Ersatz (adj.)- a cheap imitation of inferior quality.
Welcome to your ersatz The Daily Show/The Colbert Report Spoiler and Chat Thread.
Tonight's repeats are from 3/17/08 (Brian Fagan, TiaRachel thread here) and 3/12/08 (Guests Ethan Nadelmann and Howard Kurtz, TiaRachel thread here).
That, frankly, is all anyone need do to post their own TDS/TCR Fill In thread, it is in fact about the community and comments and nobody reads the damn diary.
To the extent your ego drives you to do it you can also provide other entertainment or alternatives-
The Hypnotoad.
Take a look-
PBS- Charlie Rose (Ed Rendell, Thomas Keller) | A&E- CSI: Miami |
ABC Family- 700 Club | AMC- Death Wish V: The Face of Death |
Animal- Wild Kingdom | Cartoon- Family Guy, Family Guy |
CNBC- Mad Money | CNN- Anderson Cooper 360 |
truTV- Forensic Files, Forensic Files | Discovery- Mythbusters |
Disney- Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Hannah Montana | E!- E! News, Chelsea Lately |
ESPN- High Shool Basketball All-Star Game: McDonald's All-Americans, Sports Center | ESPNC- Classic Bull Riding 2006: PRCA Xtreme Bulls |
ESPN2- Sports Center, NFL Live | Good Eats (Milk Made), Unwrapped |
Faux Noise- BillO | FX- In Her Shoes |
Golf- The Approach, Golf Central | History- UFOs: What You Don't Know |
HGTV- Haulin' House, What's With That House | Lifetime- Will & Grace, Will & Grace |
MSNBC- Confessions Of BTK | MTV- X Effect, X Effect |
National Geographic- Explorer | Nickelodeon- Fresh Prince Of Bel Air, Fresh Prince Of Bel Air |
Vs.- WEC WrekCage | Oxygen- Bad Girls Club, Bad Girls Club |
Sci Fi- Ghost Hunters | Speed- Pass Time, NOPI Tunervision |
Spike- Pros vs. Joes: Last Joe Standing | Style- Clean House Comes Clean, Clean House Comes Clean |
TBS- Friends, Friends | TCM- The Man Who Knew Too Much |
TLC- Jon & Kate Plus 8, Jon & Kate Plus 8 | TNT- Cold Case |
Travel- Steak Paradise | TV Land- High School Reunion |
USA- Law & Order: Criminal Intent | VH1- Rock Of Love 2 |
TV Guide Channel has "Idol Tonight". I can proudly say I've never watched even a single episode.
Speaking of Charlie Rose, you should really read Glenn Greenwald's piece from today-
What can and cannot be spoken on television
The significance of the interview lies as much in what it says about the American occupation of Iraq as it what it illustrates about the American media. In the American media's discussions of Iraq, when are the perspectives expressed here about our ongoing occupation -- views extremely common among Iraqis of all types and grounded in clear, indisputable facts -- ever heard by the average American news consumer? The answer is: "virtually never."
Rose was as adversarial and argumentative -- angry, even -- as he ever gets with anyone, because he plainly did not anticipate, and did not like, that he was being exposed to such hostility towards our Freedom-spreading, Liberty-loving Liberation of the grateful, lucky (dead and displaced) Iraqi people.
To see how scripted and narrow the American media's discussion of Iraq continues to be -- as Americans are told that it is a matter of mandated orthodoxy that they believe that the Surge is Working (so much so that John McCain actually demanded yesterday that Hillary Clinton "apologize" for daring to question the pronouncements of the High, Honorable Commanding General, David H. Petraeus) -- watch the entire interview and consider how those views are never heard. For those who do not watch, I will excerpt just a few of the illustrative exchanges, beginning with this opening exchange:
ROSE: And obviously, what we want to accomplish on this fifth anniversary of the American invasion, or the coalition invasion of Iraq, is how they see it as Iraqis, five years later.
Give me an assessment.
ALI FADHIL: That's a big question, assessment. Well, basically, probably, I`ll kind of sum it in a few words.
It's -- we have a country where the government is not functioning after five years. We have too many internal problems. And we have the violence increasing day after day.
We have a huge crisis of refugees inside and outside Iraq. We have a total failure of the -- of the civilian -- the civilian structure and what's happening inside. We have the sectarian divisions increasing. We didn't have that before. Now we have it.
So, basically, my assessment is we have a whole nation called Iraq, now it's wiped out.
CHARLIE ROSE: And Iraq is worse off because the United States came?
ALI FADHIL: It's worse off because the United States came to Iraq, definitely, and because the United States did all these mistakes in Iraq. |
And:
CHARLIE ROSE: So where do we go from here? Five years after the invasion of Iraq, what is a wise American policy?
ALI FADHIL: Let me start with telling you what is happening right now, what is the American policy right now in Iraq.
It's so shame to say that America is in Iraq right now, and particularly the State Department and also the Pentagon as well, the U.S. Army in Iraq. They're going back to Saddam's policies in everything. . . . If you, you know, name it, name the most successful project of the surge -- outcome of the surge, the (INAUDIBLE) councils. You know, these insurgents, the Sunnis, even Shiites.
CHARLIE ROSE: The so-called awakening.
ALI FADHIL: Awakening council, exactly. They're giving them money to protect their own neighborhoods. Isn't that the same what happened under Saddam? . . .
Anything [Americans] do -- probably even in good intentions -- is bad for us, everything they do, everything. There's nothing they're doing is right.
And that's what is going to happen. It's just prolonging the diaspora of the Iraqis. We're suffering more and more every day. We need, you know, to start the salvation (ph). . .
SINAN ANTOON: The president today said something really obscene to my mind. He said Iraq is witnessing the first Arab uprising against al Qaeda.
We did not have al Qaeda in Iraq before.We had a ruthless dictatorship. |
...
The reason for this is clear. The American media has a script to which they loyally adhere. The U.S. can make mistakes and government leaders can be criticized for incompetence, but we can never do anything that is actually destructive or evil or which justifiably provokes hatred towards us by people in other countries -- not even bombing them and occupying them for years and imprisoning tens of thousands of them with no charges and replicating the behavior of their hated dictator. Any views that suggest such a thing are simply not heard. |
What I have been doing instead of polluting my mind while I've been waiting for stuff to happen (can't read teh blogs when my computer is down) is re-reading Tolkien's Silmarillion.
And you thought you were a nerd.