Sign up for The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter.
In our quest to remain a vigilant watchdog of the constantly changing world of media, we chanced upon a site that features pictures — sent in by readers — of things that are broken. While the post that caught our eye isn’t about anything broken per se, it’s still pretty damn funny. The money piece is a small item about a New York Times article that mentions a UCLA professor — testifying at the Robert Blake trial — whose claim to fame appeared to be that he “smoked crack cocaine himself and sat in a cage with monkeys to teach them how to smoke cocaine as well.”
The upshot? We’re not sure — but there’s a lesson there somewhere when someone is getting paid to teach monkeys how to spark the rock.
Switching gears from smoked-out primates to the navel-gazing aspects of media-centric blogs, Newsosaur tackles the story that blogs may soon come under FEC campaign-finance guidelines. “The very success of this potent, home-brewed medium has placed citizen journalists on a potential collision course with the law,” he writes. “Blogging is too new to fit into the classic media paradigms and standard legal boilerplate. And it is too noisy — and nosey — to ignore.” Therefore, we have the FEC wondering if it’s an illegal campaign contribution for blogs to “improperly” link to a campaign’s website, and Apple’s lawsuit against three Web writers for leaking company information.
Despite these whiffs of a sober future right around the corner, plenty of blogs still haven’t forgotten how to dance with the girl what brung ’em. In this spirit, let the Bill Clinton health conspiracies begin! Doctor CBB at Codeblue writes of Clinton’s wan appearance and upcoming surgery:
I work in a cardiac hospital. I’ve seen 1,000 patients a year undergo coronary artery bypass surgery and there are two things I can tell you:
1. Most people bounce back incredibly quickly — especially 58-year-old previously healthy males — and are themselves again in a month or two at the most.
2. I have NEVER seen or heard of someone suddenly developing a complex pleural effusion six months after the surgery.
Then, like any other self-respecting, card-carrying, red-blooded blogger, the Doc carefully poses the question, “Does Clinton have cancer … or AIDS?” The Doc, no slouch, compares Clinton’s rather sickly pallor to Jimmy Carter, then to Viktor Yushchenko and then to an AIDS-afflicted Rock Hudson in a single post — surely no easy task. (Try to get that kind of observation from a New York Times medical writer!)
Speaking of deep thinkers, there is a new blog, called Right Reason, that brings together 14 conservative philosophers to tackle “philosophical examinations of topical issues like abortion, welfare, and terrorism, broad subjects like human dignity, private property, and just war, and even broader themes like the nature of persons, the concept of rights, and the foundations of moral theory.”
Not everyone’s cup of tea, for sure — let’s face it, some of us are more into crack-smoking monkeys — but, hey, some heavyweight pontificating is always a welcome addition to the ‘sphere.
–Paul McLeary
Has America ever needed a media defender more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.
