Day: February 1, 2010

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so why did those missionaries/nurses/aid people GO to Haiti, if they’re all running away, back home now? what the hell was your purpose to begin with? losers. it really reveals how vapid all those poverty pornographers are

alberta sniffer dogs sent down to Haiti, return home early

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“woof! woof! go find living bodies, arf. go find living bodies, arf. la la la arf arf la la go find living bodies. oh golly, a lot of DEAD bodies i do see.. In sooth I know not why I am so sad arf arf, It wearies me: you say it wearies you; But how I smelt it, found it, or pooped it out, What stuffe ’tis made of, where…of it is borne, I am to learne: and such a Want-wit sadnesse makes of mee arf arf aroooooooooof…”

—>alberta sniffer dogs sent down to Haiti to help with efforts to find living people trapped in collapsed buildings return home after becoming “too depressed” with all the corpses scattered through Port au Prince.–reported on CBC News


I’m laughing at the Journalism people. NOT Haitian misery.

It’s Not Jay or Conan. It’s Us.

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The New York Times
of interest (to me) more from the sociological angle, the shift of paradigm, that the youtube generation is having on big tv
January 18, 2010
The Media Equation

The other night, my daughter and I watched Jay Leno, talking about him and his soon-to-be-canceled show. We took in Conan O’Brien as well, dissecting the inside jokes and the implications of his walking away from “The Tonight Show.” As they did their thing, we talked about their performing styles, demographic appeal and remarkable hair.

But even though the late-night fratricide has resulted in some must-see moments, I should point out that we were nowhere near a television. We were at the kitchen table, daughter on a Mac, dad on a PC, both of us using broadband to pick and choose a greatest-hits version of the meltdown. Which is sort of the problem.

In spite of what you may have read, Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, didn’t kill “The Tonight Show,” and neither did Jay Leno. And as much as NBC would like you to think it, Conan O’Brien didn’t do in the show with his bare hands either. The people who are responsible? That would be you and me.

Think about it. The heart and soul of any talk show has always been a monologue in which the host takes the audience on a journey through the news, cracking wise about the things that happened that day. “The Tonight Show” has always been a kind of a water cooler where we all showed up and waited for the funniest person in the room to say something hilarious.

But as things stand now, by the end of the day, we all have been bombarded by news and commentary from all manner of media, making “The Tonight Show” and its ilk increasingly seem beside the point, no matter who is delivering the monologue. In its glory days, “The Tonight Show” served as a search engine on culture, letting us know which politician had made a gaffe, which corporate evildoer had been caught doing evil and which starlet had experienced a wardrobe malfunction.

Now the search engine is the search engine — or more likely, any number of “did-you-see” alerts received by e-mail or on Facebook, Twitter or other sites we visit from our desktops or on our cellphones.

All the best late-night hosts are narrators, telling stories about the absurdities of daily life. But public habits have tilted toward primary sources when it comes to pratfalls. Why wait for Jay or Conan to show you Mel Gibson’s mug shot when it’s there for the clicking on TMZ?

In a consumer-controlled Web-and-cable matrix, when a gym teacher from Queens punches the cast member known as Snooki on the MTV reality series “Jersey Shore,” that information quickly finds us. We can click on footage of the actual punch — that has to hurt, by the way — and if we want ringside commentary, it’s everywhere we look. By the time Jay or Conan or anybody else weighs in, we are already in on the joke and it’s old news.

The show hasn’t changed, we have. I’m not a big fan of Mr. Leno’s comedy, but he did a remarkable job of hanging onto Johnny Carson’s audience, losing just a little over 10 percent of the show’s viewers in his first 10 years, according to Nielsen. But as broadband Internet and DVRs became ubiquitous in recent years, “The Tonight Show” and much of network television disappeared into a thicket.

Ratings for “The Tonight Show” fell off a cliff the year before Mr. O’Brien took over in 2009, dropping to about 4.7 million viewers a night, from about 5.5 million, or 15 percent, in a single year, according to Nielsen.

While it is true that the viewership decline has continued under Mr. O’Brien, “The Tonight Show” has problems that go beyond whether Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is too tangy for middle America, which has historically been the core of “The Tonight Show” audience.

Bedtime used to mean some quality time with your late-night host of choice, but the bedroom has gotten pretty crowded. The nightstand is groaning with options, including Netflix, laptops and a remote that can pull up favored prime-time programs on the DVR. Let me see, that episode of “House” I missed or Conan O’Brien?

The contract between viewers and late-night hosts can be an intimate one. Yet while we all like to be told bedtime stories, in the main, late-night television is very hit or miss. We watch and wait for the moment of serendipity when a single joke happens to define a moment or a banal interview takes an unexpected turn. But today, if magic happens, you don’t have to wait for the show to enjoy the moment.

Take the Thursday episode of “The Jay Leno Show,” for example. We all know that Mr. Leno has been using the show to land some haymakers on his NBC bosses, but the tables were turned during the “Ten @ Ten” segment that night, when Jimmy Kimmel responded to a question about his best prank: “I told a guy that five years from now, I’m going to give you my show, and then when the five years came, I gave it to him, and then I took it back almost instantly.”

Now that’s a funny comeuppance, but Twitter and various entertainment blogs were alive with references to the joke, and I didn’t have to sit through a bunch of shows to see it.

It’s worth considering that some of the young ones on Team Conan don’t even own televisions. “Gawker tv’s most essential service: letting me keep up with the late night wars even tho i don’t have a tv,” said @mattbuchanan on Twitter.

The list of shows that thrive on broadcast television is short and getting shorter. Sports have an immediate purchase on consciousness, as will an event like “American Idol.” But every once in a while, the old network model of compelling an audience to make an appointment and keep it works its old magic — even on NBC, which did not have much luck with prime-time programming even before it dug a huge hole in its schedule and then snapped the shovel in half.

Around our house this season, we started meeting at the television on Thursday night for “Community,” “Parks and Recreation,” “The Office” and “30 Rock.” The shows were all of a piece: arch, knowing, preying on television comedy clichés in a way that made them a not-so-guilty pleasure.

But then “The Jay Leno Show” would come on, bringing the family séance to an end.

Lessons From Dr. King on Haiti

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By Elizabeth Enslin on January 18, 2010

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

It’s hard enough to comprehend the scale of disaster in Haiti. What’s harder is this: to stand by and watch hate, ignorance and greed breed on human suffering like maggots.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library of Congress (Prints and Photographs Collection).

I’m not surprised that racism is alive and well in the U.S.; I never believed it dead.  Nor am I surprised it’s found mouthpieces on Fox News, in Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and David Brooks.  Perhaps getting this old school racism out in the open is not a bad thing; it shows those who believed in “post-racial” America where racist ideas still lurk and how ugly they can be. It’s like smoking cockroaches out from hiding so you can squash them.

Here are some good cockroach stompers I’ve come across this past week (and by cockroaches, please understand I’m taking the high road today and referring to ideas, not individuals):

Chris Clarke at Coyote Crossing: Haiti in Context

Matt Taibbi’s brilliant deconstruction of David Brooks piece on Haiti.

“The Devil Writes Pat Robertson a Letter”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

But on Martin Luther King Day, I don’t want to dwell on sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity in the U.S. (which I hope comes from a small minority). I’m not sure I can go as far as Dr. King did in loving those who hate and dehumanize.  But I’ve tried to keep my focus on the stories that humanize.

For example:

A lot of mainstream news has emphasized the breakdown of the Haitian government, the difficulty of getting aid to people, security challenges, “looting,” etc. Meanwhile, people in Haiti have organized their own rescue efforts, relief, and protection.  This story from the Miami Herald provides some examples.

Those organizations already in Haiti also began immediate action, initially under the radar screen of foreign reporters. One example is Partners in Health.  Because they’ve worked with local doctors and nurses for years and because their headquarters outside of Port-au-Prince escaped earthquake damage, they were able to move quickly.  Their website Stand With Haiti provides behind the scenes look at the challenges and successes of the relief effort.  Here’s a post by Tracy Kidder on this work and another by founder Paul Farmer.

Writers and anthropologists invite us to deepen our understanding of Haitian culture.  I’ve been particularly moved by: Edwidge Danticat reading from one of her stories and anthropologist Gina Athena Ulysse discussing Vodou (just before the earthquake) and offering more reflections after.

“Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”

Of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. pushed beyond holding hands and singing, “We Shall Overcome.” In many speeches, he traced the links between race and class, poverty and war.

We need that for Haiti too. It’s wonderful to see people throughout the world donating towards the relief effort.  Now if only that generosity could be matched by an effort to understand Haiti’s history. As many have pointed out this week, colonialism, and now the new world order of capitalism and debt, have long been transferring wealth from Haiti to the U.S. and Europe.  That’s what creates endemic poverty.

For more on this angle, check-out:

Democracy Now (daily news with strong political and historical analysis)

Anthropologist Barbara Miller’s blog post: Why is Haiti so Poor?

Reconciliation Ecology on understanding the ecological crisis in Haiti.

Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation

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This is, of course, an incomplete round-up of insightful commentary on Haiti.  If you’ve come across something else, please considering sharing it here.

Note: all quotes are from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.