Jemele Hill gets it right

I’m often critical of ESPN (see the next post), but let me say that this column by Jemele Hill on the Duke Rape Case Dismissal is outstanding, far above typical ESPN.com quality. Excellent work by Ms. Hill and well worth reading.

Katie to Critics: Don’t Blame the Pretty Face

Katie Couric came out swinging against her blogworld critics today, calling them “ignorant of the way major news bureaus work” for their reaction to the growing scandal of her plagiarizing a Wall Street Journal article on television.

“What people don’t understand is that in addition to being a hard-hitting interviewer, award-winning presenter, and accomplished story framer I’m an empty suit who doesn’t write her own copy.” Smiled Couric. “I can’t be held responsible for everything that gets stuck under my nose and I read on-air to hundreds of people. It’s not like I work for a famous news division or something.”

Other network executives agreed, blaming the so-called ‘blogosphere’ for blowing things out of proportion. Brian Williams of NBC had this to say: “This so-called scandal is just a bunch of jealous coke-bottle-glasses-wearing fat balding guys in underwear in their mother’s basement complaining about us real journalists, who understand that borrowing from each other is part of the game. We don’t have time to do a so-called ‘investigation’ of every little thing that we get. That’s just not the way the news cycle is supposed to work.”

Couric’s predecessor, Dan Rather, commented while wearing a tin-foil hat and a crazy expression. “I would propose that what happened is that this famously right-wing propaganda rag changed their internet time stamps and released past-dated newspapers to make it look like she stole their material, when in fact it was just the opposite. It’s a lot like how the Republican company Microsoft rushed out an updated version of Word in order to discredit my documents about Bush’s time in the Air National Guard, which were completely true.”

Network sources indicated that Couric’s final punishment would be light, if any. “We don’t really mind that she stole material from somebody else. We mind a little bit that she got caught. But we’re impressed that she was able to quickly shift blame to her producers, so we don’t think we’ll be doing any follow-up anytime soon.”


UPDATE: Boy, is my face red! I had "Chris Matthews" instead of "Brian Williams" above. Whoops!

WikiConduct: The user-editable code of conduct!

We, the men and women womyn (christofascist douchebags not included) people of the blogosphere agree to adhere to and abide by break shove up your a$$ the following code of conduct Orwellian thought control in order to make the Internet a more hospitable place fascist dictatorship oppressive atmosphere.

Rule #1: No one will threaten anyone else except for those Chimpy Bushilterburton jackbooted thugs hippie-wannabe moonbat freaks Wikipedia submitters.

Rule #2: Bloggers will not be held responsible for what they allow to be said in their comments section by filth-spewing liberal trolls like those at the cesspool called the Huffington Post test edit please ignore

Rule #3: The deletion of inappropriate comments and whatever right-wingnuts say because it’s not worth reading anyways is not censorship morally justified equivalent to the book-burnings in the dark ages

Rule #4: Civility in discourse is as important in the blogosphere as in real life overrated

Rule #5: No one will post anything anonymously, because this leads to cowardly attacks on others just like our soldiers in Iraq just like the MSM just like the last two chickensh!t editors who edited this anonymously

Rule #6: All blogs will carry a warning that describes their content so as to prevent anyone from being offended suck except for Daily Kos! Kos Rulez! be smeared by the drive-by media in their ignorance ignore this code of conduct

Rule #7: A committee Star Chamber will be established that Surrendercrats will complain to about every right-wing blog to construct a do-not-blog list that the Rethuglicans will use against us just like the do-not-fly list to ensure conformance with these regulations and issue certifications to those blogs which meet this standard edicts against those who dare to resist the forces of civility

Rule #8: We will always act in a civilized manner to one another Jimmy Wales is a BUTTHEAD

Rule #9: Bite me

(Latest edits shown in blue)
(Previous edits shown in red with strikethrough and purple with strikethrough)
(Original shown in black with strikethrough)

Jason Cole: ADD Psychic

If you seek a reason for why athletes hold sportswriters in such contempt, look no farther than Yahoo! Sports analyst Jason Cole’s predictions of the best games of the upcoming NFL season. Somehow, he manages to mix inconsistency and incoherence in the same article, yet takes himself seriously the entire time. As an amateur satirist, I stand in awe of what must be the work of a master.

I have no idea why sportswriters persist in this madness. April is far too early to know which teams are good and which teams are bad. In fact it’s too early in September to really say this. After all, Chicago had the best offense in the NFL at the end of September last year, and that didn’t really pan out very well for them.

But Cole (and many others of his ilk) persist in telling us which games will be compelling as soon as the schedule’s released, as if his perception of the NFL season will have any bearing to reality in six months. He seems blissfully ignorant that in the past 3 seasons, we have 3 teams that have won their division each year: New England, Indy, and Seattle. The AFC North and NFC South have been musical chairs, with the other divisions won twice by the same team but with an interloper the other year.

Can we be sure that San Diego will be good next year? Well, they missed the playoffs in 2005, letting Denver take the division and missing out on the wild card to Jacksonville and Pittsburgh. Oh, perhaps you’re saying “but, but, but…”, and yes, I understand, there are circumstances to consider. This is my point about every NFL team every season: you just don’t know, do you?

If Peyton Manning is injured in training camp, would you pick Indy to be a great team next year? What if LaDanian Tomlinson went down in week 3, or Drew Brees in week 6? What if an unknown receiver on the Titans matches up well with Vince Young, whose work throwing pays off with a stellar season? What if Michael Vick gets benched and Matt Schaub is the true #1 quarterback in Atlanta?

So Cole’s predictions are laughable from the get-go. He has no idea which teams are good, but he doesn’t let that stop him from telling us where the good matchups are.

Then, his ADD takes over. Cole’s incapable of reading the earlier paragraphs to figure out what to write later. He tells us that Green Bay is terrible to watch in week 3, then best of the week in week 8. The Lions are unwatchable in week 1, then in week 10 they’re fun and will air it out and score a lot of points against Arizona, who he’d picked as game of the week in weeks 2 and 4, and whom he believes “will score a lot of points.” So, this game should be terrible, because the Lions are terrible and Arizona is good and Arizona will win big, so it’s definitely can’t-miss football from Cole’s point of view.

Ignoring the fact that Arizona has promised more football than they’ve delivered the last 5 seasons, his consistency is laughable here and throughout the rest of the piece. I guess this is why Yahoo! gives away the sports stuff for free: nobody’d pay for it.

Pelosi to Expand Engagement

Fresh off her successes in the Middle East, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today went against her party’s recommendations and announced that she plans to extend her policy of engagement to Fox News.

Pelosi did not mince words. “This congress will reach out to all regimes, regardless of who is at their head and regardless of the filth that they spew, because that is what the American people want, and that is what they deserve.”

Democratic Party head Howard Dean spoke out against the plan, cautioning that the party might get trapped in an overreach. He used recent Republican problems to make his point. “Just look at the GOP quagmire over on CNN. It’s past time for them to pull out. They know they’re not gonna get support, they know the network’s never gonna change, and it’s time that they accept that and gracefully withdraw while they still have some dignity. That’s the kind of disaster I’m hoping to avoid.”

Presidential hopeful John Edwards drew a much starker picture. “I didn’t want to pull out of Fox News, but I had to for the good of my mental health. It was not too long ago that I used to wake up at night with soiled sheets after dreaming about Bill O’Reilly. You can call me a coward if you want, but I defy anybody to have a debate hosted by a professional journalist who votes for the other party. Those soiled sheets are in the future of the GOP if they insist on coming on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, C-Span, PBS, ESPN, most cable channels, any local stations, the BBC, any Canadian channel, or Air America if it’s still operating the day after tomorrow. And now Pelosi wants to roll Democrats in those sheets by appearing on Fox News.”

“I don’t know why she wants to change things.” Grumbled former presidential hopeful John Kerry. “The Republicans and their lying, thieving swiftboat friends who stole my presidency can keep Fox news and talk radio.”

Hillary Clinton took a more subtle approach. “I was willing to debate on Fox, but the other candidates didn’t feel that they were manly enough to go on. I suppose that tells you everything you need to know about them. And a debate is not like a marriage – you can’t have one all by yourself. But if Speaker Pelosi is willing to try, I’m willing to wait to undercut her attempts until after I’ve gotten polling feedback and ensured that it validates my role as a centrist.”

Asked for comment, Barack Obama wanted to make sure everyone realized that he symbolized hope. “I hope that people can see that I’m bringing hope into the lives of those who hope for something better, and it’s my sincere hope that this hope will create a new spirit of hopefulness. But I hope that Nancy understands that I can’t say that on Fox, home of the bitter, twisted reptiles that walk the night stealing hope from hopeless children.”

ESPN’s Schreiber to Cowherd : Stop Making Me Work !

The ESPN Ombudsman sure did put Colin Cowherd into his place today. What wrath! What rage! What a dressing-down he received!

Oh, wait, that was the stuff I read over at thebiglead.com. The ombudsman herself couldn’t even summon the intestinal fortitude to put a link to the site that ESPN grievously wronged, and seemed far more piqued at having to write an “extra” column than at the actual act itself. Her statement of condemnation doubtless sent the radio host cowering:

Some of the politer terms my correspondents used to describe Cowherd's behavior were immature, irresponsible, arrogant, malicious, destructive and dumb. I agree.

You know, if her correspondents are so much more lucid than her, and they fill her inbox so capaciously, perhaps they should write the column.

Even worse is the “official” response of ESPN’s senior vice president Traug Keller (wasn’t that the name of the evil wizard in ‘Beastmaster’?):

"We talked to Colin Cowherd, and we talked to all our radio talent, making it clear that you cannot do this," Keller said Friday. "Our airwaves are a trust, and not to be used to hurt anyone's business. Such attacks are off limits. Zero tolerance. I can't say it any stronger."

Whew! I’m sure glad that they explained that criminal mischief perpetrated against those critical of the network won’t be tolerated in the future! And since they italicized cannot, you can be absolutely sure that the talking-to he gave Cowherd was severe in the extreme! I imagine there were disapproving tongue clicks to go along with it.

Let me tell you something: what Colin Cowherd did is far worse than what Don Imus did. When Don Imus made his ignorant, racist joke he revealed himself for what he was: a bigot and a fool. Imus damaged himself most of all, and only himself financially.

Colin Cowherd purposefully destroyed the business of a website because he did not agree with their criticism. He did no damage at all to himself, beyond what his employer imposes, and instead damaged another party. And every single person that helped him should be ashamed of themselves, because Cowherd didn’t do it by himself. He was the demagogue, but his legions of fans were the foot soldiers that carried out his will.

For this, ESPN waggles its fingers and writes a policy doubtless full of loopholes. Let us not forget that this is Cowherd’s second offense! He steals material from M Zone, then arrogantly dismisses critics until he has to issue a one-sentence admission that he plagiarized it. Now he knocks thebiglead.com offline for 48 hours, issues a fingers-crossed apology, and ESPN looks the other way.

If nothing else, his colleagues should be ashamed. Where are the calls from ESPN.com for Cowherd’s termination, to match the high dudgeon we read about Don Imus? Will Cowherd find himself banned from ESPN shows? The SportsGuy, riding tall in the saddle at ESPN, will say nothing, even though a maggot like Cowherd could have done the same to Simmons years ago before he hit it big. Simmons didn’t sign that contract extension to bite the hand that feeds him.

It’s this institutional hubris that will eventually doom ESPN, ombudsman or no. Speaking of which, her last point is a classic:

This is not the planned second posting I mentioned at the end of Thursday's introductory column. That will come later this week.

Sorry to wake you up, Ms. Schreiber! You can go back to sleep on Golden Pond now!

Laverne and Shirley: The Movie

Amazing Screen Studios today announced that it had purchased the rights to 60’s sitcom “Laverne and Shirley” and plans to make a feature-length motion picture about the two single girls struggling to make it in the big city. However, they plan to update the show’s themes to make it more modern.

Laverne, to be played by Lindsey Lohan, will be a struggling heroin addict who walks the streets in LA working as a prostitute when she runs into her old friend Shirley, played by Paris Hilton. Shirley has just found out that she is three months pregnant and is worried about losing her job as the publicist for a weekly Christian newspaper, the Burn in Hell Times. She takes Laverne in to help pay the rent, and the two embark on a scheme to keep the pregnancy from her ultra-conservative boss, played by Wayne Knight of ‘Seinfeld’ fame.

Also modernizing the story are the new Lenny and Squiggy, played by Ashton Kutcher and Damon Wayans. The two will be portrayed as homosexual DJs that work the club scene at night and are small-time hustlers during the day. Rounding out the cast is Antonio Banderas as Shirley’s Cuban-born love interest Carmine, who may or may not be the father of her baby.

In a bid for a rare third career resuscitation, John Travolta will play the love interest for Laverne, a powerful Hollywood mogul named Ron Hubbard, called Mr. L, who is trying to help Laverne clean up her act so she can star in his R-Rated remake of ‘The Neverending Story’.

The screenplay is written by Joe Eszterhas, with Quentin Tarantino expected to direct.

Unified Conspiracy Theory

From noted conspiracy unravelers John Conners and Rosie O’Donnel comes a shocking bombshell that threatens to tear America apart by revealing the true inner workings of American politics for the past 50 years. Be warned: your life may never be the same!

Read, if you dare, the nefarious timeline of the sinister Cabal:

1946: Several Freemasons discover ancient Templar writings handed down from the time of Jesus in a Nazi storehouse in Berlin which detail the perfect government. However, these writings have been suppressed by the Catholic Church because they challenge the power of the pope. Inspired, they form the Cabal, an organization dedicated to the implementation of this perfect form of government, which is actually a form of tyranny too frightening to imagine.
1948: Alger Hiss is framed by the Cabal for being a Soviet spy to raise Richard Nixon’s public profile and provide him with a leg up to be president two decades later.
1952: The Cabal kidnaps a young prodigy and raises him to be a political Savant, capable of political prognostication and propagandic pontification beyond what the world has ever seen. They dub him Karl Rove.
1958: The John Burch society is founded with the aims to combat communism and the spread of socialism, but is in reality a front group for the Cabal, who want to install a king to rule over the United States. They use the society in coming years to denounce their enemies.
1963: John F. Kennedy is assassinated after he refuses to accept the kingship of the United States. Standing on the grassy knoll, and the true assassin, is noted marksman Dick Cheney.
1964: The Warren commission erases all record of the assassination documents, including the infamous “Dallas Interview” where Oswald stated “I just did what Dick told me.”
1967: The crew of Apollo 1 is killed to keep them from revealing that the videos of the moon landing were faked.
1968: Robert Kennedy is assassinated after also refusing to accept the crown of the United States. Spurned by the greater of the two parties, the conspirators turn to the Republicans.
1968: Richard Nixon agrees to help the Cabal with their nefarious scheme, and proposes the Bush family as a likely group from which to select a monarch. Nixon later orders records of meetings between the Democrats and the Cabal destroyed, which goes wrong in the infamous ‘Watergate’ affair several years later.
1969: in order to demonstrate American technical prowess to the rest of the world, videos purporting to show a “moon landing” are broadcast around the world. This effort is ultimately successful, as no one since has ever realized that America does not possess any high-tech capability beyond Al Gore’s later invention of the Internet.
1973: The Supreme Court decides in favor of abortion in Roe v. Wade, ensuring that the supply of people who would be against the Cabal will be curtailed.
1973: Formation of the Trilateral Commission, which has as its goal the replication of the Cabal in every nation throughout the world and establishment of a “World Emperor.”
1975: Jimmy Hoffa refuses to use union money to support criminal endeavors and is murdered by the Cabal.
1980: Well-meaning but politically naive politician Ronald Reagan is selected as the front man to move the Bush family to greater national prominence.
1986: Dan Rather, long a thorn in the side of the Cabal, narrowly misses having his brain scrambled by a prototype space laser. It instead hits a nearby bystander, who begins to yell “Kenneth, what is the frequency?” and attacks Rather. Rather begins to wear a tin-foil hat in private to deflect the space rays. To prevent a recurrence, the Cabal begins Project Needle, implanting microchips into the populace of the United States via annual innoculations and during blood drives For this reason, children are forced to be vaccinated despite serious medical risks, which are all covered up by the AMA for the Cabal.
1991: The Cabal orders the Soviet Union to disband so that George HW Bush can take credit, which they do, and he does.
1992: In order to throw investigators off their trail, the Cabal rigs the election to promote little-known Arkansas governor and democrat Bill Clinton to the presidency. To cover their tracks they use millionaire H. Ross Perot to siphon votes from George HW Bush. When he threatens to reveal their scheme, the Cabal drives Perot mad using their sophisticated space laser to alter his brain chemistry.
1993: Vince Foster is assassinated after threatening to publicize his role in falsifying the Clintons’ tax return for the Whitewater real estate dealings, which was used by the Cabal to repay the Clintons in return for their silence regarding the conspiracy’s aid in the 1992 campaign.
1994: McDonald’s begins offering supersize meals to encourage obesity, making the American populace less capable of throwing off their oppressors in the future.
1995: Dick Cheney takes over the industrial group Halliburton, which secretly owns 49% of every major oil company in the world. This company funnels money from massive government contracts back into the Republican Party, funding their electoral successes for the next decade.
1998: A Bush family member is placed in Florida’s governorship to ensure that he can help rig the coming presidential election. He begins by ensuring that loyal party members are in place in all potentially disputed Florida counties.
1999: Newt Gingrich is driven from power because of his ludicrous nickname and failure to accept a Bush as future regent.
2000: After clumsily rigging the vote against super-genius sexpot Al Gore, the Bush family must undertake its most ambitious project yet to secure their hold on America: project Iraqi Quagmire. However, low gas prices have hampered funds from Halliburton and the Cabal must search for other sources of funding.
2001: Dennis Tito becomes the first ‘Space Tourist.’ Unknown to the tourists, they are killed in the space station and replaced with cybernetic replicates who will do the will of the Cabal in the future, thus ensuring that the elite of the world will support the nefarious goals of the Cabal when the time comes.
2001: After 70 years of existence, Enron is revealed as a giant corporate shell game. Billions of dollars go missing and the retirements of countless millions of Americans are wiped out, thus ensuring longer working careers and reduced public confidence in the federal government. Sarbanes-Oxley is drafted to reduce the power of the business sector, viewed as a threat by the Cabal.
2001: Using funds from the Enron collapse, the Cabal plants explosive devices in the World Trade Center using the well-known techniques of destroying 100-storey buildings. These are detonated so as to minimize loss of life, and advanced holographic projectors fool the populace of NY into believing that two planes struck the towers. A second controlled explosion in Washington convinces people that this is part of an attack by a previously-unknown group of ragtag terrorists. In fact, three planeloads of people were taken to an orbital base to provide genetic material for advanced bio-manipulation experiments. A fourth plane, which crashed in Pennsylvania, is a fortuitous coincidence that the evil Cabal capitalizes on.
2002: The space laser has no impact on George Soros, who is already mad as a hatter. After listening to him for a while, the Cabal decides he will pose no problem and encourages him to speak publicly.
2003: To spike oil prices, thus ensuring record profits for refineries and thus Halliburton, the US declares war on Iraq. The cover story is WMD, but there are no WMD other than the ones that the US uses on Iraqi baby-milk factories.
2004: Once again the Cabal rigs an election, but this time it is the Democratic nomination that must be secured in order to bring plan supporter John Kerry out of the primaries as the nominee. They destroy true democrat Howard Dean via space laser, causing him to howl in fury, and Kerry purposefully runs such an inept campaign that he loses to the most politically vulnerable sitting president in the last 100 years.
2004: Trusted broadcaster Dan Rather is discredited by phony documents provided by republican strategist Karl Rove, with assistance from double-secret Cabal operative Mary Mapes. The real reason Rather is discredited is because he has eyewitness testimony to a meeting between the Cabal and the Bush family discussing their plans for world domination, but now will never be believed.
2005: The Cabal organizes a diverse group of semi-literate cranks into something called the Huffington Post in order to spew vitriol across the Internet.
2005: Using their powerful weather machine the Cabal creates a huge hurricane, then bombs the levees to flood New Orleans. The 2006 NFL season is then rigged so that the Saints make the playoffs, ensuring good season ticket sales for the team. This is not part of the overall plan but is good for a lark.
2005/2006: Two Supreme Court justices are removed from the bench in order to place Cabal high-level operatives in their place, one of them as head of the court, thus ensuring court support for the coming New World Order.
2006: In order to suppress Democrat turnout in 2008 the Cabal arranges for an incompetent group of democrats led by a gaggle of screeching morons to take over congress and the Senate. Cabal turncoat Joseph Lieberman stands ready to switch sides if necessary to tip the balance back to the Republicans. Public discontent with congress begins to mount.
2006: Saddam Hussein, victim of the same brain-scrambling ray that hit Ross Perot, is hanged after a farce trial despite his clear innocence. Also, former Enron chief Ken Lay is the first person assassinated by a cybernetic replicate created in the space lab built in 2001.
2007: A misfire by the space laser costs the Cabal one of their most valuable propaganda agents, Ann Coulter. Or does it?
2007: Every conceivable candidate and their dog starts their presidential campaign too early, thus leaving an opening in 2008 for the fatigued voting populace to sweep into power the man the Cabal long ago chose as heir to the throne of the United States.
2008: Jeb Bush declares himself Emperor of the United States immediately after his inauguration with approval from the Supreme Court and popular acclaim following the most incompetently corrupt congress in history, signaling the end of freedom and liberty and the realization of the goal of the Cabal.

Noble Movie Rejected by Rubes

Hollywood today was reeling from weekend tallies for their latest critical darling, “Grindhouse”, which despite sterling directors and an outstanding cast had opened at only #4 at the box office with half of the expected gross. Studio executive Harvey Weinstein said that the opening proved that moviegoers were “uneducated hicks that need re-education into what makes a great film.”

Director Quentin Tarantino expressed regret at audience’s lack of sophistication. “We thought that the American viewing audience would be ready for an ultra-violent, super-bloody version of ‘Kentucky Fried Movie.’ I guess we were wrong, and it’s really a shame.”

Critics were agreed. Phil Mataker, president of the Critical Reviewers for American Publications, had a solution. “We are proposing that beginning in junior high-school American students be forced to take ‘film studies,’ where they can be educated about what makes a good movie. American viewers’ appetite for films like ‘Passion’ and ‘300’ shows that we are seriously disturbed, and only a strong program of indoctrination can stem the tide of this kind of madness.”

Weinstein liked the proposal but didn’t think it went far enough. “Showing R-rated features to schoolchildren is a good start, but it’s the grown-ups who need a reality check. It’s clear that adult audiences need re-education to help them appreciate our art.”

Janet Vee, editor of Film Literature On Parade, hinted that perhaps a different marketing strategy this week might make improve box-office results for the bloody double feature. “I’ve heard that their new ad campaign is going to be centered on comparing it to similar films that audiences have enjoyed. The tagline should be something like this: ‘Directed by Robert Rodriguez, who brought to film another graphic novel by the same guy that wrote ‘300’, and Quentin Tarantino, famously inspired by the same movies that inspired ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’, comes a double-billing of films gorier than ‘Passion of the Christ’ and longer than ‘Titanic’!”

Although much has been written on the impending financial disaster of the film, Weinstein dismissed notions that his studio had produced another flop. “After foreign DVD sales, merchandising, tax write-offs, selling off props and costumes, and hocking the statues we won for their metal value, we expect to make a small profit in the ten to twenty-dollar range. And as you can see by our movies, Dimension Films is not in the movie business for profit, so that’s okay.”

Weinstein also admitted that opening Easter weekend might have been a mistake. “We didn’t realize how seriously these knuckle-draggers took their mumbo-jumbo. Next time we’ll save our goriest fare for a more appropriate holiday, like Valentine’s Day or Thanksgiving.”

Scientist Killed in Lab Explosion

A New York scientist was killed over the weekend in a laboratory explosion that sparked a blaze requiring the intervention of two fire brigades. Initial reports indicate that officials do not suspect foul play, but instead believe it was a lab error.

Apparently the explosion came while the scientist was in the final tuning phases of his Irony Detector. The explosion occurred on Monday. Witnesses reported that the scientist, Wayne Szalinski, had told witnesses that he planned to tune the machine while listening to respected community leader Reverend Al Sharpton’s interview with radio bad-boy Don Imus.

“It was an awful mess,” detective Lenny Briscoe said. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. We’re still not sure what set it off.”