Dear Niece, Last night I had bad dreams about the apocalypse without zombies, because I’ve been reading too much Huffington Post. Huffington Post writes about only three things on their main page: Apocalyptic Politics, Apocalyptic Weather, and Kittens. On the Black Voices page they write about Beyonce, Bill Cosby, and Apocalyptic Cops. Around 2:30 AM, I decided if things get too bad you should come up here to “The Wall.” Since it is remote up here in the Northwoods, we will be safer. In a city, we would have more access to better supplies, of course, but the supplies would run out eventually, and weRead More →

Emma Watson is the new UN Goodwill Ambassador for Women. She gave a powerful speech about the “F-word” and women’s issues to launch the HeForShe campaign. The Daily Mail covered her hair. Leonardo DiCaprio is the UN Messenger of Peace. The Daily Mail did not mention his manbun or attire. Compare the coverage for yourself: Her brown locks were swept into a centre-parting and she kept her make-up understated and natural. Completing the look she added a metallic belt and conservative black pumps.   And then this: the passionate environmentalist and “the world body’s new voice for climate advocacy.”     Note: I might getRead More →

Viewing Obama’s victory on television was eye opening because it showed how much I’ve let the birthers, Tea Partiers, and 1% define my reality. On Tuesday night I watched Fox News because that is who I wanted to narrate my election returns. Call me a masochist. I couldn’t find the Fox station – a funny commentary on my news viewing habits, since I have no problems finding the channel for other shows. I settled on MSNBC. Love that Rachel. I never doubted that Romney would prevail because I’m that jaded. I lost hope early in this election. At 10:00ish on election night, I was explainingRead More →

Students stumped me this week over my information literacy quest about how to peel a hard-boiled egg, which is now a homework activity for public speaking. First, a bit about the activity: The homework requires the students to follow a list of the sources and determine the best way to peel an egg. The point of the assignment is to evaluate the credibility of internet cites and learn that (1) the first Google hits aren’t necessarily valid, and (2) credibility isn’t necessarily obvious at first blush. A colleague who is a librarian mentioned once that people rarely look past the first page of search engineRead More →

Huffington Post has lost it. The site contains story after story about Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin. Sometimes other people are added to the mix — all the usual suspects. To be fair, they add balance with Jon Stewart, Michael Moore, and Arianna herself. On the whole, though, that site is obsessed with right wing bloviation. This obsessive coverage just gives the blowhards more limelight, attention, and power. It’s like feeding trolls. Sarah Palin is now promoting her book, which means she’s making the media circuit. Ultimately this translates to more Palin for us to look forward to on HuffPo. They will documentRead More →

An email I sent to reporter Lynn Sweet in response to a post she made on Politics Daily on why Obama should appoint a woman to the Supreme Court: I’m writing to you about a phrasing that you wrote in the lead to your SCOTUS post. The lead to your article reads: “So a new Gallop poll shows “no clamor” for President Obama to select a woman or minority to the Supreme Court vacancy being created by the departure of Justice David Souter.” Your lead calls to mind an old book entitled _But Some Of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All theRead More →

Today in class, students were supposed to bring an editorial from a newspaper. More than half the students didn’t know what an editorial was or where to find it. What kind of education system do we have in this state? When students can’t tell the difference between an editorial and a news article, I get scared. I’m not talking about the more sophisticated position that questions the difference between information and persuasion, either: “there’s no such thing as information; all information is perspectival.” The students simply didn’t know the kinds of writing in a newspaper. It means that our educational system is not teaching studentsRead More →

Senator Barack Obama has been a media darling since at least August. And the right wing is already starting its smear campaign against him. Much has been made of his middle name, “Hussein.” (See Wonkette.) I saw him on C-SPAN addressing voters in New Hampshire, where the press asked him if his middle name would be a problem in a presidential campaign. His response was pretty savvy, I thought. He said something to the effect of “Anyone who sees my name as a strike against me already has so many other strikes against me that it’s a moot point.” (No, this is not an exactRead More →

You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals, as Jack Cafferty just pointed out, so tragically, so many of these people, almost all of them that we see, are so poor and they are so black, and this is going to raise lots of questions for people who are watching this story unfold. –Wolf Blitzer, CNN What specifically was Wolf Blitzer reporting on when he made this comment? I wish I had seen it so that I could see the context of the quote. The quote, however, is being splashed all over the web. Slate has an interesting take on this quoteRead More →