A bad day at home is better than a good day at work, or so I once thought. I went to the doctor today and he proceeded to examine me, which is probably as uncomfortable for him as it is for me. Nevertheless...ouch. And I have to eat nothing for twelve hours Monday night for a blood test on Tuesday morning.
All that aside, had a good ride up to Albertsons and back via Ash Canyon Road. And if you're wondering, I spend a lot of time standing in the saddle. :)
Aunt Lilly called about the trip we're taking to the Bay Area and she got some awesome seats right by the visitor's dugout (section 114 on the chart). There weren't seats to get all four of us together but we'll work that out. The interesting news on top of that is the game we're going to is the ESPN Game of the Week, so we'll be on national TV with Jon Miller and Joe Morgan. I might have to make a big sign: "Next up on ESPN: Sportscenter."
Just got back from the college and found out at 1415 that my book order for my three classes was rejected by the college book store, and the store closed at 1300. My classes start a week from today. I'm going to have to use a lot of imagination, and I am more than a little annoyed that I had to go to the college to find out the order was rejected. I feel like I just got re-examined without the benefit of KY jelly.
(Cleansing Breath...)
Not too long ago, I got on the mass media for not doing their jobs. Since 9/11, the Fourth Estate seemed entranced with the having access to Wizard of Oz (the fantasy face propagated by the Republican public relations juggernaut) and ignoring the man behind the curtain (ie: the real story). Hurricane Katrina may be changing that a little, according to this blurb from IMDB [the paragraph breaks were added for readability]:
"At one point during NBC's coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, reporter Martin Savidge commented: "This is not Iraq, this is not Somalia, this is home." In fact, the images that television continued to bring into American homes Thursday seemed far more horrendous than anything presented from war-torn nations abroad, and television anchors and reporters who usually distance themselves from disaster stories often appeared as angry as the hurricane victims about what appeared to be gross disaster unpreparedness.
"While he was interviewing Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, Anderson Cooper interrupted her after she thanked President Bush and former President Clinton "for their strong statements of support." Said Cooper, "I'm sorry for interrupting but for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi, and to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset and very angry and very frustrated. And when they hear politicians thanking one another, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours and there's not enough facilities to take her up."
"When Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, who attempted to assure the country that authorities had things under control, appeared on Fox News and CNN, both networks split the screen with images showing just the opposite. (Indeed, an ABC News crew turned back when they encountered gunfire on the way to a New Orleans hospital.) Fox anchor Shepard Smith, reporting from New Orleans, remarked, "We were expecting a naval armada [to come to the rescue]. It hasn't happened." The television networks themselves also came in for a drubbing from several newspaper TV writers for their limited coverage of the disaster. Ed Bark of the Dallas Morning News commented: "How have ABC, NBC and CBS handled what arguably is the worst natural disaster in U.S. history? They've mostly been looking the other way, keeping their daytime soaps in play and waiting all the way until Wednesday night to schedule their first prime-time news specials on the devastation."
"Aaron Barnhart in the Kansas City Star also took the networks to task for handing off the story to the cable news networks, writing, "It doesn't matter if the coverage can be found somewhere else. When it's offered by broadcast networks, more people are informed and the overall sense of urgency rises. This is what happened in 9/11. It happened in the war...Coverage equals importance. That's what makes broadcasting broadcasting." Meanwhile, the cable news networks drew some of their biggest audiences ever. Since Sunday, Fox News Channel has averaged 4,159,000 viewers in primetime (it set a record of 4,900,00 on Wednesday), while CNN has drawn 3,076,000 (3,600,000 on Wednesday) and MSNBC, 1,235,000 (1,500,000 on Wednesday)."
This is what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they called for Freedom of the Press. James Madison, who basically wrote the First Amendment, said, "The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable." He thought it was the press' responsibility to shine the light, and get in government's face, if there was something wrong or evil. From what we've seen on television from Louisiana and Mississippi, something stinks with the Bush's administration's idea of disaster response, and the press is finally doing the job we need them to do.
Distance: 5.70 miles
Time: 00:27:48 minutes
46 Days Until the USN
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