by Ripley
Snoopy's cartoon balls, are you kidding me??? Via AP:
I'll assume you're sitting there, scratching your head and maybe thinking something like, "What the holy fitzer valves does Joe(!) the Plumber(!) know about cypherin' and big city newspaperin'? He's just a regular Joe. (yuk yuk)" You'd really have to think long and hard to figure out what kind of outfit would hire this clown to - ohhhhh...
"War correspondent"... I suppose one could get his or her pedantry all up in my face and point out that if Mr. Wurzelbacher is "corresponding" with us from an area that's experiencing a "war", that he sort of qualifies as a "war correspondent", but... come on. I mean, Fuck...
Leave it to the nutless wonders of PJTV to glom onto some pseudo-celebrity du jour whose claim to fame is being schooled on the finer points of tax policy, on video, by Presidential candidate, Barack Obama. (he's black, by the way - did you know that?) The people who pay John Cole good money to try and convince you and me that Glenn Reynolds or Hugh Hewitt or whoever the hell it was is going to be the "end of broadcast/cable news" or some such self-aggrandizing bullshit. And then, there's the breathless, dang near turgid promos on their "web site"...
... breaking news ... Joe the Plumber goes to Israel to cover the Gaza War for Pajamas TV...
Huh... "reports from Israel"... "goes to Israel"... Kind of a cushy gig for a war correspondent. You have to ask yourself, "Why isn't he going to the Gaza Strip to report on conditions there?" Shit, Bill O'Reilly was in the fucking mix, man. Ask him - he'll tell ya! But again, this is really about some dime a dozen lunkhead who's being pushed into America's face like a Miss Junior Little Miss Pre-Tween Sweetness and Light pageant contestant by a bunch of wannabe's who can't stop talking about themselves even when you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom. [True Story: I had a landlord once who was talking to one of my roommates about his girlfriend and followed the rommate upstairs when the roommate said he had to use the bathroom. The landlord stood there, waiting patiently outside the bathroom and picked up the conversation as soon as the door opened. Creepy? Oh yeah... a little...]
And, really - what kind of "news organization" would spend money to send a fucking plumber half way around the world to deliver poignant, insightful commentary on a decades long political, and centuries long cultural, struggle? What can we expect from this joker, some kind of Ollie Williams "Shit's
blowing up!" reports? For the love of Granny's tits, at least the sports shows have enough
brains to hire former players for a good chunk of their commentary.
Oh, I tell you, kids. This just does not sit well with me. I have nothing against people cathing a lucky break, but fuck's sake... This is beyond the fevered, feel good dreams of Horatio Alger. Shit, it's just got to be burning holes in the stomachs of every legitimate journalist out there. And,Hell, not to keep dipping into the O'Reilly well, but at least he had some actual face time on a real live TV show and some experience in journalism, if not combat.
But here's something for the PJTV crew and Sam "Who Ya Gonna Call?" Wurzelbacher to think about.
On January 29, 2006, Woodruff and Canadian cameraman Doug Vogt were seriously injured in an explosion from an improvised explosive device near Taji, Iraq, about 12 miles (19 km) north of Baghdad.
At the time of the attack, they were embedded with the U.S. 4th Infantry Division, travelling in an Iraqi MT-LB. Woodruff and Vogt were standing with their heads above a hatch, apparently filming a stand-up. Both men were wearing body armor and protective helmets at the time. Woodruff sustained shrapnel wounds; Vogt was struck by shrapnel in the head and suffered a broken shoulder. Both men underwent surgery for head injuries, with a joint Army & Air Force neurosurgical team, at the U.S. Air Force hospital south of Balad, located in Camp Anaconda, and were reported to be in stable condition. Tom Brokaw reported on the Today show that Woodruff had also undergone surgery, with a portion of his skull being removed to reduce the damage from brain swelling.
Bob Woodruff was an actual war correspondent, corresponding from an actual war zone, and while some may argue that embedding reporters with the troops was a bit of heavy handed propaganda, it was far less a publicity stunt than the PJTV crew is trying to pull on us. They cry and whine about "bias" and "facts", then they prance around the internets, sticking their hairbrushes in front of their stuffed animals' faces and asking really tough questions. And, yet, they want us to believe they're serious journalists.
It is to fucking laugh...
[Updated to remove some excess white space around the blockquotes and to say: Fuck you, PJTV and Joe the Plumber.]
Rip -
