is also important to me that I not have to spoof my IP address, therefore slowing any streaming video. Both MSNBC and Comedy Central allow me to watch programming from any IP address I damn well please. However, the content I watch on MSNBC.com and ComedyCentral.com is solely for the commentary, as well as the bizarre. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow (soon to come to MSNBC) round out one set and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert round out the other.

All of my actual news, I receive from approximately 60-70 RSS feeds I have set up in my reader, as well as strolling for domestic and international sources. This may seem like a lot, and at first it may seem overwhelming, but it forces me to look at what is actually news to my life. We each have different thresholds for what we want to consume as news; some may find they want to hear about the car accident, stabbing, house fire, cheating politician or set of twins that was born on New Year’s Day. However, others may want to let the general irrelevant buzz (irrelevant to my life, in this case) go by and concentrate instead on the news concerning their childrens’ education, parents’ health care, property tax rate, that little thing called war, national disasters or the issues discussed in the upcoming election (the real issues, nothing to do with flag pins or the number of houses) and whether or not you are going to vote. I encourage you to find out for yourself what your actual news wants and needs are and then choose where you get this news from, instead of allowing the networks, newspapers and commentators (posing as journalists sometimes) do it for you. If you would like suggestions for some starting points on where to find feeds or how I built up my network of contacts, please don’t hesitate to ask.