Lonelygirl15
Today’s rant is on the subject of skepticism and the scams that are taking place all over in the media world. It dovetails with the Jonah Goldberg column I wrote about yesterday. If you've been following the story about Lonelygirl15, you know what I'm talking about, if not you can read about it here.
Long story short, it's about a girl who was ostensibly pouring out her heart about the trials and tribulations of her life on a video blog on youtube, only she wasn't. What she was was an actress playing a part. The whole thing was an attempt by some kids to create a "new" kind of entertainment. But a lot of people were sucked in, funny enough a lot of other people were not quite as sucked in. A guy named Matt Foremski using the same tools, the Internet, that the scammers were using, blew up the scam. In a story in the Trib this morning matt's dad Tom provided the Money quote:
"There's going to be these kind of minor explosions of information that we don't know if it's real or not. . . . On the one hand, it's a good thing if it gets people to question their media. On the other hand, everything's going to be questioned." (Emphasis added)
In a world where these kinds of small-scale manipulations and distortions seem to be everyday occurrences in just about any medium you care to mention (Jason Blair, Dan Rather, that "Million Little Pieces" guy) it's no wonder the skepticism has reached the point where we don't believe journalists or presidents.
My Dad used to say you can't believe anything you read and only half of what you see. I used to think he was joking. Not now nomore. Now I think he was just a little ahead of his time.
Long story short, it's about a girl who was ostensibly pouring out her heart about the trials and tribulations of her life on a video blog on youtube, only she wasn't. What she was was an actress playing a part. The whole thing was an attempt by some kids to create a "new" kind of entertainment. But a lot of people were sucked in, funny enough a lot of other people were not quite as sucked in. A guy named Matt Foremski using the same tools, the Internet, that the scammers were using, blew up the scam. In a story in the Trib this morning matt's dad Tom provided the Money quote:
"There's going to be these kind of minor explosions of information that we don't know if it's real or not. . . . On the one hand, it's a good thing if it gets people to question their media. On the other hand, everything's going to be questioned." (Emphasis added)
In a world where these kinds of small-scale manipulations and distortions seem to be everyday occurrences in just about any medium you care to mention (Jason Blair, Dan Rather, that "Million Little Pieces" guy) it's no wonder the skepticism has reached the point where we don't believe journalists or presidents.
My Dad used to say you can't believe anything you read and only half of what you see. I used to think he was joking. Not now nomore. Now I think he was just a little ahead of his time.
posted by 35th 'n Shields at 3:13 PM
1 Comments:
“35th ‘n Shields”:
One of the curious features of the 9/11 – accounts that attempt to link the events of September 11, 2001 to premeditated planning inside the U.S. Government (however compartmentalized the accounts try to make U.S. responsibility, ultimately) is that although there are NO good reasons to accept these accounts, it is also true, as you point out, that there are no good reasons to accept the denials that emanate from the regime in the White House, the credibility of which is pretty much ZERO on all matters.[1]
The same goes for Jonah Goldberg’s work, too. And in its totality. Which means that in rejecting the 9/11 – accounts that Goldberg does (at one point, Goldberg actually uses the phrase “seditious dementia of conspiracy theories”),[2] we still have no reason to accept the word of as big a joker as him, either.
(Speaking of conspiracies: It was in late August, 2001, that the same Jonah Goldberg conspired with one Jessica Lynn Gavora, then a speechwriter and senior advisor to the U.S. Attorney General, to tie-the-knot on an island off the coast of Washington State. Several years before this, of course, Jonah’s mother Lucianne had conspired with her then-friend Linda Tripp to secretly tape-record Monica Lewinsky's laments about her past conspiracies with the last President, Tripp also and more importantly conspiring with the Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to wear a microphone while having lunch with Lewinsky at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel near D.C. Lucianne Goldberg, it turns out, was introduced to Tripp by Tony Show—who since then has gone on to conspire with FOX News and more recently the regime now in the White House to advocate for Republican policy to the United States and the rest of the world.)
The bottom-line is that by the weird logic of power, there are fewer and fewer voices within establishment circles that warrant our trust.
Especially when they say “Boo!”
David Peterson
Chicago
[1] “Who Blew Up the World Trade Center?” September 14, http://ssirish.blogspot.com/2006/09/who-blew-up-world-trade-center.html .
[2] “America the Treacherous,” Jonah Goldberg, September 13, http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZWFkZjBhZThjMjQxY2RlN2EwZGYxNGU4N2YzMTlkZjU= .
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