The Smarmy Carny

Just when you thought network TV was about as low as it could get, Hollywood's ineffective and misdirected attempts to push environmental issues this week brought network television to a new low.

NBC celebrated "Green Week" this week. It was one of the oddest campaigns or ratings stunts of television history, all under the motto "Green is Universal" — perhaps a reference to NBC Universal, the company that owns NBC, Universal Studios, and other media companies.

Probably the only successful change is that NBC's "The More You Know" PSAs were environmentally focused. They are, after all, PSAs, so they can easily fit the theme. Granted, the environmental topics pale in comparison to the standard TMYK themes of domestic violence and drug use, but that's no matter.

The worst of Green Week is that NBC has directed their shows to adopt an environmental theme in this week's episode. What this accomplishes is that each show on NBC suddenly creates an awkward, contrived environmental situation. These environmental themes have been shoved into this week's episode, regardless of the episode's plot or the show's season-long plot arc.

• ER — The ER experiences a blackout after an unseasonably hot Chicago Day. Sam spends some time with a conservationist doing an energy usage study on County General and Morris has a run in with door of a Hummer.
• Heroes — The Heroes logo turns green — literally — for the week.
• Life — Charlie randomly decides to purchase a solar farm because of a dream he had.
• My Name Is Earl — The Warden instructs Earl to toss in some environmental teachings into their "scared straight" program.

The silly theme only thrives in silly, random shows that enjoy being silly, random shows like Scrubs and Deal or No Deal. One of the worst examples is My Name Is Earl: The warden randomly orders that Earl insert an environmental theme into their "scared straight" program for young children. Furthermore, the awkward, forced moments degrade the episodes' content and don't do much to increase awareness of any sort. These are theme's we've heard for the past 15 years. I'd expect environmental snippets like this in a children's program, perhaps, but not in programming geared toward adults.

I'd love to see the writers of any show stand up against this theme — not the environmentalism theme, mind you, but the NBC-mandated "Green Week" theme. No wonder the writers are on strike this week.

TV Envy also has a great article on NBC's Green Week this that delves into the subject that is worth the read.

President Bush was literally beside himself during his speech at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, thanks to presidential impersonator Steve Bridges.

It is traditional that the president shows up and delivers a speech lampooning himself. (You might remember Laura Bush's dirty horse joke from last year's dinner.)

The highlight of the speech is a mental run-through of a phrase followed by the actual words uttered by Bush:

Internal President (Bridges): All right. Maintain. Be cool. Let’s give this a try: "We must enhance non-compliance protocols sanctioned not only at IAEA formal sessions, but through intercessional contact."

External President (Bush): “We must enhance non-compliance protocols sanctioned not only at E-I-E-I-O sessions, but through intersexual conduct.”

Mark Seavey, an Army seargent infantry squad leader recently released due to an injury, stood up to speak at an Arlington, Virginia town hall meeting. Representatives Jim Moran (D-VA) and John Murtha (D-PA) were taking questions at the time.

Take a look at this video. Listen to Seavey's comments on the troops' morale and note Murtha and Moran's reactions to the questions. More importantly, note their responses (or utter lack of response, to be more accurate). The transcription below was first posted over at the Dawn Patrol/Mudville Gazette.

"Yes sir my name is Mark Seavey and I just want to thank you for coming up here. Until about a month ago I was Sgt Mark Seavey infantry squad leader, I returned from Afghanistan. My question to you, (applause)

"Like yourself I dropped out of college two years ago to volunteer to go to Afghanistan, and I went and I came back. If I didn't have a herniated disk now I would volunteer to go to Iraq in a second with my troops, three of which have already volunteered to go to Iraq. I keep hearing you say how you talk to the troops and the troops are demoralized, and I really resent that characterization. (applause) The morale of the troops that I talk to is phenomenal, which is why my troops are volunteering to go back, despite the hardships they had to endure in Afghanistan.

"And Congressman Moran, 200 of your constituents just returned from Afghanistan. We never got a letter from you; we never got a visit from you. You didn't come to our homecoming. The only thing we got from any of our elected officials was one letter from the governor of this state thanking us for our service in Iraq, when we were in Afghanistan. That's reprehensible. I don't know who you two are talking to but the morale of the troops is very high."

Moran - who is one of the few congressmen supporting Charlie Rangel's call to restore the draft - responded quickly: "That wasn't in the form of a question, it was in the form of a statement. But, uhh… let's go over here." And he took the next question.

Thanks to the Dawn Patrol/Mudville Gazette, Michelle Malkin, Tom Segel, and Rush Limbaugh for further propogating the story, else I might never have heard about it. God knows the mainstream media wouldn't latch onto a comment like this. Wait for Bush to mispronounce one word this week, however, and we'll hear all about it.

Too graphic?!?

The Joliet Herald-News, a newspaper in Illinois, refused three separate pro-life advertisements on three separate occasions, including the one pictured here.

Why? The reason given was that the pictures were "too graphic." I'm sure that the actual reason should be much more obvious than that. The newspaper reserves the right to reject ads for any reason, so why didn't they just come out and say that these were rejected because they did not fit the media's liberal ajenda? Isn't it the liberal mindset that is frequently criticizing conservative viewpoints for being too closed-minded?

When Jill Stanek asked the advertising department what type of ad could run, she was told that pictures of already born babies could be included.

To view these "graphic" ads, you can visit the NRL ad campaign page or see them in PDF format by clicking below:

• I Am an American
• She's a Child
• Excuse Me America

If you're interested, you can contact the Joliet Herald-News:

• Joliet Herald News
  300 Caterpillar Drive
  Joliet, Illinois 60436
• 815.729.6161
• Senior editor Bill Wimbiscus: bwimbiscus@scn1.com

A blonde was sitting on the train reading the newspaper.

The headline read, "12 Brazilian Soldiers Killed."

She shook her head at the sad news and wiped away a tear.

She then turned to the stranger sitting next to her and asked, "How many is a Brazilian?"

On the 14:30 CBS News Update, one story discussed the decision to allow pets on the buses transporting people away from the hurricane zone.

One woman was being interviewed and she was quite happy that she could bring her cats with her. She noted that if she was not allowed to bring her cats that she would not have evacuated.

The shining line of the update was when this woman followed up that statement by saying that pets should not be left behind, and that "They're human like we are."

Hmm . . . I'll have to keep that in mind.

Newsmap screenshot

I StumbledUpon newsmap the other day, and it's quite intriguing. Newsmap is "an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator." What does that mean? I don't know. What I do know is that Newsmap allows you to look at news headlines in a completely different way.

As the default Newsmap setup appears, you see U.S. news stories appear in boxes all over your screen. The bigger the box, the bigger the news. The colors of the boxes tell you how old the story is as well as whether it is world/nation/sports/etc.

The Newsmap interface is somewhat customizable, too. At the top, you can add or remove countries. This brings up side-by-side comparisons of each country's news. It's interesting to see how high-ranking U.S. news sometimes falls by the wayside in other countries. You can also remove or add any of the seven news categories. I find that it's much easier to use with one or two categories selected because the headlines tend to get miniscule when so many stories are shown at once.

There are a couple additional features that I do not tend to use at all. In the lower left portion of the interface, you have the ability to look at the archives of Newsmap for up to a week ago. I can't see how this would be particularly entertaining unless you have read every article that comes up for the present time or if you are looking for a news story that was posted five days ago and no longer appears on today's Newsmap. One last feature toggles the view between "Squarified" and "Standard." Oddly enough, Standard is not the default. Go figure.

Now I'll just have to wait for Newsmap 3D.