Both have issued apologies — Fox in a one-line statement to the Los Angeles Times and Loftus in an e-mail to the family — after being contacted by the newspaper. The Voricks say they have yet to see or hear a correction.
Newspapers and News Organizations are staffed by people and being human, mistakes can be made. However, when your channel is named “Fox” and your audience is made up of the kind of folks who think “terrorist” is spelled “Muslim” and/or “Terrist” you really have to be stingy with the “Here’s the address of a blood enemy of the United States and the UK, don’t kill him or anything”
That (as you would expect) is exactly what Fox has done though:
In what Fox News officials concede was a mistake, John Loftus, a former U.S. prosecutor, gave out the address Aug. 7, saying it was the home of a Middle Eastern man, Iyad K. Hilal, who was the leader of a terrorist group with ties to those responsible for the July 7 bombings in London. — More Here
Now we have family being terrorized by the chinless wonders who occupy the amazing quotient of people who decided MacGyver was too cerebral. They will continue to show up and hurl themselves into the defense of the realm until Bill or Ann (joking mthey don’t care what a woman has to say in the real world) or Rush says “folks, false alarm, good drill”
Fox has handed over a mea culpa in print (where their viewers won’t read it, because the can’t “tee hee”) and these people now need a daily police protection detail, like they are worthwhile people and not the scum who would yell “Terrorist Scum” to a 12 year old eating barbecue.
Die in a Fire, indeed.
Vitter was asked at a town hall meeting about the fact that he opposes government health care, but supports re-importing prescription drugs from, as a constituent said, “countries that have socialized medicine.” Vitter has campaigned in the past on re-importing drugs from Canada.
“My ultimate goal,” Vitter explained, “is to use that (re-importation) to cause that (pricing) system to collapse.“
Dear Ms Mathyssen,
Congratulations on your election last fall, I am very glad that you were elected in my riding as your responses to my questions of last summer were very persuasive and matched my own values and goals well.
As I’m sure you are aware, politics to the south of us often dominate our news cycle; often to the detriment to coverage of local and national Canadian politics. The healthcare debate south of the border is of particular interest (having lived in the US for a number of years on a work visa, I have a strong appreciation of our local system). However, this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1-X_J2qAGE) shows a Senator from the US discussing attempting to damage the Canadian Health Care system directly. I feel very strongly that this demands and apology from the senator and would hope that the Prime Minister could be motivated to request an official apology from the Senator. This is a serious affront to relations between our two nations and was not said in jest or to make a point, Sen. Vitter is making a direct threat to Canada’s sovereignty and this should be redressed.
Again, I thank you for your service on behalf of London-Fanshawe and Canada as a whole and wish you the very best of days forthcoming.
Sigh, yet another top ten list on Digg. Every day another list. Crappy Top Ten lists (except for cracked who seem to have a good handle on such things) are thick on the ground these days and getting thicker. Why bother with a substantive article about 80s nostalgia and the vagaries of movie production when one can just list their favorite tv shows and say “wouldn’t it be cool if Ice-T played Snarf?”
Some movie adaptions of cartoons can be “acceptable” (I’m looking at you GiJoe and Masters of the Universe) but they can easily slide into awful (you too GiJoe, Masters of the Universe and Transformers, Flintstones, Spiderman 3, Batman Forever, Catwoman, etc).
I imagine the reason for this is the same reason we can’t enjoy the same music universally because our individual tastes and cultural lenses are so unique. When someone tries to interpret why a given concept was so good, their own biases and interpretations will inevitably change the subject to meet their own vision, ruining it for everyone else who “loves it” as much as they do.
Take for example the “Addams Family” excepting the cultural touchstones that were added to the modern movie interpretations, the spirit of the original subject matter remains the same. The characters are fairly tight copies of the originals, the house is a bigger budget version of the original and while more fleshed out than the original material, there were no significant characterization changes made.
Compare this to “The Transformers” the stoic warriors from Cybertron who crashed to earth during the cretaceous period and spent millions of years in metal hibernation only to resume their fight in the modern era are replaced with pod robots who are clumsy led by a robot from Cybertron who says “My Bad” and another robot who pees on people.
This is a quality remake? No this is inevitable. Michael Bay looked at the Transformers and saw an opportunity to make his Robot Buddy movie. A metal Bad Boys.
Except Transformers isn’t about cops or drugs or LA cultural commentary; it’s about an ancient war for scarce resources on an alien planet fought by refugees. This is where any adaption for movies would fall apart except in the most skillful of hands, because if you catch my drift from before, my interpretation is probably inaccurate for the general public too.
If someone was to remake Harry Potter as a homosexual love triangle between Snape, Draco and Harry it would still sell tickets, regardless of its fidelity to the source material. This is the state of media and storytelling. There is almost always an audience, but it takes a deft touch to reach a plurality of that audience. Even when that audience is made up of fans of the subject matter.
The Harry Potter movies may even be a great example of why Cartoon Movie Remakes are doomed to failure. Harry Potter is (for the most part) the consistent vision of a single creator telling a continuous story. Cartoons are (with few exceptions) the product of multiple creators over many years often facing competing visions and cultural pressures. Even the venerable South Park has uneven storytelling and writing, with wildly vacillating moral mores. If a cartoon that has creators and producers who are so committed can be so wildly uneven, how can a toy-driven cartoon like “Thundercats” ever hope to be captured as a widely accepted and even acclaimed live-action product?
Fans who came to a product later in life would have a much different view of it if the cultural norms that bore it were no longer remembered or relevant. GiJoe may have been about an advanced fighting force against a faceless and aggressive terrorist force, but there was a none-to-subtle “USA” vs “Russia” element that hung around it. The GiJoe comics gave Cobra a more American origin (making Cobra a domestic Terrorist organization led by a former salesman no less – how Postman). This proved to be somewhat more challenging to put on film, the producers and writers opting for “The Cobra Origin Story” instead of any concrete discussion of the Joes and their purpose (hint, in the 80s the Joes were formed to combat Cobra, or not, depending on who was at the reigns that day)
Which brings me back to my initial point, while reading this you’ve been thinking that here and there I’ve misinterpreted something about one of the cartoons or TV shows I’ve been talking about. Or more egregiously praised or condemned something that you feel was worthy of neither or both. Which is the crux of my previous piece on music and this as well. Appreciation of art or creative works is so subjective, one cannot hope to please a plurality of people without first rendering the subject so inoffensive or so bland so as to remove all unique qualities from it, unless of course the work itself IS unqiue. Remakes, by their very nature cannot be unique and instead must be reduced to their base elements in order to (if you will excuse the term) hit all the targets at once. Thus Transformers was “Names, Object labels and Basic story” and Gi-Joe is “The Origin of Cobra” and Masters of the Universe was “Set AFTER the cartoon when Skeletor has won” because faithful remakes are impossible and are avoided by the very people who make them.
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.
–Investors Business Daily commenting about the Health Care of Lifelong Brit Stephen Hawking
People in the US who have no real exposure to Universal Health Care of any stripe always want to tell you about how bad it is; and therefore by comparison how awesome (51st in the world) American Health Care ™ is.
It’s just that it’s so not the case. The only advantage one achieves in the States over a place with Universal Health Care is the CashKey system.
The CashKey system works like this; with enough cash no door is locked to you and no barrier can really stand in your way.
So if you want a new knee or some extra skin cut loose; toss some money at a doctor (or a hospital board member) and you’ll get right into an operating theatre that day. Maybe you have a benign (but painful) tumor, cash money, cash money. Money money, dolla dolla bill y’all!
That’s all well and fine; but doesn’t that set up a tiered system that places profit over health care?
Well, yes. Yes it does.
So, what about Sir Hawkings? What about him?
Had Mr. Hawkings been born into a family without cash or to Middle Class parents without Health Insurance, how would Stevie Hawkings be doing now? Why not ask a disabled homeless person about their life? How about all those folks in Appalachia with no doctor (because there’s no profit in serving those poor areas, get it)
How about this mind-blowing statement; if your school received government money to educate you; you have an obligation to serve society as a whole. It’s as simple as that. If your education was in any way funded by cash from taxes or public funds; then you spend at least the first part of your career serving the public good and paying back society.
But there’s no money in that, is there?
Uninsured Gladney agitating against health care reform is reminiscent of those unemployed guys in Ohio who were strong supporters of George Bush against John Kerry. It did not matter to them that they were out of work and on the dole, or that they did not have health insurance, or that their brothers or brothers-in-law were in combat in Iraq: What really mattered to them was that George Bush believed in god, George Bush opposed gay marriages and abortions, and George Bush supported their right to own guns.
Fucking idiots.
Posted by: Doran on August 10, 2009 at 10:18 AM | PERMALINK
Umm, what? Did Obama get into office and then say, “bwa ha ha, no more politics and decision making for me. Time to break out the records and get to Dancin’ in this here White House!”
Is that what happened?
Or has the Obama White house faced Republican and Conservative Democrat Oppostion to every single thing that he has proposed.
If you live here in Reality; you’d know it was the latter. Over there in crazy town the White House is hosting a 2h-hour George Clinton and Jay-Z concert and nothing is getting done because the President goes to bed at 10 PM and isn’t fond of reading. Right?
Yup, it has finally come. Summer is here. It’s only about 2 and half months late too. We enjoyed the sun a bit and got out into the trees and around the ponds some. It was Humid and Sweaty and juuuust perfect. If I wasn’t on call today I’d be looking for a patio to embarrass myself on. Maybe next weekend will be nice? The forecasts have been so unreliable I’ll just wait until Wednesday to decide.
The march from “Summer” to crap it’s snowing in September!
Published by NiteMayr on August 25, 2009Does anyone else think that it is a good chance that we’ll see snow on the ground by September 31st this year? The glorious weather we had just a week and a bit past appears to have been what would have been a heat wave in a normal summer (40+ degrees) but was the only thing that looked like summer this year.
I’m going to hibernate this winter, call me when the Great Lakes have dried up due to the heat.