Saturday, April 16, 2005
 
When Did Alternative Weeklies Go Nuts?

Three quick hitz from the last week's Shepherd Express, which we picked up in Milwaukee but didn't actually use to find activities downtown:
  • Something Doesn’t Add Up: Did John Kerry Win?


      Five months after the election of George W. Bush on Nov. 2, 2004, something still doesn’t add up.

      Although the election results have been accepted by the majority of the country, a nonpartisan group of university-affiliated statisticians and other experts found that something may have gone very, very wrong—so wrong that the wrong man may be sitting in the White House.

      This group, USCountVotes, looked at the exit poll results taken throughout Election Day by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. The exit polls indicated that Democratic nominee John Kerry would win by 3% of the popular vote. Nevertheless, George W. Bush officially won the national popular vote by 2.5%. This type of discrepancy is the largest to ever occur in a presidential election. Exit polls are conducted with those who have just voted—they are not a sampling of “probable” or “eligible” voters before the election.

    Five months after the election and a non-partisan but named group has analyzed the exit polls and determined John Kerry won the presidency. If only we could get the damn constitution and its means for determining the presidency out of the way. What's next for these people? In 2000, they wanted to selectively recount ballots from only certain areas; in 2004, they want to use exit polls instead of ballot counts. What's next for 2008? I'm less than eager to find out.

  • In a piece entitled "Destroying Dorothy: How a media tycoon got even with a Hollywood actress", the author poses this question:


      How much, if at all, was newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst to blame for the shocking fate that overtook the brilliant young Hollywood actress Dorothy Comingore?

    The author then spends two pages recounting what happened to Comingore, but the only evidence presented against Hearst is that she starred in Citizen Kane and that Hearst was rich and powerful. Ergo, or Ogre as the case may be, Hearst was behind it all. Because that's the only reason it could have happened.

  • But, on the other hand, I am what Media Musings columnist Dave Berkmann calls a blogosphere enforcer:

      You have to wonder—five years out, will any expression that a right-wing administration and its blogosphere enforcers object to be considered acceptable?

    I would bust Berkmann's kneecaps, digitally and metaphorically of course, were he worthy of the attention. Because columnists among real papers know they're inconsequential in 2005 unless the blogosphere either loves them or hates them. But Mr. Berkmann, I don't think of you.
Since 2000, a large number of publications have become largely unreadable, with every article and column somehow bemoaning the controlling force of the Administration in Washington. Harper's, Time, The Shepherd Express....

Funny how these sorts of publication laud more intrusion helpful participation from the Federal government in daily lives, whether through free health care that will determine who gets what care, to regulation that makes it harder for new pharmaceutical products that will help many come to market because it will harm a few, to what words the FCC will ban from television (whether it's racial epithets that are banned or swear words). Unfortunately, its the growth of this encroachment benevolent despotism that makes the occupant of the White House too damn important for daily life and for overemotionalism in daily, weekly, and monthly publications.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:53 PM
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