A lesson on political equivocation from Thomas Friedman

30Sep09

Tonight in my Television & American Culture course, I screened Buying the War, an excellent Bill Moyers PBS feature detailing how the press allowed themselves to be co-opted by the Bush administration to enable the fraudulent war in Iraq. (If you haven’t seen it, check it out online.) The screening reminded me of this piece [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, Not Quite TV   |  3 Comments

Vermont’s Governor Wallace

06Apr09

Today Vermont had an opportunity to lead the nation in the fight for equality and justice by becoming the first state to legislate marriage equality without a mandate from the courts. Today, Governor Jim Douglas stood on the wrong side of history and vetoed the bill that had overwhelming support from the legislature. There is [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, Middlebury, Vermont   |  2 Comments
Tags: gay rights, marriage equality

Mulling the future of public access TV

31Mar09

Since I moved to Vermont in 2002, I have been on the board of Middlebury Community Television, our local public access channel. Yesterday, the board sponsored a community media forum, where we invited members of our community to come together to discuss the role of a small public access channel in a small town today [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, Middlebury, TV Industry, Technology, Television, Vermont   |  4 Comments
Tags: public access

A new day

20Jan09

While I’m certainly overcome by the thought of President Obama, I think the joy in respecting and believing in my President for the first time in a long time will sink in slowly after he starts to do all the good things that he will do. But first I need to relish in the end [...]

Filed under: Media Politics   |  2 Comments
Tags: cheney, president obama

Name one thing…

19Jan09

I write this on a day I’ve awaited for eight years: the final day of the George W. Bush presidency (also known as the Dick Cheney Vice Presidency). It’s hard to fathom how much has transformed over the past eight years, and thus I believe that Bush’s tenure will be regarded as one of the [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, Not Quite TV   |  14 Comments
Tags: bush, presidency

Vlad and Boris speak!

02Dec08

On October 14, a YouTube video appeared on a new account entitled “vlad and friend boris presents ‘Song for Sarah’ for mrs. Palin”:

It bore no identifying markers of its creation beyond the names Vlad and Boris. A music video attesting a Russian crush on Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, it slowly [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, Narrative, New Media   |  2 Comments
Tags: election, music video, online video, sarah palin, youtube

A New Day

05Nov08

I graduated from college in 1992, a few months before President Clinton’s election. It was in the midst of a recession under Bush #1, and most of my generation felt alienated from the previous 12 years of Reagan/Bush. With Clinton’s win, we were overjoyed with hope and possibility, the feeling of relief that washed over [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, Meta-blogging   |  1 Comment
Tags: election, president obama

Live-blogging

04Nov08

Just a link to Midd Blog, where I’ll be weighing in with a number of Middlebury students & faculty throughout the day about the election. With my fingers crossed…

Filed under: Media Politics, Middlebury   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: election

Dualing political tones on television

03Nov08

One aspect of the campaign that I’ve been tracking is the comparative emotional tones being struck by Obama and McCain, especially via their negative ads. McCain’s commercials have been overly negative and brutal in their attacks of Obama, mostly by aiming for fear and suspicion. A couple of examples – first, a web-only ad linking [...]

Filed under: Academia, Media Politics   |  4 Comments
Tags: election, maddow, MSNBC, obama, olbermann, political ads

Communication Scholars Speak Out Against McCain Campaign

25Oct08

Just a quick link to this site, where over 100 faculty who teach communication and media studies have signed onto censure the deceptive, unethical, and racist discourse eminating from the McCain campaign in their desperate attempts to frame Obama as a dangerous “Other.” There are some links to frightening examples as well. If you’re a [...]

Filed under: Academia, Media Politics, Representations   |  1 Comment
Tags: campaign, election

The thrill of defeat and the agony of victory

21Oct08

In 2004, my lifelong Red Sox fandom came to fruition, with a unprecedented sense of contentment and peace after years of suffering. That lasted around a week, until Bush was reelected, offering a stomach punch to my other lifelong allegiance to progressive politics. For a native New Englander, these two events were uncomfortably related, the [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, Not Quite TV   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: baseball, election, red sox

Spinning the War

20Apr08

Be sure to read this excellent bit of investigative reporting in today’s New York Times by David Barstow. It lays out in painful detail the way that the Pentagon created and nurtured a web of “independent” war analysts to serve as talking heads on TV news for the past 6 years, and how nearly all [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, TV News   |  1 Comment
Tags: Iraq War, New York Times, PR

The Taste of Obama

23Mar08

One of my favorite bloggers is Joe Posnanski, a brilliant Kansas City sports writer whose posts are entertainly digressive ramblings inspired by David Foster Wallace as much as Peter Gammons. Recently he launched a second blog, Favorable Ratings – inspired by Buck O’Neil, the late Negro League legend whom Poz wrote about in his book [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, TV Shows   |  4 Comments
Tags: obama, The Wire

Obama & Santos, together again

27Feb08

Check out this great video from Slate highlighting the (quite intentional) parallels between Barack Obama and The West Wing’s Matt Santos. I hope the result is the same, although I can’t imagine that the parallel will persist, with Obama choosing Leon Panetta as running mate!
Update: Alas, Slate has taken down the video, but since this [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, TV Shows   |  5 Comments
Tags: obama, west wing

Back in the Game

06Jan08

Greetings.
Have you ever had a friend send you an email that requires a response, but that comes at a bad time that you can’t find the emotional energy to invest in a reply and must put it off for a bit? And then you let it linger on your to-do list for days that become [...]

Filed under: Media Politics, Meta-blogging, TV Shows   |  13 Comments
Tags: The Wire