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Craigslist Adult Section

craigs_list_sex_forsale2010-med-bigBy: Billy BeerSlugger

Just so everyone knows, Craigslist has taken down the Adult Services section on their website. Now you may be thinking, “That’s good, prostitution is illegal and disgusting” and for the most or all of that equation you will be right. Prostitution is definitely illegal and Craigslist is one of the main places that people in every major city have gone to acquire an escort, get a blow job or be beaten unmercifully by a dominatrix.

On the surface, taking down a portion of a website known to harbor such activity is hailed as a victory for morals and right wing politics. However, having one place for people to go to advertise or acquire such services also gave law enforcement a one stop shop to snoop, sting and arrest the people partaking in such activities. So on one hand you have a free-ish website devoted to people providing erotic services and on the other hand the people who are posting these services are opening themselves up to arrest and prosecution if they are providing illegal services as well as the people who are responding to ads may be caught in a sting also. So does one negative and one positive equal a wash? Apparently not.

With a political season in full swing and right wing rhetoric being spewed out of every trying to be a senator/representative that is in a conservative area it put a lot of pressure on Craigslist and they eventually caved. Why? I’m not really sure. Maybe endless days in court and lawyer fees, maybe they didn’t want the bad press, maybe they figured it just wasn’t worth the hassle to let people sell sex for free essentially. Either way, the people that were frequenting the Craigslist Adult Section now have to go other places to find what they are looking for. Places the Police aren’t privy to or do not have good ways of tracking. So that when things do go wrong, someone gets hurt or killed it’s going to be that much harder to solve the case.

You can look at this things from the two angles, pro-adult section and anti-adult section and have a great argument on both sides but I’m of the mind that people will find another way to do their illegal activities, just like in the realm of illegal downloading of copyrighted data. You shut one file sharing site down and 10 more pop up and then more people know that there’s file sharing sites when they hear the news on TV that one was shut down. It’s almost better to leave the original one up and try and control that monster than tear it down and create a long line of copycats.

Anyway, that’s why we call them issues because they have two equally different but somewhat logical thought processes behind them. Whats great about this country is we are allowed the opportunity of free thinking unlike many other countries and cultures. I always find it’s best to discover both parts of the argument, look at both rationales behind the thought processes before you make an informed decision.   Don’t know why but this issue kind of reminded me of how blindly following a politician on certain issues is often not the right thing to do. They were some of the people frequenting Craigslist Adult Section to begin with.

Catch our fun take on BeerSlugger.com’s brief foray into the world of Adult Personal Ads on Craigslist.

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The World Trade Center Mosque

By: Billy BeerSlugger

So there is a Muslim group trying to put up a large Mosque a little bit away from the “hallowed grounds” of the World Trade Center. The beef being that it was Muslim extremists who flew plane into the World Trade Center towers to begin with. A lot of people on the right/conservative side of the including Sarah Palin who I’m not sure why people listen to her. I haven’t seen or heard of any Democrats come out against it but one would have to guess that there are some who are completely against it but won’t touch the subject politically.

It’s a touchy subject, the largest mass murder in American History and the religion of the supposed perpetrators is trying to essentially put a large headquarters within a stones throw of that site. However, as many pudits probably have pointed out (I haven’t been watching TV lately), America grants the freedom to practice religion.

In the Bill of Rights, Amendment 1:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I think it’s pretty clear right there, those people are within their rights to establish a Mosque wherever they please; you can’t prohibit them from building a Mosque.

Just a couple of other things I want to bring up:

  1. Just because an extreme group of Muslims blew up the World Trade Center does not make all Muslims bad people. There’s extreme groups of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and every other major religion who give their more moderate brothers and sisters a bad name.
  2. Voltaire once said, “I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” I certainly agree with this statement in terms of Freedom of Speech and I think it lends itself well to Freedom of religion.

I do not particularly agree with placing a Mosque so close to Ground Zero but I’m also an American and I support any religions wish to practice. If they own that land or have somehow been granted that land then they have the right to build there. End of story.

Even as I am right leaning it does not seem very tolerant of religions in general. At least on the part of some people in our crappy political system.

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Tv’s New Hit

TV will rot your brain..if your lucky.By: Sean Millski

Has anyone else seen that the news is suddenly full of stories about kids being hit and killed by…..Televisions!?  The first Delaware Valley incident that caught my attention was earlier this week in Kensington, That resulted in only an injury, the second, yesterday in Burlington county new jersey resulted in the death of a two and half year old boy! In doing a little research I found this is not at all uncommon. Every major city in the country reports many such instances every year. For example; Last November in Florida a 16mo old boy was killed when an older sibling climbed a 4ft tall TV to turn it off and ended up toppling it over onto his infant brother. Almost the exact same thing happened in Phoenix,Az. 3 times in as many months!

Even though I immediately started to suspect a combination of poor parenting and the trend towards huge TV’s (even though the one in Jersey yesterday was only 27″), as it turns out the vast majority of cases I looked into the police have put the blame on faulty TV stands and not the TV’s or parents. Which begs the question… What is with the problem with the TV stands!? Are people not putting them together properly , are the little plastic discs under a modern TV too small to support the weight or are the crappy fiber-board stands sold today too cheap to even be safe in your home!? If your thinking ” Whew, I’m safe ’cause I used a cool wall mount” you’d be wrong because in a few instances it was a faulty wall mount or installation of the mount  that caused the TV to fall. So unless your Builder Bob your not safe there either.

I could be way off here but we didn’t seem to have this problem years ago, even with the 2 ton sets we grew up with because furniture was made by a craftsmen, came assembled already and making a quality product was still job one.  Of course the old school TV’s came already in a  sturdy, balanced stand but even the hulking sets of the 80’s and 90’s were supported by real, honest to goodness furniture. I think this just another case of the increasingly ignorant consumer being screwed by the man at price-mart.

Maybe the lesson is to put out the three or four dollars for one of those furniture securement kits to keep your children, pets and property safe?

I don’t know what the answer is but maybe before you have the family over for the holidays you should take a second and make sure your TV is securely mounted to the wall or get those chinese directions out and give your realistic looking, veneered wood TV stand the once over.

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9-11 Suspects To Have Days in Court

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Ron Jeremy? You decide.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Ron Jeremy? You decide.

By: Billy BeerSlugger

According to this article on Reuters the alleged masterminds behind the 9/11 bombings will be tried in New York. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others will soon be “subject to the most exacting demands of justice”, Obama said.

Correct me if I’m wrong here but wasn’t Osama Bin Laden the mastermind of this whole thing? I mean, yes there had to be other people involved but hasn’t the media, the government and every other organization been pushing the ultimate blame on Bin Laden since two days after the bombings?  So how is this guy one of the Mastermind’s when it’s been pushed on the American people that Bin Laden is the guy?  If Bin Laden makes the decisions doesn’t that make the guys that are getting tried Knights, Rook’s or Pawn’s in this Chess match to Bin Laden’s King?

How are these people expected to get a fair trial in the city that they are accused of blowing shit up in?  Seriously how do you get an impartial jury in the City of New York even 8 or so years after they lost 3,000+ of their fellow New Yorkers allegedly to the actions of the guys on trial.  Just not going to happen, you might as well execute these guys before they get airlifted off of Guantanamo.  We couldn’t have had this trial in Omaha, Nebraska where there isn’t nearly as many high profile buildings/targets to hit by potential terrorists seeking to make a statement during the trial?

Doesn’t Khalid Sheikh Mohammed look eerily like Porn Star Ron Jeremy?  What’s up with that shit?  Does anyone else smell a conspiracy here?
Casino41

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Carrie Prejean Sextape

carrie-prejeanBy: Billy BeerSlugger

Former Miss California Pageant winner Carrie Prejean is back in the news because of a sextape (although more like a masturbation tape) that has surfaced.  Prejean originally came into national focus after she was criticized in the media for her answer in the Miss USA pageant which elaborated her views on gay marriage.  As more information came out about her and the more interviews done because of the answer on gay marriage she painted herself as a very god-loving person as citing that the body was a holy temple and other Christian type views on the world.  She was labeled as a hypocrite by the media after photos came out of her posing semi nude and or topless and then being under fire to surrender her Miss California Crown in which Donald Trump (who owns the pageant) gave her a pass.  Later she was stripped of her crown for breach of contract for reasons I didn’t care to look up which resulted in Prejean suing the Pageant for wrongful termination.  That suit was settled last week sometime as rumors of a sextape swirled and eventually was shown to Prejean and her mother (classic).

So now Carrie Prejean is back on the talk show circuit, Larry King Live, the Today Show, The View and talking about her book while all these shows are booking her for is the sextape questions which will boost ratings, not the book.  She refuses to answer questions about the sextape under the premise that the details of the settlement of her suit she is not permitted to and yada yada fuckin yada….

Now maybe this is an elaborate plan to boost her public persona and sell her book or maybe the former boyfriend she sent the video of her masturbating needed the money, though it seems the most money to be made from the tape would have been during her 15 minutes of fame. Anyway, she kind of won’t go away and it’s annoying me.

It’s not particularly annoying me that she has a sextape (because I definitely want to see it) but that all the talk shows have to have her on to talk about this shit.  All the liberal media has to parade her around as some gay hating, god loving whore when the girl is pretty much everything that most girls her age are, a little opinionated and a lot naive.  How many teenage girls have sent sext messages to their boyfriends.  How many groups of teenage girlfriends have put up a video on Youtube of themselves dancing very scantily clad to fast paced music or filmed the lot of them in the shower with bathing suits on (Ask me how I know these exist)? Point being that this kind of stuff happens quite regularly. I don’t know about filming masturbation, that’s a little overboard but I’ve received some pretty graphic stuff from girlfriends past that I wish I had saved.

The thing that most aggravates me is that she is a lightening pole for the liberal media to take shots at.  Trying to discredit her in any way possible and tie it into the Republican Party or Conservatives.  Not exactly a fair assumption and really she shouldn’t be news at all.  Prejean is right in that she says she is being attacked by the media for being against gay marriage and a devout Christian in the spotlight but really why does anyone care what this girl has to say?  Beauty Queens aren’t exactly known for their brains are they? Please Click here for more on that subject.

So why?  Why is this girl in the news?  A sextape is a sextape but it doesn’t necessitate talk show interviews.  Shame on whomever booked her and shame on her for using the publicity of the sextape  to sell her book even if by happenstance. Since you know she wasn’t going to get booked without the sextape scandal as her 15 minutes was up.   A person using a sextape to sell books and talk shows using a sextape to up ratings, I guess everyone wins (except the public).

Now I realize that the “Right” or “Conservatives” sometimes paint newsworthy people into the Democrat/Liberal unfairly but you really didn’t see Kim Kardashian be a lightening rod for criticism from the right even though she supported Obama for so long and has a sextape and naked pictures. It’s like Prejean is the newly appointed spokeswoman for conservatives as seen by liberals and really that’s far from the truth as Obama is doing a good job so far.

Maybe one of the biggest reasons why I wrote this is smug ass pseudo-intellectual talk/news host Kieth Olbermann seems to be fixated on her whenever she pops up in the news.  You may know I have a deep and reasoned dislike of Olbermann but I think the guy took it a little too far when he gave Prejean the two-fingered salute at the end of his show, signifying the two fingers a woman may choose to masturbate with (to view it go to the end of this video). It’s the kind of over the top gesture that someone on the other side of the political spectrum would get fired for but I’ve heard little to no backlash.

Olbermann, like many of his so called reporter counterparts seem to forget that this girl is a beauty queen not a Rhodes Scholar.  The weight of what she says or her opinions really don’t need to be a concern of national media , shes famous for being pretty and being personally (not an activist) against gay marriage.  There really is more pressing things going on in the world than the trials and tribulations of Carrie Prejean and her fake breasts and sextape.

However, as I said earlier, I do want to see the sextape.

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SEPTA Super Sneaky Strike

150px-SEPTA_text.svgBy: Billy BeerSlugger

It was great of SEPTA’s TWU 234 workers to strike yesterday leaving hundreds of thousands of Philadelphian’s not only without a ride to work, school, doctors appointments etc, but also without leaving them with the proper amount of time to plan for alternate transportation. They struck at 3am in the morning so that it wouldn’t be announced on the 10 or 11 o’clock news or splashed on the front page of news sites before Philadelphian’s went to bed.  Which if you’re really trying to piss people off you’re going to sneak attack strike. Not only that but Tuesday, the day the strike began was an Election day.

Not that I don’t give the TWU a little bit of credit for sticking through the Philadelphia end of the World Series but not to inform your ridership at least the night before is downright dastardly. These people have jobs, scholastic careers and other necessary staples of life to attend to that count on SEPTA to get there. I’d love to see the attendance numbers for the thousands of Philadelphia school aged children that need a bus, subway or trolley to get to school.  These kids probably love the SEPTA strike because it effectively gives them a get out of school free card today. It’s hard enough to get these kids to go to school as it is without having them walk 4 miles. Lost in the news coverage is the kids who take SEPTA to school and as I always say to my friend who bangs a married chick with kids, “Think about the children.”.

Anyway, I’m not completely against Union’s.  My mom was a 30+ year member of the Communications Workers of America, my uncle is a high ranking SEPTA union leader though not the Union that’s striking (as there are 3 unions that serve SEPTA).  However, this is really a case of a Union holding a city hostage.  When my mom’s union went to the picket line you could at least still make phone calls. It’s pretty customary as well for the people that are striking to show up to a picket line in protest but these lazy sons of bitches, for the most part, are home watching cartoons. Though I did see a story that there was a picket line in front of the Fern Rock station.  Obviously they wouldn’t picket anywhere in Center City for fear of being heckled and laughed at.

Per a Union worker in this article

“We’re damned if we do, and we’re damned if we don’t,” said Harris. “The riding public is not educated on what we’re fighting for. Why should we work under stressful conditions without getting paid for it?”

Well sir, you are getting paid, maybe just not as much as you’d like to.  As for the stress of a job, join the club.  Without marginalizing the efforts of the workers who really do make SEPTA run, what about those workers in the subways averaging $53,000 a year to take $2 and press a button.  I wouldn’t wish that kind of stress on anyone.

Governor Rendell said the five-year contract spurned by TWU leaders called for a $1,250 signing bonus upon ratification, a 2.5 percent raise the second year, and a 3 percent raise in each of the next three years.  It also called for an increase in pension payments to workers and no increase in their health-insurance contributions.

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60 Minutes of Unchecked Facts

60minutes
It's more like 42 minutes and 18 minutes of commercials.

By: Billy BeerSlugger

I didn’t actually see this episode of the investigative news/magazine 60 Minutes since the Phillies were on but from what I and other people on the internet can tell you, their editor needs to do a little better in the fact checking department.

Their segment was on how illegal downloading was costing Hollywood 6 billion a year, which may or may not be that far off, however, the reasoning they give to support this claim is pretty much fabrication or conjecture which ever way you want to look at it.

First there is the claim that Organized Crime (the Mafia?) is making most of it’s money off of counterfeit movies.  Now I’m not going to dispute the fact that there are bootlegged movies out there but 60 Minutes is having me believe that Tony Soprano is behind all of this and not some dude with a DVD burner in his basement looking for some extra cash. I mean I could at least warm up to the idea if 60 Minutes gave me any proof. There was some talk about gangs of pirates using mafia style pickups but the focus quickly turned to illegal downloading.

Second, there is the segments claims by director Steven Soderbergh that piracy is costing the movie industry 6 billion a year.  Neglected is the fact that Hollywood continues to make more and more money each year. Another Soderbergh assertion is that fewer movies are being made and will continue to be made because of piracy.  Another assertion debunked given the statistics on movies 567 movies made in 2004 and 1038 in 2008, almost doubling inside of 4 years and still increasing.

I’ll give you that if movie tickets continue to go up every year then revenues should go up every year but you can’t really say that in this kind of economy.  Bottom line Hollywood made more money last year than the year before and the year before that.

The segment also delved into the role Bit torrent plays into illegal downloading and then cutting to a guy saying, “what we have done for 15 years is not put in any speed bumps, any technological blocks in the way of individuals so that the conclusion that the younger generation in particular draws is that if it’s so easy it cant be wrong.”

Well yes it is easy, people can choose to share anything they want on Bit torrent and if they choose to share or download things illegally it is on the government and the copyright holders to find a solution that does not intrude on the openness of the internet. The blocks and speed bumps the guy interviewed in 60 minutes is advocating sound a lot like bandwidth throttling and packet sniffing, things which go against the principles of net neutrality.

While there are millions of Bittorrent users out there, I only know about 3 people who could use Bittorrent effectively enough to download music, movies and the like. So if it’s so easy and so popular, why don’t I know more people that do it? Why can they use iPhones and computers but have no idea how to use Bittorrent even after I wrote an article on it?

I digress, the real focus here is on 60 Minutes and it’s one sided affair with File Sharing and the Motion Picture Industry.  There were a few facts thrown in about how the movie Wolverine was leaked and still did extremely well at the box office but overall there was not a peep from anyone on the opposing side of issue of illegal downloading.  Further, the “so called facts” that they gave didn’t coincide with any of the generally accepted statistics reported all over the internet.

I wonder how much money CBS makes off of Movie Advertisements a year?  Could this be yet another sacrifice of journalism for advertising dollars?  The whole thing to me seemed like a propaganda piece for the MPAA, chock full of bogus facts and subjective estimations.

Maybe more people would go to see movies if 90% of them were not lacking in substance, didn’t recycle old stories, didn’t remake old movies or have plots which are so horribly obvious as to the outcome that all you really needed to see was the previews.

What about the film-makers who are using file sharing technology to get their movies seen by the masses or the ones exploring new business models like some in the music business are. Let’s not talk to the copyright professionals or consumer advocates who render baseless most of the MPAA’s claims 60 Minutes. That wouldn’t be a balanced approach to the issue, would it?

P.S: Maybe if Steven Soderbergh didn’t put out pieces of crap like The Girlfriend Experience people wouldn’t walk out of the movie theater requesting their money back like me.

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Glenn Beck is an Asshole

I just farted.
Pull My Finger America.

By: Billy BeerSlugger

Just because I rip into left wing ego case Keith Olbermann doesn’t mean I can’t flip the script and call it like i see it on a so-called conservative talk show host.  Glenn Beck of Fox News is also part of the partisan, Jerry Springeresque impasse we seem to be stuck at in terms of the sensationalism, manufactured outrage and just plain bullshit that has clogged up the airwaves of late.

I’m not sure where Glenn Beck came from or why he’s a credible but whomever is signing his paychecks should take a good hard look in the mirror. I have been flipping through the channels lately and found him to be most annoying, abrasive and not really making much sense.  Using props of various kinds to prove his points, spouting about historical/political facts that do and do not have relevance to the situations of today. I think he’s cried on air 4 or 5 times so far and while that may have been to garner more attention and make himself seemingly more of a patriot because he cares for his country it’s been as believable as the Terrel Owens “That’s My Quarterback” interview.

I remember the first time I saw him on TV he was interviewing a lady and he was talking about how much he hates compact fluorescent light bulbs because he didn’t like how they made him look in the mirror.  He brought up a great point that at the time NBC was running a “Green” campaign and doing Public Service Announcement’s for CFL’s and cutting back on energy consumption while NBC’s parent company General Electric makes those lightbulbs. However, marginalizing energy consumption on the part of how you look in the mirror is the exact opposite of how American’s should be thinking.

This week I saw him stand by a red phone begging the White House to call him, erratically prancing around and acting like a school kid who just got multiple wedgies (queue crying).  I don’t get it, every once in a couple months he comes up with a somewhat credible news story or uncovers some far-left tie to a White House appointed position and plays off of that for another 3 months while giving everyone his whacked ass view of his “America”  during the mean time.

While I genuinely believe that Glenn Beck is trying to do good for his country in his head, the way he is going about doing it is not only misguided and ineffective but also extremely dangerous in it’s subjective and one-sided nature.  Yes there are problems in America, there have always been problems in America and there will always be problems in America.  We don’t live in a Utopia and you cannot please everyone all the time. I can appreciate some of his views on Healthcare, government takeover of the Auto industry and have grown weary of bigger and bigger government as it acquires more and more of America.  Notwithstanding, just because you are talking louder and throwing a temper tantrum doesn’t make you right and actually serves to diminish the message you are trying to send.

It’s hilarious that the people that say the most outrageous things are given the bigger pulpits to shout from when real journalists are relegated to page 18 of the newspaper and don’t have a TV show because the objective truth isn’t good for ratings.  It’s partly the fault of the American public for consuming this crap but more so the fault of the media conglomerates and advertisers who effectively put these wind bags on the air. Yes it’s a capitalistic society and I understand making sensible news profitable is hard if not impossible but there has to be another way right?

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Media Conglomerates

By: Billy BeerSlugger

I get really weary of these media conglomerates the bigger and bigger they get.

Clear Channel.

  • 900+ Radio Stations
  • Formerly owned 40+ TV stations
  • Owns numerous outdoor advertising billboards and Taxi Cab displays.

Analysis: You can’t turn a radio station dial without every other station being owned by Clear Channel.  You can’t miss billboards they own if you travel on major highways. If you live in a metropolitan area you have seen news and sports scores on top of taxi cabs.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp

  • HarperCollins book publishing
  • Elektra Records catalog
  • More than 150 Newspapers in Australia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, UK and Ireland and the United States.
  • Around 30 Magazines including GQ and Vouge.
  • 20th Century Fox (Film) and various other motion picture related entites
  • FOX Broadcasting Networks including FOX, Fox Business, News, Sports etc.
  • Fox International owns 120 channels around the world.
  • Social Network MySpace
  • Other online interests include RottenTomatoes.com (film review site), Photobucket.com, Hulu.com(45%)

Analysis: Murdoch has his hands in pretty much everything. You’re not going to read an upper echelon newspaper in print or online that Murdoch doesn’t own. Many argue his Fox News network caters to a Republican agenda. It’s nice to own the biggest film rating website when your company makes movies. Rupert’s MySpace status says “Mogul”.

Walt Disney: Here’s what’s in the Mouses’ house.

  • ABC Television Network  has 226 affiliated stations reaching 99 percent of all U.S. television households.
  • ESPN and their channels.
  • Disney Channel, SOAPnet, A&E, the History Channel, the Biography Channel
  • Disney owns 277 radio stations in the United States through it’s stake in Citadel Broadcasting Corp.
  • 6 Magazines including ESPN the magazine. Marvel Comics and their catalog of charaters.
  • Hyperion Books (publishing)
  • Touchstone Pictures, Miramax Films, Pixar and a host of Buena Vista companies.
  • The Disney internet group includes NFL.com, NBA.com, NASCAR.com ESPN.com ABC.com among others.

Analysis: Mickey and ESPN are pretty big.  ABC reaches just about everyone in the U.S. They will keep making movies with moneymaker Pixar and new acquisition Marvel Comics to just about corner the Comic Superhero market. Why does Disney control NFL.com and NBA.com? I was always a bigger fan of Donald Duck.

Viacom / CBS Corp.

  • TV Stations include: MTV, MTV2, Nickelodeon,VH1, Spike TV, CMT, Comedy Central, Palladia, BET, Showtime.
  • Paramount Pictures including: Dreamworks, MTV Films, Nickelodeon Movies.
  • MTV.com, VH1.com, Spiketv.com, ComedyCentral.com, Nick.com, Rhapsody.com (49%).
  • 140 radio stations
  • Publishing includes Kaplan, Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster, The Free Press, The Touchstone, Fireside Group.
  • CBS Network consists of 29 stations. CW Network (50%).
  • Video Game Developer Harmonix of Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Analysis: I linked Viacom and CBS Corp together because even though they split up in 2005 after merging in 1999, Sumner Redstone still controls 71% of the voting stock in both companies. The influence MTV has on the youth of America turning them into mindless consumers is amazing.  Shows on MTV end now and they roll a Beatles Rock Band clip during the credits (Subliminal Commercial).  Palladia is actually pretty awesome and should be called Music Television.  I’m not sure who has more power at any given time: Sumner Redstone or Rupert Murdoch?

TimeWarner

  • HBO, Cinemax, CNN, TBS, Warner Bros. Television Group, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies
  • Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema, Castle Rock, Village Roadshow Pictures.
  • DC Comics (Batman + Superman)
  • People, Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune among a host of other magazines.
  • AOL, AOL.com, AOL Instant Messenger
  • Warner Music Group – one of the big 4 labels.

Analysis: After betting the farm on AOL and it not working out they have fallen off a bit.  Time Warner posted a $16.03 billion loss for the final quarter of 2008 which may lead it to sell of portions of it’s assets.

General Electric:

  • NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, Sci Fi Channel, Telemundo, USA, Oxygen
  • NBC Universal Television Distribution, Universal Media Studios
  • NBC Universal (80% ownership): Universal Pictures, Focus Features, Rogue Pictures. Universal has production agreements with Imagine Entertainment, Jersey Films, Tribeca Films, the Kennedy/Marshall Company, Playtone Company, Strike Entertainment, Type A Films and Working Title Films among others.

Analysis: Just read that Comcast Corp could be buying the NBC/Universal entertainment division from GE. This lead me to write this article. NBC has fallen off after the loss of must see TV, NBA games and Monday Night Football. Universal does come out with a lot of movies though. Telemundo always has hot chicks on there.

Overall Analysis:

With such a small amount of companies controlling such a vast amount of media it’s a wonder everything we see, read and hear on radio, newspapers and TV is so homogeneous.  When someone like Sumner Redstone or Rupert Murdoch controls a vast empire of media, if a person, organization/corporation or member of government could persuade them to report the news a certain way or handle specific stories in a particular light or influence them whatsoever from a journalism standpoint this country is seriously fucked.  Knowledge is power and if you are controlling the knowledge or twisting the knowledge a certain way for hundreds of millions of people you can influence elections, shape public opinion and government policy. We as Americans are guaranteed free speech and press but I don’t think that’s what we’re getting from our media conglomerates.  When so much money relies on advertising these companies are effectively at the will of the advertisers and in some ways, the government which has found ways to censor news without effectively taking a newscast off the air.

Democracy is only as good as the level of credible journalism in that Democracy.  I found a worthy cause for this issue calling for more diversity in media. Find out ways you can get involved at http://www.stopbigmedia.com/.

Look for more info on these conglomerates on http://www.freepress.net/ownership/chart/main.

One of the best speeches on Media I’ve ever heard.
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Why I Dislike Keith Olbermann

Keith_Olbermann_-_small
I'm smarter than you.

By: Billy BeerSlugger

I never really had a problem with Keith Olbermann on Sportscenter when he teamed with Dan Patrick to put a soundtrack of zingers and one-liners to sports highlights.  He smiled, cracked jokes and seemed generally likable though still slightly smug.

I don’t really have a problem with Keith having his left wing show on MSNBC either.  He can have his “Worst Person In The World” and try to pick apart Bill O’Reilly or his Republican/Conservative opponent du jour every night and I’m fine with that, he’s got his right to do that within reason and I won’t be above saying he’s right from time to time.  He seems to have a general care about the country and it’s citizens which is a very respectable trait and one I happen to share with him.

What I cannot stand is Olbermann being on the Sunday Night Football panel.  I realize his background in sports broadcasting but if there’s one thing i don’t like mixed in with my sports it’s bullshit politics.  Not that he brings up politics on Sunday Night Football, but just knowing his priggish, self-righteous ass is a mouthpiece for a left sided network pains me to no end.  For the record I would hate to see Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh as an anchor on a sportscast as well.  You do remember how long Limbaugh lasted as an ESPN commentator in 2003?

You don’t see Chris Berman have a show and plug a Republican agenda or Bob Costas stray from sports leaning stories on his show. You have to pick what you are, sportscaster or political pundit; there’s no gray zone here.  I don’t care if a sportscaster comes out in support of an issue or political candidate but don’t make a whole show about it and further, don’t be a condescending asshole about it.

Olbermann sits himself behind a desk on weeknights and pretends to be a modern day Edward R. Murrow (he won the Murrow award in 2003).  However he does it with a sharp tongue and an “i’m smarter than you”, egotistic tone that makes me want to throw my laptop off my desk.  I won’t pretend to write as eloquent as Keith or tear into an issue with the same smarts and vigor but give me a staff of capable people and a full time salary and I have no problem devoting 10+ hours a day into pumping out content that’s informative and stimulating.

What makes Olbermann so smart anyway?  He claims to have gone to an Ivy League school (Cornell), however, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications arts from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, not the School of Arts and Sciences which is the Ivy league one.

In an interview with Playboy Magazine Olbermann was quotes to say:

“My Ivy League education taught me how to cut corners, skim books and take an idea and write 15 pages on it, and also how to work all day at the Cornell radio station and never actually go to class.”

Obviously lying about going to the Ivy League Cornell isn’t a big deal to folks like you and I, but for a guy who wastes valuable airtime to nit pick at Rep. Charlie Rangel for saying ‘inferred” instead of “implied” it seems relavent to nit pick at him.  Oh, wowzers Keith, got him on that one.

Seriously though, tone and inflection are big parts of broadcasting and no doubt were covered during his matriculation at non-Ivy league Cornell studying Communication Arts.  You would think he would have taken from that education that if you come off as a pompous arse and a know it all that you would actually have to back it up with a little more than a Communications degree and several stints as a sportscaster spouting lines like “Booya”! Where is the credibility with this guy?  Half the time he’s making inane grammar corrections or subjective comments on subjective comments from Senators, Representatives or right wing personalities. 30% of the time he’s dealing in absolute bullshit and the other 20% is reserved for stuff that actually does matter whether it’s biased or not.

I’m not saying that Olbermann is a bad person because he’s better than most of the talking heads out there but I wonder sometimes if he’s at least subconsciously trying to be the smartest guy in the room nation to show up the kids who repeatedly stole his lunch money in grade school.  That’s been my experience at least, either the overzealous person is overcompensating because they are constantly dealing with their own insecurities which can include a host of things including height, weight, perception of beauty or lack of breast or penis size.

Basically he’s the guy sitting at the end of the bar drinking alone because of his lack of people skills. He’s pissed off all his friends and most of his acquaintances who aren’t blinded by his B-list stardom.

But then again… i could be wrong.