Stephen King and the news

I was browsing through the list of headlines that the Drudge Report has (it's how I can keep up nowadays, since I really haven't had the time to watch the news except for those rare times I happen to catch the tail end of the 4-hour long Today Show)...

*Alright, stop, rewind and edit.*

I was browsing through the list of headlines that the Drudge Report has and a headline called "Stephen King suggests Jenna Bush be waterboarded..." caught my attention. It's a Time.com interview by Jon Mahoney of the thriller author, Stephen King. I just thought King's musings about the state of the media nowadays were fascinating:

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STEPHEN KING: So who's going to be TIME Person of the Year?

TIME: I really don't know, there's a very small group of people who make that decision.

I was thinking, I think it should be Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.

Really?

Yeah. You know, I just filmed a segment for Nightline, about [the movie version of his novella] The Mist, and one of the things I said to them was, you know, "You guys are just covering — what do they call it — the scream of the peacock, and you're missing the whole fox hunt." Like waterboarding [or] where all the money went that we poured into Iraq. It just seems to disappear. And yet you get this coverage of who's gonna get custody of Britney's kids? Whether or not Lindsay drank at her twenty-first birthday party, and all this other s---. You know, this morning, the two big stories on CNN are Kanye West's mother, who died, apparently, after having some plastic surgery. The other big thing that's going on is whether or not this cop [Drew Peterson] killed his... wife. And meanwhile, you've got Pakistan in the midst of a real crisis, where these people have nuclear weapons that we helped them develop. You've got a guy in charge, who's basically declared himself the military strongman and is being supported by the Bush administration, whose raison d'etre for going into Iraq was to spread democracy in the world.
So you've got these things going on, which seem to me to be very substantive, that could affect all of us, and instead, you see a lot of this back-fence gossip. So I said something to the Nightline guy about waterboarding, and if the Bush administration didn't think it was torture, they ought to do some personal investigation. Someone in the Bush family should actually be waterboarded so they could report on it to George. I said, I didn't think he would do it, but I suggested Jenna be waterboarded and then she could talk about whether or not she thought it was torture. And then the guy from Nightline said, "Well, obviously you've not been watching World News Tonight with Charlie Gibson." But I do — I watch 'em all!

You might be one of the few people who does.
We're news junkies in my house.

Do you actually think Britney and Lindsay should be on our cover?
Yeah, I do.

Sort of a, 'This is what the media's actually interested it, so let's just put it out there' thing?
I think there ought to be some serious discussion by smart people, really smart people, about whether or not proliferation of things like The Smoking Gun and TMZ and YouTube and the whole celebrity culture is healthy. We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics — trying to play a serious part in the world — to a culture that's really entertainment-based. I mean, I know people who can tell you who won the last four seasons on American Idol and they don't know who their f------ Representatives are.

But you've been well in the public eye for decades now. Is it pretty blatant how much worse it's gotten?
It's worse every year. And the guy says to me — the Nightline guy — I didn't get the guy's name. Granted, I haven't been feeling real well and it was a long day of interviews. But he said to me, "If we didn't cover cultural things, we wouldn't be covering you and The Mist, and promoting the movie." And I'm like, "Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan aren't cultural." They aren't political. They're economic only in the mildest sense of the word. In fact, if I had to pick somebody, some celebrity who has had some impact this year, some sort of echo in the larger American life, I would say Hannah Montana. That whole issue of online ticket sales and scalping fascinates me. There are [legitimate] issues there about the Internet, so that actually does seem to have some cultural significance. But Britney? Britney Spears is just trailer trash. That's all. I mean, I don't mean to be pejorative. But you observe her behavior for the past five years and you say, "Here's a lady who can't take care of her kids, she can't take care of herself, she has no retirement fund, everything that she gets runs right through her hands." And yet, you know and I know that if you go to those sites that tell you what the most blogged-about things on the Internet are, it's Britney, it's Lindsay. So I think it would be terrific [to have them as TIME Persons of the Year]. There would be such a scream from the American reading public, sure. But at the same time, it's time for somebody to discuss the difference between real news and fake news.

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I didn't even read the rest of the story, but so true. Takes me back to the media theory days of "gatekeeping."

Interesting. The guy's brilliant and freaky.

(Pic from the Time.com story)


Thoughts later...

Thanksgiving overflow

Can hardly believe it's that time of the year again. Well, Florida "fall" weather makes it even harder to believe so.

That excuse to eat an exorbitant amount of food, spend tons of money and deck the halls with boughs of holly.

Ooooh...and the new Relient K Christmas album should be out soon too. But I digress.

The American holiday season is now becoming an exercise of excess. (Not that we don't already do that every other day of the year.)

1. Excess of food - bring on the pounds!
2. Excess of shopping - 4 am doorbusters!
3. Excess of decor - gigantic blow-up snowglobe!

Despite the commercialization of the holiday season, there's something about it that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside. (Yeah, cheese grits, but true.) So many memories of holidays past come flooding in, reminding me of how good I've really got it. It reminds me of how blessed I've been through all these years. It reminds me to be THANKFUL for what I've got, instead of long for what I don't.

God has given me 22 wonderful years of health, happiness, love and grace. And as if that's not enough, he pours on the blessings. And then some.

Talk about an overflow? My cup runneth over.

Death by media crucifixion

I happened to catch the Today Show yesterday morning (a rare instance nowadays), and Matt Lauer interviewed a husband who is now considered a suspect in his third wife's death and his fourth wife's disappearance. If you're not familiar with the story, read up. Watch the interview here:


Exclusive: Peterson talks to TODAY

Then today, Lauer asked two "experts" to analyze the interview, scrutinizing the accused man's body language, manner of speech, and choice of words.

As a budding journalist, I mostly paid attention to the way Lauer asked his questions and his follow up questions. I respect him so much as a journalist. But his questions seemed to be the kind that lawyers ask during a trial. What was he trying to do? Try to force a confession out of Peterson and consider the revelation a worthy addition to Lauer's "best journalistic moments" retirement video montage? I watched as the man, Drew Peterson, answered Lauer's questions with indifference and nonchalance, a reaction that seemed to have convinced the "expert" this morning that he is indeed guilty.

The bottom line is, the media seemed to have made up their mind about the case before it is even tried in a court of law.

I love the Today Show. And Matt Lauer for that matter. And journalism is my true love. But I think this is an instance where the journalism gets in the way of justice.

Whatever happened to innocent before proven guilty? The right to a fair trial, anyone?

I am in no way defending this man. He could be guilty for all I know. (Remember Scott Peterson and his pregnant wife, Lacy?) But that's just it. I don't know. And neither does anybody else, until the case is put on trial.

The media's job is to tell the story as it is. And yes, some part of the job calls for interpretation and speculation. The job calls for asking questions about the current system.

But does that mean asking questions before the current system does?

Another part of it is that if this case has to be tried with a jury, some of the potential members of that group may have seen the interview, and might have been swayed by the way Lauer packaged the story. Although the jurors are asked to check their prior assumptions at the courtroom door, and to forget everything they have known about the case thus far, Lauer's interview may just alter the case, and a fair and just trial may have just been thrown out the window.

Just a thought.

Yet Another Dance RAWR Dance Blog Entry

Just because I ♥ these guys! I can't wait to see them on Friday!!! Aaaahhhh!!!





I have a feeling it's gonna be amazing!

At 22, the start of something new?

After 3 months of uncertainty (and counting), it's so weird to be back here in DC. It feels so much like home now. I know exactly where things are and I don't feel like such a lost puppy anymore, even though I'm walking downtown by myself. So sitting here on a bench in the National Mall, the Washington Monument to the left and Capitol Hill on the right, I have a feeling that this is where I ought to be.

Going back home to Jacksonville will be interesting (yet again). I love it here so much. Too bad my family and friends and home church has to be so far away. The job interviews went really well, I'm just hoping they would give me a call in the next couple of weeks.

DC looks so different in the fall than in the summer. For one, there are definitely less tourists around. It's a lot quieter. It's colder and the leaves are starting to change colors. I can't imagine what this place will look like when the Mall is covered in snow, or around the holidays. Maybe I'll get to find out soon enough. This visit was an awesome birthday present!

So, I'm officially 22 now. Wow, I'm getting older. I don't feel any different, just ready to start the next phase of my life. The independent phase. The moving on with my life phase. The growing up phase. I know that at some point, when bills come in the mail and things get kinda lonely and life isn't going as planned, I'll start wishing I was in college again, living at home, with no financial responsibilities, except for my monthly car payment. But right now, I'm ready. If God will open a door here, then I'll know that this is where I ought to be. For now, at least.

The remaining question is, am I ready to say hasta luego to reporting for now?