Media Malpractice: Media Obsession With "Slam"ing

Ok, so I've started to notice a trend in recent reporting.  What is with the media obsession with politicians "slam"ing, "rip"ing, or "blasting" other people or organizations?  the media can't come up with better verbiage than that?  Here are some examples:

Palin "slams" sexist Newsweek cover (CNN)

Critics "rip" new mammogram guidelines (Fox Noise)

AG "Blasted" for Bad History (Fox Noise)

DCCC "slams" Shadegg for suggesting Bloomberg's daughter will be kidnapped (CNN)

Palin "slams" Levi for "Porn" (CNN)

Axelrod "slams" Romney (CNN)

Thats just from the past 4 days!

Perhaps CNN and Fox News can find more descriptive ways to express their ideas, instead of using words that, I can only assume, are appealing only to the ignorant, uneducated, ill informed masses who think politics is a wrestling match.

Common Sense

Practice Non-Religion: Pat Robertson on Hate Crimes Bill

It's always fun to listen to the paranoid, fatalistic rantings of religious extremsists in America.  Here is a particularly fun one by a personal favorite, Pat Robertson.

Robertson pulls out the usual slippery slope guns that he has used in the past claiming that protection of gay people will lead to legalization of pedophilia, beastiality, blah, blah, blah.  I've already addressed why this is stupid so I wont re-address it here.

He also claimed that the Hate Crimes bill is all about denying christians their right to hate people.  well I think I've already discussed why that is also stupid (no one cares what you say, this bill protects against religious people who act upon the venomous language Robertson spits out everyday).

So, anyway, feel free to watch what he says:


I wont go any further than to say, you should seriously question your life choices if you share a religion with this guy.

Common Sense

Anti-Gay Rhetoric 101: Scholastic Books says Lesbian Parents are Offensive?

Today, Think Progress, reported that a childrens book that included a girl whos parents are Lesbians was denied by Scholastic publishers.  The book, "Luv Ya Bunches" was held up by the publisher because some of the language was considered questionable or offensive.  The publisher suggested edits that included removing works like "geez," "crap," "sucks," and "God" (as in "oh my God").  They also requested that one of the girls' parents, who are lesbian, be changed to a heterosexual couple.

The author complied with the language change, but refused to change the parents' sexual orientation and gender, arguing that this was not offensive.  The publishers the refused to publish the book, claiming that they didn't want to deal with the complaints from parents.  sketchy...

Well after thousands of people complained over their refusal, they backtracked and published the book.  If you are interested in knowing more than 200,000 children are raised by gay and lesbian parents.  I guess they were just going off the stereotype that gays and lesbians don't raise children.  oops.

Here is there most recent statement on the matter.

Common Sense

Ignorance is Bad! No More Funding for Political Science Research?

Check this out first

Here's another wonderful example of Republicans trying to keep the masses ignorant because stupid people win them elections.  They lie, cheat, and exagerate their way to power knowing that as long as they demonize school, research, faculty, intellectualism, and all smart people as elitist, out of touch, or "liberal" the ignorant masses will become more ignorant, and never question their rediculous policies.

Let me break that down for you into a simple cycle.

Smart people overwhelmingly vote for liberal policies

Republicans want to win votes

Republicans need to find a way to keep people from being smart:

Step 1 - Demonize faculty for "liberal bias"

Step 2 - Claim higher education as "indocrinating students"

Step 3 - Encourage "parent's rights" to force the school to teach ignorance (intelligent design, abstinence only, etc.)

Step 4 - Bully academia into respecting their "opinions" as legitimate theory

What Happens: Parents and children make bad choices about where to go to school, IF they will go to school, and what they learn.  Critical thinking is undermined.  Parents are allowed to indocrinate their children at home AND in the school house.  Schools are crippled from encouraging real learning and forced to teach conservative, christian, ignorant propaganda.

Cycle: These indocrinated students (believing that education is bad) will then buy into the cycle and continue to supress critical thinking in their children, friends, co-workers, spouses, employees, etc.

Result: These undereducated people will lack the intellectual capacity to critically analyze party platforms and policies and will dogmatically vote Republican...

All due respect to Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), but there is a HUGE difference between research on political science and political commentary and punditry. On the one hand, you have critical research, original data, and a deep, thorough process that creates new, unique knowledge that is empirically driven and vigorously reviewed for validity and reliability by peers and professionals in the field. On the other, you have loud mouth commentators who mistake their own opinion for fact, and believe that validity and reliability come from ratings and the number of people who watch their show.Just another example of republicans trying to suppress critical thinking and education.

Common Sense