Andrew Warner

Immortal Technique, whose work has been posted here previously, continues to write some of the most politically-pointed lyrics in all of music today. Much to the chagrin of the anti-skeptic, his latest shows no mercy:

Labels: Hip-Hop, international politics, National Politics

Posted by Andrew Warner at 10:22 PM | Permalink   

University of Cincinnati sports are getting attention for all the wrong reasons.

Read my take HERE.

Labels: Cincinnati, Sports

Posted by Andrew Warner at 8:09 AM | Permalink   

Cincinnati City Council, in an expected 5-4 vote, is set to officially oppose the war.

The naysayers on council are arguing that the non-binding resolution will have little or zero impact on the situation in Iraq – but that view's a little short-sighted. After all, President George W. Bush's troop surge may mean another Cincinnatian having to pack up his things and kiss his mother goodbye. At least City Council can tell that mother they tried to prevent it.

If I were on council, that would provide me a little peace of mind.

But even so, Berding (and others) insist that there are more pressing issues on Council's plate.

""I would think that people would expect us to get the snow off Cincinnati streets, not to get our soldiers off the streets of Baghdad," Berding said to The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Eh.

Snow on the streets is troublesome. At its worst it might even cause an accident and take a life. The war in Iraq, on the other hand, takes lives every day – American, Iraqi, and even Cincinnatian.

Who is anyone to say 250+ cities standing against the war will have no impact? The president reads the news (or someone reads it to him). Who knows what'll happen when he sees his supporters dropping like flies.

Labels: Cincinnati, international politics Iraq, National Politics, war

Posted by Andrew Warner at 9:33 AM | Permalink   

In a recent blog entry, Editorial Page Editor David Wells takes a moment to question the content that fills the pages of newspapers:

Iran is threatening to go nuclear, the vice president may have to testify in a Washington criminal trial and Congress is investigating what happened to $12 billion in cash that was sent into Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein and might have ended up in the hands of insurgents now shooting at our soldiers.

So what stories have enthralled the public in print, broadcasts, blogs and comment boards for the past three days?

Anna Nicole Smith and the off-course astronaut...

How, when and why have stories that used to be fit only for supermarket tabloids been elevated to the mainstream?

It's important to note that Wells provides three links to the type of news people should be reading: Iran, Dick Cheney having to testify, and a misplaced $12 billion – all stories from the New York Times.

Conspicuous in its absence is the example of good journalism we should be reading from the Cincinnati Enquirer (currently their top story is about a high school basketball game).

Either irony is completely lost on Wells, or he is growing tired of the editorial choices made by the Enquirer.

The Enquirer has been participating in fast-food journalism for some time now, so if Wells' confusion is genuine, color me baffled. You can't feed people Big Macs every day and then wonder why they turn up their nose when you try to feed them broccoli.

Labels: Cincinnati, media, National Politics

Posted by Andrew Warner at 10:05 AM | Permalink   

Anna Nicole Smith was toxic to herself, but great for media outlets.

Watching Smith at the end of her rope on national TV was amusing. It was easy to call her a lush and a media whore while she was cracking under the pressure of celebrity. But we never thought the made up world of reality TV would ever be this, well, realistic.

Watching one of the "beautiful people" crash and burn is painful – something about those who have the world in the palm of their hand not finding happiness is off-putting. Knowing the warning signs were all on a TV show (a profitable one, too) and having no one step in to solve the problem mixes guilt in with the heavy dose of shock.

Media critic Tom Maurstad says everything I wanted to say in the Dallas Morning News (read the whole thing):

Were you one of viewers watching The Anna Nicole Show on E! who turned the show into one of 2002's cult favorites? If so, then you watched as a semiconscious and frequently incoherent Anna Nicole stumbled and slurred her way through a sad and silly life filled with creeps and hangers-on. She was great stand-up fodder for late-night comedians and provided endless threads of discussion for water-cooler and Internet chat groups. But this conclusion to her life is just the latest reminder that at a time when everything is grist for the reality entertainment mill, under all that entertaining fizz is cold, hard reality.

If Anna Nicole Smith had suddenly whirled to face all those cameras that were always clicking at her and set herself on fire, she couldn't have been any more obviously a person in terminal distress. As our ongoing immersion in rehab entertainment has taught us, what Ms. Smith needed was a core group of friends and family, along with the help of trained counselors (not to mention a camera crew to capture it all) to stage an intervention and get the help she so desperately needed. But judging from the parts of her private life that she broadcast to the world, she didn't have that core group, or she didn't listen to their warnings.

And so her life spun from one tragedy-scandal-crisis to the next, from the lawsuits over the inheritance from her oil tycoon and octogenarian husband to the birth of her daughter and the mysterious death of her son. But there's an oh-yeah moment that freezes all the flash and noise around this story: remembering that somewhere there's an infant girl who has lost her mother and hasn't yet had determined for her, in what will no doubt be a highly publicized court case, who her father is.

I don't mean to put too much emphasis on one celebrity while there is obviously so much wrong with the world. But this one should make us take a deep breath and ask us how far we are willing to push people for a laugh.

Labels: media, random

Posted by Andrew Warner at 2:30 PM | Permalink   

Since you'll be in the doghouse if you don't get her something, SNL created the perfect gift:



She'll love you forever.

Labels: random

Posted by Andrew Warner at 1:46 PM | Permalink   

Paula Zahn hosted a panel to discuss discrimination against atheists and this is what it looked like:

An angry black woman telling atheists to shut up, a blonde woman (who I swear I thought was that chick from Saturday Night Live) who parroted the first angry woman, and ESPN's Stephen A. Smith who was at least trying to make sense.

What they discussed was how atheists attack Christianity, America is a Christian nation, and that prayer should be in school (for no other reason than "it is what I believe"),

What the debate lacked was an atheist or any coherent thought. Surprisingly, the SNL-looking woman blamed atheist parents for forcing their beliefs on to children again – didn't we cover this with Jesus Camp?

I can't even do the idiocy justice. Just watch it yourself:

Labels: atheism, media, religion

Posted by Andrew Warner at 8:14 AM | Permalink   

Sacha Baron Cohen has signed on to play Borat in Borat 2.

Awesome.

The only worry I have is that he'll be recognized too often to have the same impact. We'll see.

Labels: media, movies

Posted by Andrew Warner at 8:08 PM | Permalink   

Blogging, as a new form of media, is dead.

A concept that once had the potential to challenge mainstream media, has been bought, sold, and replicated to the point that it's not even interesting any more. Outside of a few independent thinkers (Andrew Sullivan off the top of my head), readers know what they're going to read before they even punch in www.dailykos.com.

Need proof?

Here it is.

Josh Nelson, a loyal Kossack (so much so that he went to Vegas for their convention), went out of his way to provide media coverage for a significant political event (a Ralph Nader book signing). He decided to take his alternative coverage to the popular Daily Kos and he was, essentially, given the hook.

Apparently, if something isn't singing the praises of "alternative" Democrats like Howard Dean or John Edwards, it's not worth of the pages of the mighty Kos.

I can't help but wonder, what's the entertainment value of reading a Web site that only showers praises on one party and treats anything else as evil? What's the intellectual value of only reading people who agree with you? More importantly for these activists turned media, what's the political value of only discussing the issues with people who already are on your side?

If you want to listen to people that think the same way you do, why not just sit in the bathroom and listen to your own echo?

Labels: media, National Politics

Posted by Andrew Warner at 11:53 AM | Permalink   

With Nader announcing he's considering a run for the presidency in 2008, I thought I'd write about him in my column.

Check it out HERE.

Labels: National Politics

Posted by Andrew Warner at 6:59 AM | Permalink   

Ever watch that show on Dateline where adults are lured to the houses of minors for some sex?

The appeal is obvious. You get to watch shady dudes squirm while Chris Hansen uses his best "gravitas" voice to put them on the spot. You get to watch the cops make a reality-tv style bust – you know, SWAT teams, yelling, and lots of guns being used against small, unarmed, and scared shitless men. Maybe parents get to feel a little safer knowing that Chris Hansen and the Dateline team are putting the bad guys away and keeping their daughter from coaxing old men into bed.

As entertaining as it may be, it's an embarrassment to journalism. More importantly, it's an embarrassment to our legal process.

Cops letting Dateline put a suspect on television before they make the arrest? Continued public interrogation after an arrest? Not to mention, the old rule against entrapment.

I don't justify the actions of men who have sex with children, but the way these attractive women (posing as teenagers) beg and plead with these men to make them come have sex is just crazy. Men never make sound decisions when they're thinking with their little head.

A surprisingly somewhat balanced report from Fox News:

"Sexual predators running around, picking up children off the 'Net are not an epidemic … ["To Catch a Predator"] focuses on the equivalent of a sexual straw man, turning the stranger-predator into the 'epidemic,'" said Pierre Tristam, a columnist at the Daytona Beach News-Journal in Florida, who recently wrote a controversial article on the popular "Dateline" series and says the shows epitomize "tabloid pulp."

"[NBC's predator series] should quit borrowing from the shabby techniques of reality TV and return to the ethics and demands of journalism," Tristam said.

To Catch a Predator is a perfect example of what we get when views, clicks, and ratings are the forces driving the news. Sure it's entertaining, but is it useful?

The news used to be information that we needed to know. Now it's just entertainment – check that. Infotainment.

Labels: media, random

Posted by Andrew Warner at 9:01 PM | Permalink   

With spring break right around the corner, it's time for students to start thinking about how to get into, and out of, vacation hot spots.

With the politicization of homeland security, we've had our passport laws tinkered with. Because of that, I had to do a little actual reporting.

Read up and get the information you need to travel easily.

Labels: National Politics, random

Posted by Andrew Warner at 12:44 PM | Permalink   

From a Ralph Nader interview transcribed at the Cincinnati Beacon:

RALPH NADER: Well, that factor, one, and whether we can get enough petitioners to get on the streets to overcome the likely harassing lawsuits and attrition by the Democratic Party in places like Pennsylvania and Ohio. But, basically, you can’t run a campaign like this unless you get a lot of young people who are contacting you all over the country and who want a new politics in America and who want to develop the skills for future campaigns in their own right. That’s really what we’re looking for now.

As someone who only has faith in politics because of Ralph Naders, I'm begging Nader to run again in '08. Good news for him, I'm a young person in Ohio who is willing to collect signatures for him.

There's always a group of people frustrated enough with American politics to throw their weight behind an alternative candidate – ESPECIALLY if Democrats back a candidate like H. Clinton. Who knows if Obama's any better?

A Nader candidacy is enough reason to wake up and believe again.

Labels: Democrats, National Politics

Posted by Andrew Warner at 9:06 PM | Permalink   

Rudy Giuliani filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission and we're supposed to be surprised.

As if it's news that someone who has been jockeying his way to the front of the polls since 2001 has suddenly considered making his decision "official." We all know he's running, yet the media hangs on to every word and every press release as if the public is waiting anxiously on the edge of our seats.

He's in. We all know it. He's just waiting for the best time (as decided by some very expensive strategic consultants) to enthrall us with the big announcement.

Why the media picks a few, high-profile candidates and zeroes in on them (2 years early) is beyond me. I can't make much sense of anything the media does these days, though.

A day doesn't pass without us getting a front-page story on Clinton, Obama, Giuliani, or McCain's bathroom schedule, but candidates like Kucinich, or even Joe Biden can't buy a cover story. Qualifications don't seem to matter when there's Obama's dazzling charisma getting in the way.

Labels: media, National Politics

Posted by Andrew Warner at 8:40 PM | Permalink   

It wasn't designed specifically for the Super Bowl. At least I assume it wasn't since I've seen it in the movie theaters for a few weeks now.

Regardless, marketing wise, Coca-Cola has achieved greatness again. The new commercial, which is modeled after the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto, takes something violent and brutal and turns it into something uplifting. Nice touch for a dreary February.

Here it is:



E-mail me your favorites. I'm sure it won't be hard to find them on You Tube.

P.S. The Bears are struggling right now, but I hope they find a way to put to put down these Colts.

Update: The K-Fed Nationwide spot gives it a run for its money.

Labels: media, Sports

Posted by Andrew Warner at 8:48 PM | Permalink