The big three news channels are all glued to a live shot of a small airplane in Atlanta that’s having landing gear problems. Right now, the view is just a white spot against a blue sky. Exciting television to be sure, but what’s going to happen if the people behind the scenes get the fiery crash that they’re hoping for? Elation? Dread? Regret?

A few years ago, local stations in Los Angeles interrupted after-school childrens programming to go with a live shot of a car chase and its eventual standoff with police. As the cameras zoomed in on the man who was in frantic negotiations with the police, children throughout the city who just wanted to watch Saved By The Bell were instead subjected to the site of a stranger picking up a shotgun and blowing his head off. The media quickly apologized, but what the hell were they expecting to see?

If this airplane turns into the fireball that producers secretly hope it will be, I’m sure we’ll see similar backpedaling as newsmen try to justify their low-brow voyeurism with canned responses about the “public interest”. If the plane lands safely, however, the media’s comeuppance will be delayed. I just hope it won’t take the death of a few strangers to make the media realize that they’re wasting everyone’s time with their prurient desire to show a disaster on live TV.

Mere words cannot prepare you for the horror that you will experience upon hearing “Bush Was Right” by The Right Brothers. “Bush Was Right” plays like a mix between “We Didn’t Start The Fire” and a third-rate imitation of the faux arena rock that’s played during beer commercials, with a lyrical subtlety that makes Sir Mix-A-Lot look like Bob Dylan. And notice that twang in the vocals? It shouldn’t come as any surprise that these guys are really a country band. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but this pathetic attempt to cross over makes Garth Brooks’ “Chris Gaines” experiment look like a success in comparison.

No, it’s not a parody. The group Right March is campaigning to get this crap played on MTV :

“The Right Brothers,” a conservative music duo out of Nashville, has released a new song that does what needed to be done: it tells the TRUTH. Titled “Bush Was Right,” the song hits the listener with fact after fact after fact - but the tune is so catchy, and the music is so driving, you can’t help but sing along (especially on the chorus)!

Now here’s the first problem. How do you “sing along” to a chorus that isn’t sung at all? The chorus of this song is just the words “Bush Was Right” yelled over and over again, punctuated by a guitar lick that resembles a childish taunt “neener neener neener”.Yes, you can drunkenly shout along with the song, but it would be a stretch to call that singing.

This is what the youth in America need. They’re already bombarded with songs on the radio and videos on MTV that trash our President, conservative beliefs, and traditional American values. From “Mosh” by Eminem, to “Idiot Son of an A**hole” by NOFX… all of these songs serve to fill young people’s minds with LIES.

I don’t know if Right March realized this or not, but Eminem is one of the popular musical acts on Earth. He could read the phone book and make it a hit. NOFX, though lacking the mainstream success of Eminem, have been touring and recording for twenty years and are one of the most influential punk bands of all time. Who the hell are The Right Brothers?

We think it’s time they hear the TRUTH - so we’re launching a full-out nationwide campaign to get this new song full of TRUTH onto MTV and radio stations across America!

WILL YOU HELP US? We’re putting together a “kickin’” music video right now, and we’re preparing a HUGE grassroots campaign to get hundreds of thousands of people to request “Bush Was Right!” on MTV’s “Total Request Live” show… leading to our demands for it to be played in regular rotation!

If they DON’T - then we’ll hit the media in a BIG way, showing how MTV plays left-wing videos while CENSORING conservative videos

Now this is my favorite part. If MTV doesn’t play “Bush Was Right” during the 15 minutes or so per day that they still show videos, it’s because they’re censoring conservative views! This is hilarious on so many levels. Are these guys really stupid enough to think that there’s some sort of musical fairness doctrine or something? There are a ton of talented, hard-working groups out there that deserve the mainstream exposure these goobers think they’re entitled to.

But I will give The Right Brothers credit for one thing…they’re hilarious. “Bush Was Right” has nothing on songs like “Trickle Down”…

If the rich man didn’t spend his cash on cars and boats and planes
There’d be a lot of average Joe’s out of work today
His dollar helps America’s economy to thrive
The rich man keeps the working man working and alive

Chorus
Trickle down, trickle down let the money trickle down
It won’t do anybody good buried in the ground
Trickle down, trickle down let the money spread around
And one day it’ll be my turn and mine will trickle down

…and “This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Party” :

This ain’t your daddy’s party
They’ve gone and left you behind
It’s time you learned the real story
Time you made up your own mind
You’re generation number three on a liberal family tree
But do you really even know why
This ain’t your daddy’s party
So won’t you come and join mine

Well, you say they make a stand for the average common man
That’s a real nice philosophy
They’ve been claiming that for years while the money disappears
From working folks like you and me
And don’t even get me started on Defense and Education
separation of church and state
And how their liberal hearts bleed if you try to kill a tree
But not a baby on the way

I’m sure they have a song about the death of small government conservatism on the way any moment now. Then again, if they were able to see the contraictions in their own worldview, they probably wouldn’t have followed the anti-immigrant rant “The Illegals” with the immigrant-friendly “What Happened To The Pot”.

Pajamas Media has launched under a new moniker, Open Source Media, or in their officially-sanctioned shorthand OSM™. Yes, the trademark symbol is part of the abbreviation to remind people that they’re not that “open source”. And in case you get any funny ideas about freely distributing and modifying any of OSM™’s intellectual property, every page is accompanied by a copyright notice and a link to the privacy policy :

Our Site and all its contents, which includes, but is not limited to, text, graphics, photographs, logos, video and audio content, is protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under the copyright laws of the United States and other countries. All individual components of Our Site, including, without limitation, articles, content and other elements comprising Our Site are also copyrighted works. Additionally all of the weblogs linked to by us are likewise protected. You must abide by all additional copyright notices or restrictions contained on this site and our linked weblogs.

You may not reproduce, distribute, copy, publish, enter into any database, display, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit any part of this site. The only exceptions to this are that you may download material from Our Site for your own personal use, provided such download is limited to making one machine readable copy and/or one print copy that limited to occasional articles of personal interest only. No other use of the content of Our Site is permitted. Please contact our Sales Department if you wish to have rights other than those stated above.

As a comparison, here’s the notice at the bottom of DailyKos (who’s notably absent from OSM™’s blogroll) :

Site content may be used for any purpose without explicit permission unless otherwise specified.

The jury may still be out on whether or not OSM™ is a thinly-disguised conservative blog circlejerk, one thing is already clear. They’re not open source. I’ve always considered the intentional misuse of buzzwords to be a MSM™ phenomenon, but the guys in pajamas sure are quick learners.

In 1866, the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Ex Parte Milligan that the suspension of habeas corpus was unconstitutional, even if done during wartime. Since we now find ourselves in the remarkable situation of having to defend this most basic right, the court’s opinion in Ex Parte Milligan is worth revisiting. The most stunning part, to me, is this quote near the end which seems to be looking into the past and future at the same time :

Time has proven the discernment of our ancestors; for even these provisions, expressed in such plain English words, that it would seem the ingenuity of man could not evade them, are now, after the lapse of more than seventy years, sought to be avoided. Those great and good men foresaw that troublous times would arise, when rulers and people would become restive under restraint, and seek by sharp and decisive measures to accomplish ends deemed just and proper; and that the principles of constitutional liberty would be in peril, unless established by irrepealable law. The history of the world had taught them that what was done in the past might be attempted in the future. The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, [71 U.S. 2, 121] and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false; for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it, which are necessary to preserve its existence; as has been happily proved by the result of the great effort to throw off its just authority.

In the extended entry, I’m including a longer quote that reiterates the rights afforded to us by the constitution, the origins of those rights, and why those that would take those rights away from us are un-American. Rights as basic as habeas corpus should be beyond debate at this point. That this is even on the table shows the depths to which these men would sink.
(more…)

Pajamas Media, the protean venture which is supposed to use bloggers to destroy the mainstream media or something like that, is almost here. To be honest, I’m embarrassed to be sharing the same writing medium with these self-aggrandizing jackasses. Sane bloggers look at these delusional hacks the way normal Star Wars fans look at those douchebag fanatics who think “Jedi” is a religion. Get over yourselves, guys.

One of the bloggers who led the charge against Rather is Charles Johnson, proprietor of the curiously named Little Green Footballs. Shortly after this triumph, Johnson joined forces with another popular blogger, Roger L. Simon, to form (thumbing their noses at Klein and all other doubters) Pajamas Media.
. . .
“Our intention is to create an aggregation of good blogs, quality-wise, to provide an alternative to the mainstream media,” Simon tells NRO.

In the beginning, however, they will be somewhat dependent on that same mainstream media. The site will have links to the top news headlines of the day, as reported by the AP and other establishment news sources.

How is this different than the Huffington Post or the Daou Report? Oh yeah, those guys aren’t dumb enough to think they’re going to replace the medium they’re criticizing.

Bloggers don’t work nine-to-five; they post around-the-clock. They don’t file one story a day; they might update dozens of times throughout a 24-hour period. And they are everywhere. The New York Times has 53 bureaus worldwide (16 of them in the New York area). Pajamas Media plans to easily top that number, and at a fraction of the cost.

Out of curiosity, how often does your RSS reader show an updated feed between midnight and 5AM? And this bizarre comparison between the number of New York Times bureaus is hilarious.

Screw it, I’m gonna start a new venture called 555-Media that combines the power of the telephone with the news-gathering abilities of traditional media. Whereas outlets like the New York Slimes have blights on their record like Jayson Blair, our “telejournalists” will ensure that everything we do is ethically and intellectually unassailable. The NYT only has 53 bureaus, but there are millions of telephones. Take that, MSM™, now where’s my $3.5 million?

Pajamas Media will also distinguish itself from the mainstream folks, according to Simon, with “a new method of fact-checking.”

An internal instant-messaging system will link their correspondents all over the world. If there are any doubts about a report’s veracity, they can call on the expertise of their editors instantly.
. . .
“If we’re not certain a story is real,” Simon said, “we immediately ping our eight wise men and check it out.”

Editors?! Wow, why hasn’t the mainstream media come up with that idea? And what’s this “instant-messaging” thing they’re talking about? Is that like the telegraph?

More than that, however, Johnson and Simon consider the entire blogosphere their fact-checkers. This is a sacred tenet among many bloggers. If a blogger makes a mistake, readers will call him on it right away, either via comment or email. And the blogger is honor-bound to correct it immediately and clearly.

That’s right, for PJ’s Media, it’s all about honor. That’s why each member of the editorial board will carry a medium-length Japanese sword called a wakizashi with which they will carry out their sacred duty and sacrifice themselves to defend the honor of their media venture. Shortly after issuing a front-page correction, any disgraced editor will plunge the wakizashi into his abdomen, make a swift left-right slash, followed by an upward stroke to ensure a quick, honorable death.

Instead of relying on a few overworked editors to fact-check every story, bloggers count on thousands of other bloggers to, as they like to say, “fact-check their a**.” Bloggers, in other words, lean on the collective knowledge of the entire Internet rather than a handful of elites.

Huh? Weren’t they just boasting about ability to send and instant telegram to their “eight wise men”, or is their editorial board the “handful of elites” they’re referring to here?

Credit where it’s due, however, I applaud the PJM™ for their use of the word “ass”. I’ve been mildly cursing for years now to show the world that I’m edgy and unpredictable, but still safe enough to bring home to meet your family. It’s nice to see a media outlet that’s finally hip to my generation, dammit. The dudes at PJ’s media aren’t afraid to get in your face and, pardon my French, raise hell.

Johnson and Simon claim that, like most bloggers, they will not hesitate to own up to errors. In their view, more established media are too arrogant and hidebound to admit many of their mistakes. And when they do, it’s often published separately from the original story. For instance, newspapers usually print corrections buried deep in subsequent editions. Someone who’s read the original error but doesn’t read the paper closely every day will never know of it.

You really can’t prevent every kind of error,” Simon elaborated. “The difference is, corrections will immediately come up on the front page [of Pajamas Media], as opposed to the mainstream media, where you need three Talmudic scholars to find the correction.

I’m glad somebody is finally addressing this issue. I’ve been complaining for years about newspapers printing their corrections in in either Hebrew or Aramaic. Lately it’s gotten so hard to find one or two Talmudic scholars, much less the three it takes to flip through a newspaper skimming for the word “corrections”. Those arrogant MSM elites (as opposed to arrogant blogger elites) should admit mistakes on the front page above-the-fold, recall any copies of the paper that contain errors, and come up with a way to travel back in time to make sure mistakes never happened in the first place. Since that’s unlikely to happen until PJM takes over the world, I’d suggest the following compromise : If the newspaper makes any mistakes, those mistakes should be acknowledged in a special section of the newspaper (let’s call it “corrections”) and that section should be placed as close to the editorials as possible.

But I’d be a fool to mock ambition this modest :

If all proceeds according to plan, the eventual goal is to replace the established media sources with a network of what Johnson and Simon call “citizen-journalists.”

The only question that remains is when Johnson and Simon will find the time to cure cancer, end poverty, and usher in a new era of peace and prosperity.

Once again, a conservative rant is spreading throughout the liberal blogosphere and I’m more interested in word choice. In this case, it’s Bill O’Reilly’s McCarthyite rant against his enemies and his use of the word “guttersnipes”.

What is a guttersnipe?? I just assumed it was one of those made-up conservative insults like “assclown” or “crapweasel”, but it actually appears in the dictionary :

gut·ter·snipe n. : a child who spends most of his time in the streets especially in slum areas (Synonym: street urchin)

So when Bill O’Reilly is trying to find term to smear his enemies, this is what he compares them to :

I know conservatives don’t care about the poor, but when did poverty become an insult to these people?

My friend Josh noticed an interesting contradiction on CNN’s homepage last week and was savvy enough to save this screenshot :

Out of curiosity, how do you shoot down a helicopter with a roadside bomb?

How much do I love Arrested Development? So much that this absurd bit of hyperbole doesn’t seem like that big a stretch :

For believing that the earth orbited the sun, Galileo died under house arrest.

For laying the groundwork for ethics and philosophy, Socrates was sentenced to death by poisoning.

And for creating the most intricately woven, wickedly smart series ever to make it to television, Mitchell Hurwitz has to watch his “Arrested Development” get slapped around in the ratings by the likes of “Yes, Dear,” “Still Standing” and any number of schlumpy-guy-with-a-hot-wife sitcoms.

Humanity has a long history of punishing visionaries, but this is ridiculous.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the punishment is getting worse :

The Bluth clan of Fox’s “Arrested Development” is also headed for the exit after Fox has cut back the third-season order on the Emmy-winning comedy to 13 episodes.

The fact that the ratings for Arrested Development are crap is hardly a secret. Creator Mitchell Hurwitz even acknowledged it as he accepted his second consecutive Emmy a few weeks ago :

We’d be remiss if we didn’t point out the fact that the academy has twice rewarded us for something that you people won’t watch. Tomorrow you have a chance - tomorrow at 8 o’clock - you know we’d appreciate it. You’ll get back to CBS in time for `Two and a Half Men.

It seems to me that there are two big obstacles standing between AD and the enormous popularity that it deserves :

Arrested Development is on the worst network at the worst time with the worst shows. This may have helped the most critically acclaimed comedy on TV attract the five or six people who are fans of Prison Break and Kitchen Confidential, but for the rest of us, Monday nights on Fox is hardly the ideal venue for your best show. Especially when the already shitty schedule is interrupted for a month by baseball and is about to be interrupted again to make room for a double-helping of Prison Break during sweeps.

The show rewards repeated viewings. Granted, it’s not harder to get into than a show like Lost or Desperate Housewives, people aren’t accustomed to anything other than the easiest of laughs from a 30 minute sitcom. True, there’s a lot of silliness on the show, but all of the friends I’ve tried to attract to the show didn’t become big fans until they watched 3 or 4 episodes. This is especially difficult when you consider that the show probably lost a lot of viewers who watched a single episode to give the show a chance and walked away thinking it was all hype.

That said, these are hardly insurmountable problems. I’m entering fantasyland at this point, but here’s what I’d do if I had the power to save the show :

Before the ink is dry on the cancellation notice from FOX, the show should be picked up by NBC to add to their Tuesday night sitcom lineup alongside “The Office” and “My Name Is Earl”. If ever there was a perfect audience for a neglected show, this is it.

They should give away a DVD with five episodes from the first season. This might sound weird, but it worked (for me, at least) with “Everybody Hates Chris”. I like Chris Rock and I was curious about his show after all the hype I’d heard, but I don’t think I would have ever watched an episode if UPN hadn’t stuck a DVD of the pilot into a copy of Entertainment Weekly. I don’t watch UPN and I’m really weary of new sitcoms, but this promo let me see the show on my own time and sat on my coffee table as a reminder of the show until I set TIVO to record it. A similar promotion with enough episodes from the first season for people to really get a taste for why AD is so great would be a perfect way to re-introduce people to the show as well as build up sales of the DVD box sets.

So please Mr. TV-Man, save the funniest show on television. The Bluth family is too young to die.

UPDATE : A fellow fan over at The Huffington Post vents :

I’m one of Arrested’s biggest fans and yet during its first two seasons I’d say I only saw a third of the episodes because of confusion over it’s air time. Week after week I’d tune in to find it was continually pre-empted and rescheduled because of Sunday Night Football and Malcom in the Middle re-runs (the most frustrating part of this was when I finally would catch an episode it would typically be a re-run of one of the few I’d actually seen before!) THEN, when they finally put it on Mondays and I think I’ve got a handle on the show’s schedule they preempt the damn thing again for FIVE WEEKS because of baseball! Their website stated at the start of the hiatus that the show would be back Oct 31st, but then when I checked that night, it was two straight hours of that assinine Prison Break show (a guy goes to prison to break his brother out? does that make logical sense to anyone?!). If I hadn’t stayed in the room during the commericla break of the first episode last Monday I wouldn’t have known there was another on at 8:30.

Seriously, how do the brainiacs at Fox not realize that their inability to capitalize on the show’s incredible buzz is based solely on their inconsistant programming schedule?! I mean, it would seem to me that should be one of the must fundamental principles to growing a show’s fan base. Same time, same night, week after week. Don’t preempt, don’t postpone. DUH!

As David Cross ranted at the end of the blooper reel on the season two DVD, the programmers at FOX aren’t the only ones who deserve some scorn :

“I’ve got an idea for what you can do, why don’t you fucking fire your complete marketing team and get a new one there that knows how to market a show that won five motherfucking emmys, golden globes, SAG awards, WGA awards, DVA awards, Producers Guild Awards, critic’s top 10 list; you know if you can’t fucking market that kind of show and get better ratings then maybe the problem doesn’t lie here maybe it lies with marketing.”

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is a movie star. Dude, we get it. Please shut up.

“If I would do another ‘Terminator’ movie I would have Terminator travel back in time and tell Arnold not to have a special election,” the former action film star joked. “I should have also listened to my wife who said don’t do it.”

If he made another Batman movie, he’d have Mr. Freeze tell Arnold to “chill out” with the special election thing. If he made another “True Lies”, he’d tell everyone the truth about his blatant attempt to cripple the Democratic party. If he made another “Pumping Iron” film, he’d tell Arnold to do the heavy lifting himself and not rely on the people of California to make the hard decisions for him. If he made another “Total Recall”, he’d think twice about replacing and then doing a worse job than Gray Davis. If he made another “Predator”, he’d think twice about molesting those women. If he made another “Raw Deal”, he’d apologize to his constituents and actually govern like the moderate he pretended to be two years ago. If he made another “Collateral Damage” he’d think twice about short-changing the children of California by cutting school funding and screwing teachers. If there was a sequel to “The Running Man”….

Y’know what’s weird? The first thing that caught my eye when reading this much-maligned post at Instapundit was his word choice :

The White House needs to go on the offensive here in a big way — and Bush needs to be very plain that this is all about Democratic politicans pandering to the antiwar base, that it’s deeply dishonest, and that it hurts our troops abroad.

And yes, he should question their patriotism. Because they’re acting unpatriotically.
. . .
Patriotic people could — and did — oppose the war. But so did a lot of scoundrels.

Oh Glenn, you’re sooo old school. Who knew instant punditry provided enough time to consult the thesaurus? Since I find the rest of the post particularly grating, let me just say that this bit in particular proves that Glenn Reynolds is a churlish rogue :

Reader Kathleen Boerger emails: “Could you do me a favor and define ‘patriotism’ please?”

I think it starts with not uttering falsehoods that damage the country in time of war, simply because your donor base wants to hear them.

Patriotic people could — and did — oppose the war. But so did a lot of scoundrels. And some who supported the war were not patriotic, if they did it out of opportunism or political calculation rather than honest belief. Those who are now trying to recast their prior positions through dishonest rewriting of history are not patriotic now, nor were they when they supported the war, if they did so then out of opportunism –which today’s revisionist history suggests.

Notice what Reynolds does here. He doesn’t name any names, he just writes a description of opposition to the war just vague enough to wiggle out of if he’s in a bind. No, he’s not talking about any specific people or mentioning any political party by name, because that might jeopardize his undeserved reputation for being independent and give his opponents the details necessary to call him on his bullshit.

Since Glenn actively opposed the election of John Kerry, I’m going to assume that Kerry was who he was thinking of when constructing his little strawman. After all, John Kerry is a flip-flopper. So, is Sen. Kerry one of those who seeks to “recast [his] prior positions through dishonest rewriting of history”? Well, here’s what he had to say on the Senate floor in the fall of 2002 during the debate over whether to authorize the President to use force to disarm Iraq :

“As the President made clear earlier this week, “Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable.” It means “America speaks with one voice.”

Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies.

In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days–to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out.

If we do wind up going to war with Iraq, it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent–and I emphasize “imminent”–threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs.”

The way the President and his defenders would have you believe it, everyone was on the same page in regards to invading Iraq. Just as the Administration disregarded the caveats in their intelligence briefings, scoundrels like Glenn Reynolds overlook the fact that the support of many for this war was conditional on objectives the President failed to meet. I opposed the war and I’m not saying this to justify what I believe was a shameful vote by Senator Kerry and others, but I think hacks like Instapundit need to do their homework before decrying “historical revisionists”.