Tag Archives: stupidity

Inaccuracies in TV Reporting

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The terrorism hoax in South Florida seemed to be the start of a game of “Telephone” amongst the TV news stations, with the initial information getting more and more distorted with each telling. If we want a really free press we should be aware of these (sometimes egregious) errors. Yet another reason to turn off the TV…

TV dots airwaves with inaccuracies

…a wretched performance — worse yet, a wretched performance that dragged on for eight hours, terrorizing South Florida and smearing the daylights out of three medical students who can be counted on to contribute heavily to the next edition of the travel guide What Sucks About South Florida.

In Defense of Rednecks

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As a proud native of Chicago and current resident of Pittsburgh, I hardly qualify as a redneck, and I’m quite the Yankee as far as my life goes. Nonetheless, there is much to respect in Southern culture (I hope it doesn’t get wholly assimilated in the near future), and I do not like this new CBS project to create a “reality” TV version of the Beverly Hillbillies. Yep, pull up a redneck, multi-generational family from its home in Appalachia or the South, and then set them up for a year in Beverly Hills with plenty of funds.

Now, before we commence this new voyeuristic feast, please read the August 30, 2002 entry of Dave Kreitman’s blog and Rob Dreher’s National Review op-ed on this subject.

This manipulative exercise in television seems engineered for the public to get its jollies in mocking a people without feeling dirty–after all, if hillbillies are ignorant and bigoted, aren’t we justified in hating them? I remember hearing a guy in junior high talking about throwing pennies at child beggars in Mexico, and watching them scramble for the money. This new TV project seems to be in a similar spirit, as we put the poor on parade and hopefully get to witness them as they do something dumb. But modern society is more mature than that junior high acquaintance, right?

Soak the Poor

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We at the Earth Summit are very concerned about making sure the poor do not breed as much, thus allowing us to maintain our own opulent lifestyle. So drive that BMW SUV, eat your Chilean sea bass, but just be sure to send that check to Zero Population Growth on time to maintain your positive environmental karma! Oh yeah, and blame it all on the United States while you're at it. 😉

Do It Yourself

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Oil changes and home repairs are one thing, but do-it-yourself surgery is outrageous. I feel so bad for this guy.

Pensioner forced to chop off rotting finger due to surgery delay

A New Zealand pensioner chopped off one of his rotting, gangrenous fingers with a pair of scissors because he could no longer stand the pain after waiting 20 months for surgery, it was reported yesterday…Matthews is suffering from dry gangrene following cardiac surgery 20 months ago in Christchurch Hospital and his fingers are rotting and dying as a result. Two of his fingers have already rotted off and he is desperate for surgery to amputate two remaining fingers.

A picture of this poor fella can be found here.

Moral of the story? Socialized healthcare sucks and lowers the standard of care for everyone.

Open Mouth, Insert Foot

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Things People Said
Ordinary people can be drop dead funny.

"Human speech is directly responsible for almost every thought and emotion we have throughout life's journey. The complexity of language and the complex messages we use it to communicate leave the possibilities wide open for just about anything. Among other things, people can say things that are funny. We pay good money to see comedians say funny things, and a lot of them come through. But due to the nature of the human comic sense, the deliberateness of a comedian can dilute the potential for humor."

"This page features humor that bypasses that. The humor here is, for the most part, unrehearsed and unintentional. Hundreds of quotations are listed. There are lines spoken by people intending to say something else. There are lines spoken by people who misunderstood something or other. They may or may not have known any better. The intricacies of human language may have fouled them up, or perhaps unfortunate slips of the tongue led them to ignominy. Whatever the case, there's a lot to laugh at."