Ocelopotamus

News, culture, and politics. Not necessarily in that order.

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Entries Tagged as 'Journalism'

Roundup: Swiftly Tilting Planet Edition

September 17th, 2007 · Comments Off on Roundup: Swiftly Tilting Planet Edition · Activism, Books, Chicago, Climate Change, Comics, Culture, Fantasy, Film, Foreign Policy, Hate Crimes, Health, History, HIV/AIDS, Infrastructure, Journalism, LGBT, Lit, Media, Nature, News, Peace, Politics, Public Transportation, Roundup, Science, Science Fiction, Tech

Eric Alterman has an outstanding column in The Nation on how the media’s mean girls (of all genders) develop the narratives they use to bring down the presidential candidates they take a dislike to. With examples of what they did to Gore in 2000, and what they’re doing to Obama and Edwards right now. Two […]

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Roundup: Pink Elephant Edition

September 10th, 2007 · 3 Comments · Activism, Books, Climate Change, Comics, Culture, Energy, Film, Foreign Policy, Health, History, HIV/AIDS, Human Rights, Internet, Journalism, Language, LGBT, Media, Music, Nature, News, Peace, Performance, Politics, Racism, Roundup, Science, Tech, Theater

General Petraeus says that “victory” in Iraq will require 9-10 more years. I’m trying to imagine how ten more years of bloody occupation can possibly work out to a victory. More on that subject here. A bill has been introduced in Venezuela to restrict baby names to a list of 100 approved choices. “The bill’s […]

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“Lord Have Mercy, I Think It’s the Cops”: Larry Craig and Madame George

September 4th, 2007 · 3 Comments · Activism, Culture, Essays, History, Human Rights, Journalism, LGBT, Music, News, Politics, Theater

Forgive me for posting twice in a row about Larry Craig. After the past week, surely it’s time for him to begin shrinking in the collective rear-view mirror of our culture. But I can’t help it. On Sunday, someone who goes by the nom de net Blueness posted an absolutely beautiful diary on Daily Kos, […]

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Senator Larry Craig vs. Avenue Q, and Butch Otter Goes Shopping

August 31st, 2007 · 4 Comments · Comedy, Culture, Journalism, Media, Performance, Politics, Theater, Video

Proving that the Republican Party truly is just one big puppet show:   … I can’t find it now, but I swear that at some point in the 24 hours after the Craig story broke, there was a headline referring to him as “Toilet Sex Senator.” And of course my first thought was that The […]

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Video: Fox’s War Drums, Colbert’s Water Fight, and Stewart on Bush’s Magical History Tour

August 26th, 2007 · 1 Comment · Comedy, Culture, Foreign Policy, History, Journalism, Media, News, Peace, Pets, Politics, TV, Video

A few video clips from the past week: First up, here’s a scary video compiled by documentarian Robert Greenwald showing how Fox “News” is beating the drum for war with Iran … watch them repeatedly engaging in the same kind of propaganda and scaremongering they used during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in […]

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Uganda Burning: Anti-Gay Bigots Rally to Keep Hatred Alive

August 21st, 2007 · 2 Comments · Culture, Human Rights, Journalism, LGBT, Media, News, Politics, Religion

Anti-gay bigots in Uganda rallied today in support of the country’s draconic anti-gay laws (which punish “sodomy” with life imprisonment), carrying signs saying charming things like “Arrest all homos.” They also howled for the firing of a reporter who dared to write an objective story about the experiences of gay people in Uganda, calling her […]

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Olbermann on O’Reilly, Colbert on Huckabee, and Stewart on Kristol

August 17th, 2007 · 2 Comments · Comedy, Culture, Foreign Policy, Journalism, Media, Politics, TV, Video

Keith Olbermann explains why Bill O’Reilly is no less than two of the three worst people in the world. (Hint: It includes defaming someone as being anti-semitic … who was actually attacking anti-semitism!)   I Stomach Huckabee: Colbert on the Iowa straw poll. Oh, and watch for the moment when the Governor threatens to break […]

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Roundup: Skydiving Baby Giraffe Edition

August 15th, 2007 · Comments Off on Roundup: Skydiving Baby Giraffe Edition · Activism, Apple, Books, Chicago, Comics, Culture, Death Penalty, Fantasy, Fiction, Film, Food, Health, Human Rights, Internet, iTunes, Journalism, Lit, Media, Meta, Nature, News, Politics, Roundup, TV, Ursula K. Le Guin

Out, damned spot! Fox News caught red-handed, laundering entries on Wikipedia. Keep on scrubbing, Lady MacFox, but those stains belong to you always. The GOP’s California strategy: winning the 2008 election by undoing California’s winner-take-all electoral system. Once the state goes piecemeal, the Repubs gain at least 20 electoral votes from safe GOP districts. Arianna […]

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Rolling Stone: John Edwards is “the Real Liberal” in the Race

August 13th, 2007 · 4 Comments · Climate Change, Healthcare Crisis, Journalism, Labor, Media, Politics, The Economy, Stupid

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Roundup: Ronald Reagan Memorial Bridge Edition

August 9th, 2007 · 1 Comment · Activism, Apple, Comics, Culture, Human Rights, Infrastructure, Journalism, LGBT, Lit, Macintosh, Media, Nature, News, Poetry, Politics, Religion, Roundup, Science, Tech, Torture

This is brilliant. Peter Smith at the Huffington Post has a proposal for renaming the new I-35W bridge in Minneapolis that will replace the one that collapsed: “For a while there, back when the Republicans held the White House and both houses of Congress, they were naming things after Ronald Reagan everywhere. Airports. Aircraft carriers. […]

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Good Morning, Day 7

July 24th, 2007 · Comments Off on Good Morning, Day 7 · Activism, HCC-DDT, Health, Healthcare Crisis, Human Rights, Journalism, Media, News, Politics, The Economy, Stupid

About 50 Americans have died since yesterday because they couldn’t afford health care. That brings the total to 350 people who have died thanks to our profit-focused health care system just since I started keeping this count, six days ago. If 350 US citizens had died in a plane crash this week, we’d be hearing […]

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Notes on Sicko: A Prescription for Change

July 6th, 2007 · 4 Comments · Activism, Culture, Film, Health, Healthcare Crisis, History, Journalism, Media, News, Politics, Science

I saw Sicko Tuesday night, and it did not disappoint. The main impact for me is this: Watching this film makes it unavoidably clear that we as a nation have been completely duped, conned, and as the kids say, “pwned,” by those who’ve spent millions to convince us that universal healthcare is too expensive, can’t […]

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Roundup: Green Blood and Near Beer Edition

June 11th, 2007 · 1 Comment · Comedy, Comics, Culture, Hate Crimes, Heroes, Human Rights, Internet, Journalism, Language, LGBT, Media, Music, News, Politics, Roundup, Tech, TV

POLITICS: Department of things that should be perfectly obvious to everyone: Colin Powell says we should close Guantanamo. “Essentially, we have shaken the belief the world had in America’s justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission. We don’t need it and it is causing us far […]

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“People Like Hillary”

June 10th, 2007 · 2 Comments · Blogs, Journalism, Media, Politics

A big part of the reason I dread the idea of Hillary becoming the Democratic nominee is that during her time in the White House, she never won a single battle with the right wing in the eyes of the media. Whether the subject was healthcare, how to raise children, baking cookies, Tammy Wynette, or […]

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