Contrived controversies rule the day. Like the frog boiled alive, the tiny incremental distortions undermine perceptions and fuel ignorance.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/18/125241/426
Accompanying its wretched cover story on "Ms. Not Quite Right," the tall and not-even-good-looking far-right pundit Ann Coulter, the editors at Time have an equally nauseating photo essay of "candid" shots that Coulter was more than happy to turn over -- of her childhood, ex-boyfriends, etc.
Now check out this picture from last summer's GOP convention in New York! Here's the caption:
Demon and Idol: Protesters blast Coulter at the G.O.P. Convention in New York City last year.
As you can see, the shot shows Coulter with a red grafitti-style "X" over her mouth with a scrawled "ENEMY," and calls her a "Reactionary Neo-Imperialistic Criminal."
It also says the sign is from Communists for Kerry. That should have been a - pardon the hideous pun - red flag for those insightful Time editors. We know Time-Warner has had some accounting woes, but don't these guys have Google up in Manhattan?
Communists for Kerry is a right-wing JOKE, guys -- scroll to the end of this story and you'll see how a credulous Fox News was also duped by these folks last summer.
Maybe the alert editors at Time could have noticed the sign directly behind the Coulter "protest" -- it's from a group called "Criminals for Gun Control." Then there's the sign on the right, "Liberating Iraqi Children from Tyranny is Co$ting Too Much," from the infamous group called Protest Warrior.
Kos "Now that's pretty funny."
Incompetence, laziness, shoddy journalism, yes, it would seem that these terms fit as we all robotically repeat the future defense of such inexcusable actions.
Why didn't they google it? They must be dum? Ha ha ha.arrgh.
guys, put on your tin foil hats, swallow your pride and realize that sloppy is slick and besides some folks here at kos and a few people who catch the correction page in the next issue, not many people will learn that photo was contrived.
All right heres where I'm going to poke at some egos, please stick with me. Over at Protestwarrior.com (the guys behind the joke sign) they are gloating and laughing at how easy it was to "trick those stupid liiB3Ralls", and take my word for it (I've surfed the forums before) those guys are idiots.
Facts are a big deal, yes its true that with the break neck speed upon which news breaks, that sometimes honest to goodness mistakes are made.
But, in this particular case, we need to get it right about the article about ms right. We need to remind ourselves that ann coulter provided the photograph, so, it is intuitive that those different folks on the editorial board that signed off on this would have (or should have) gone to great lengths to verify the photo.
Now, both sides of the black and white version of this are laughing. one says, "time magazine is dumb" and the other says, "liberals are dumb",
Both sides get to belittle the plebeians (its never us) and ascend to new heights of condescension.
The PR regimes are sitting on the manuscript for `how to propagandize an open society'. I flipped through an advance copy and I have to admit that my initial outrage quickly subsided and was soon replaced with respect. Respect, not of the end goal, but instead the style and subtle artistry of the means.
The cheap parlor trick became the grand illusion and I could not help but admire the hallucination. Laying it out on the table made my reality seem surreal and I begged for a fog that would reconnect me with my neighbors. How naïve to think I could explain phenomenon to highly emotional hairless apes. I am, after all, just as susceptible to the psychology of nationalism, but I am nevertheless, still confounded by the amazing lack of curiosity. History is certainly for historians and maybe the paranoid, but for every one else, it's a myth.
Kos, why are you laughing? I know why the ford foundations mouth piece amy Goodman laughs, but kos, you aren't that are you?