Crikey, people in L.A. are pathetic!
The dog days of August means a slow news period for the media ("cucumber season," as the Czechs call it). How the news media of different countries choose to fill the news hole is instructive and interesting.
Take the Czechs. They've taken to some good old-fashioned muckraking, reporting on CzechTek, an incident that's making waves here since riot police appeared to brutally attack about 5,000 ravers at an outdoor techno party in the countryside at the end of July. This has had everyone weighing from the current and former presidents to the average raver who just wants, you know, to throw a wicked techno party without getting his head bashed in my the police.
The image of police beating young people remains especially problematic for the government, says Jirák, because it brings to mind violence used by communists to stifle opposition before — and during — the 1989 revolution.
Then there are the Brits. Seems Tony Blair is doing his best Dubya impression by taking a long vacation in the middle of the war. Only, Tony's people asked the British press not to say where he's taking his holiday, citing "security concerns." And, incredibly, the British media have gone for it.
Sort of.
Unable to report on "Tony and Cherie get a tan," the British media are at least having some fun with it.
The Sun, publishing photographs of Mr. Blair and his wife, Cherie, said the images had been taken somewhere in the Caribbean. On Thursday, The Daily Mail published a spoof quiz entitled "Where's Blair," offering readers 10 possible venues for the prime minister's vacation, including Afghanistan and Iraq, along with more plausible places like the Caribbean. A columnist in The Sun suggested that Mr. Blair might be staying at the home of a "bachelor boy" - the title of an early Cliff Richard song.
And then there's the L.A. media. From the folks who never fail to cut to live coverage of the high-speed police pursuit du jour, the media that go into "Storm Watch" whenever measurable precipitation falls, the TV networks that make a big to-do of weather forecasts for a climate that has some of the most monotonously nice weather in the country, we have the epic story of the summer: Gator Watch. Apparently there's an alligator that was someone's pet and has since been released into an area lake, and the media are treating this like, well, like the O.J. Simpson chase. But it's just another example of how lame-ass L.A. "news" media are.
Now, maybe if this were, say, more serious, and not purely whimsical, it might warrant some coverage. Kind of like when someone got loose in San Diego with a military tank and a death wish.
But let there be no doubt about how frivolous this whole farce is:
It was time to call in a professional. Enter Jay Young, a 31-year-old, $800-a-day hunk and alligator hunter from Colorado. Wearing a leather cowboy hat and alligator-tooth necklace Young surveyed the scene and dismissed the danger involved: "At most I can lose a couple of fingers," he declared.
That's right. When people in L.A. need to catch a gator, they turn to some bloke from Colorado, a state known for having a large gator population.
But hey, he's an "$800-a-day hunk," and it wouldn't be L.A. if they weren't superficial.
Take the Czechs. They've taken to some good old-fashioned muckraking, reporting on CzechTek, an incident that's making waves here since riot police appeared to brutally attack about 5,000 ravers at an outdoor techno party in the countryside at the end of July. This has had everyone weighing from the current and former presidents to the average raver who just wants, you know, to throw a wicked techno party without getting his head bashed in my the police.
The image of police beating young people remains especially problematic for the government, says Jirák, because it brings to mind violence used by communists to stifle opposition before — and during — the 1989 revolution.
Then there are the Brits. Seems Tony Blair is doing his best Dubya impression by taking a long vacation in the middle of the war. Only, Tony's people asked the British press not to say where he's taking his holiday, citing "security concerns." And, incredibly, the British media have gone for it.
Sort of.
Unable to report on "Tony and Cherie get a tan," the British media are at least having some fun with it.
The Sun, publishing photographs of Mr. Blair and his wife, Cherie, said the images had been taken somewhere in the Caribbean. On Thursday, The Daily Mail published a spoof quiz entitled "Where's Blair," offering readers 10 possible venues for the prime minister's vacation, including Afghanistan and Iraq, along with more plausible places like the Caribbean. A columnist in The Sun suggested that Mr. Blair might be staying at the home of a "bachelor boy" - the title of an early Cliff Richard song.
And then there's the L.A. media. From the folks who never fail to cut to live coverage of the high-speed police pursuit du jour, the media that go into "Storm Watch" whenever measurable precipitation falls, the TV networks that make a big to-do of weather forecasts for a climate that has some of the most monotonously nice weather in the country, we have the epic story of the summer: Gator Watch. Apparently there's an alligator that was someone's pet and has since been released into an area lake, and the media are treating this like, well, like the O.J. Simpson chase. But it's just another example of how lame-ass L.A. "news" media are.
Now, maybe if this were, say, more serious, and not purely whimsical, it might warrant some coverage. Kind of like when someone got loose in San Diego with a military tank and a death wish.
But let there be no doubt about how frivolous this whole farce is:
It was time to call in a professional. Enter Jay Young, a 31-year-old, $800-a-day hunk and alligator hunter from Colorado. Wearing a leather cowboy hat and alligator-tooth necklace Young surveyed the scene and dismissed the danger involved: "At most I can lose a couple of fingers," he declared.
That's right. When people in L.A. need to catch a gator, they turn to some bloke from Colorado, a state known for having a large gator population.
But hey, he's an "$800-a-day hunk," and it wouldn't be L.A. if they weren't superficial.
posted by Alexander Dubcek | 14:43
1 Comments:
Here in San Francisco we call it The FOG Days of Summer.
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