Week of 03/09/2015

Brian Versus Bill-O
– by David Matthews 2

When it comes to the idea of honesty and integrity in the media, I can’t help but come back to a little exchange between Jon Stewart and the political commentators on CNN’s now-defunct series “Crossfire” back in 2004.  Stewart was being grilled by the hosts about his Comedy Central series “The Daily Show” about his supposed “journalistic integrity” when Stewart turned the tables on them.

“You're on CNN” he said. “The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls. What is wrong with you?”

That pretty much spelled the end of that incarnation of “Crossfire” ten years ago.  Meanwhile, Stewart only recently announced his retirement from “The Daily Show”.

The “Crossfire” hosts made the mistake that a lot of other people do about Stewart’s show on Comedy Central.  “The Daily Show” is not a news program.  It’s a satire of a news program.  Stewart is not a reporter.  He doesn’t pretend to be a journalist.  He is a comedian.  He doesn’t do what he does to inform.  He does what he does to entertain.

And yet we’ll watch his show instead of the local news, and we’ll trust what he says more than we will the network anchors.

And that, I think, is the real joke.  But the joke isn’t on us.  It’s on the people that think that Stewart is a journalist or that his Comedy Central show is a real news program.

That brings us to a guy named Brian and another guy named Bill-O.

Brian Williams was long considered a reporter before he became the host of NBC Nightly News.  People trusted him.  If he said something happened, then viewers believed that it did, because they believed in him to be honest.

That kind of honesty and trust is not easy to build.  And yet it can be ruined so easily.

In February of 2015, Brian announced that he may have told a fib about being shot down in a helicopter in Iraq.  And, for that, he was taking some time off from his job as Managing Editor and host of the Nightly News.  Not long afterward, NBC decided his time away would be six months without pay, and there is some speculation that it may eventually end his employment altogether.

There is some precedence.  Dan Rather lost his job as the “grand poohbah” of CBS News – a position he inherited from the great Walter Cronkite – after it was discovered that one of his stories had a questionable source.  And no matter how many times Rather said the documents were true, the facts continued to mount until his bosses decided to pull the plug and terminate his job.  The scandal destroyed the integrity of that network’s news division, and NBC execs could very well move to make sure that the same doesn’t happen to their own division.

That brings us to Bill-O, aka Bill O’Reilly. 

Bill-O, it seems, has been making claims for quite some time that are now turning out to be false.  Was he a “war correspondent” during the Falklands War?  Apparently not, since he was in Buenos Ares at the time looking at photographs.  Was he there at the hotel when the friend of Lee Harvey Oswald killed himself?  Well the sheriff’s report and the Associated Press reports at the time say otherwise.  So do his co-workers at WFAA in Dallas, who say they were with him in Texas when George de Mohrenschildt committed suicide in Florida.

As far as anyone knows, Bill-O does not possess the power of teleportation, nor does he own a teleporter straight out of “Star Trek”, so it’s a little difficult to claim that you can go from Texas to Florida in an instant.

Oh, and apparently he wasn’t caught up in the Los Angeles riots of 1992 either.

Bill-O, Bill-O, Bill-O…you just can’t seem to keep your history straight.

So why is Bill-O still on the air?  You would think that after he went on a tear about Brian Williams and the integrity of the news division that Fox News would set the example, especially after Bill-O started bashing the so-called “liberal media” following Brian’s suspension.  “Think about other news agencies that are distorting the facts,” he said.

Bill-O?  They are. 

But instead of admitting to his instances of Munchausenism, Bill-O and his employers at Fox News have been busy attacking the accusers.  They don’t refute the claims with hard proof or evidence.  They simply dismiss the accusations of Bill-O’s lies and exaggerations by screaming “Liberal agenda” in the same way that a little boy refutes his bad behavior by saying that the other person’s a “doodie-head”.

But, you know what?  There is a way out for Bill-O.

Because let’s get brutally honest here… what Brian Williams does (or did) and what Bill-O does are two different things.

Brian is/was a reporter and a news anchor.  His job depends on people trusting what he says is honest and factual.  His accounts need to be fact-checked and verified.

But Bill-O really isn’t a news anchor, is he?  No, he isn’t.  He is the host of a commentary program that dissects the news of the day with his own slanted spin.  Maybe he was a reporter once upon a time, but not today.  Not while he sits in the chair of the “O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News.  Not while he churns out books talking about “Killing” this person and “Killing” that person like they were Harlequin novels.

Bill-O is a commentator.  Commentators have different sets of rules than a news anchor.  They don’t have to be completely factual.  They can exaggerate things and make stuff up to get their point across.  I should know, because I’ve been a commentator longer than Bill-O had a Fox News program, and I’ve been pointing out the line between journalism and commentary for years now.  (And, by the way, that’s not an exaggeration.  My commentary site started months before Fox News went on the air.)

As a commentator, Bill-O can live in and report from his fantasy world with impunity.  He can talk about how he witnessed famous events without actually being there.  He can accuse the United States Army of committing war crimes in Malmedy during World War II.  He can claim that a falafel is just another word for an exfoliating bath sponge.  He can claim he defied the Ottoman Empire and flew on a cannonball.  Oh, wait, that last one wasn’t Bill-O; that was Barron Munchausen.  Well it’s easy to see how anyone could confuse the two of them.  (Just kidding, of course.)

Fox News could even take it to the next step and just admit what their critics have long accused them of being… not a news network, but rather a political propaganda machine for the conservatives and neo-conservatives.  Then they won’t ever have to worry about “journalistic integrity” or whether or not their media personalities are telling the truth.  But I really don’t see that happening anytime soon.  They love the pretense of being a “superior” media outlet too much to give it up.

What Brian Williams did was sad and needless.  But at least he had the integrity and the courage to own up to his mistake when exposed and accept the punishment from his employer.  What would truly be sad is not that Bill-O won’t do the same, but if his own viewers refuse to hold him to the same standards that he pompously decrees others should live up to.

Week of 03/02/2015

In Defense of Superhero Movies
– by David Matthews 2

So apparently there are those in the bowels of Hollywood that have a problem with superhero movies.  The stench of which wafted up like a foul fart during this year’s Academy Awards ceremony.

Jack Black, best known for playing rather large and obnoxious characters, decided to let this little gem rip like a bad burrito during the opening song: "Opening with lots of zeroes, all we get are superheroes: Superman, Spider-man, Batman, Jediman, Sequelman, Prequelman -- formulaic scripts!"  Shallow, “Hal”, really shallow.

Of course, I could possibly excuse his ribbing as simply him being an actor playing a role of a douchebag performer.  I used to be a stage actor myself in college, so I know that sometimes you just have to sing the song as it was written.  Then again, Mister Black is also one half of the comedic folk group Tenacious D, so there is a chance that he wrote the lyric himself, which would make him an actor playing the role of a douchebag performer singing a song written by a douchebag lyrist.

This comes a day after director Dan Gilroy dissed superhero movies during the Independent Spirt Awards. “Independent film, the foundation and everybody here today, I think are holdouts against a tsunami of superhero movies that have swept over this industry,” he said.

Gilroy, it should be noted, is married to Rene Russo, who co-starred in two superhero movies, “Thor” and “Thor: The Dark World”.

It should also be noted that just hours after Black slammed superhero movies, the Academy Award for Best Picture went to “Birdman”, a movie about an actor that was best known for playing a superhero.  And the award for Best Animated Feature went to “Big Hero 6”, a computer-animated superhero movie.

Now before we go any further, I should point out that I am not only a huge fan of superhero movies, I’m also a creator and self-publisher of fan-made superhero comics.  So not only am I biased in my support of superhero movies, I create content that could be turned into the next big blockbuster movie for the Hollywood elite to pooh-pooh all the way to the bank.

Having said that, I have to ask Misters Black and Gilroy and all of the other Hollywood elitists that don’t care for this genre of money-making movies… what the hell is your malfunction?  What’s with all the hate, haters?

A “tsunami of superhero movies”?  There are maybe one or two superhero movies coming out in any given year from Warner Brothers, Sony, Fox, and Marvel Studios, not counting the direct-to-video animated releases.  Compare that to the orgy of so-called “horror” movies that come out every other month that could all be summed up by simply saying the word “jump-scare” a hundred times.  There are more movies made in any given year about teen angst than there are superhero movies, Mister Gilroy, so I have to seriously question your reasoning in singling out superhero movies.

“Opening with lots of zeros”?  I’m sorry, Mister Black, but which movie did you perform in that brought in over one billion dollars at the box office?  Yes, “billion” with a “B”.  That’s how much money “Marvel’s The Avengers” brought in.  One-point-five billion US dollars worldwide as of February 13th of this year.  That’s a lot of “zeros”.  And it’s still bringing in money for Marvel Studios!  How much money did you bring in, Mister “Nacho Libre”?

Of course this ongoing bias against superhero movies is nothing new.  Back in 2009, Hugh Jackman – best known for playing Wolverine in several “X-Men” movies – wondered why superhero movies get snubbed in the Academy Awards.  After all, Heath Ledger had to die to get his Best Supporting Actor award for “The Dark Knight”.  And “Superman – The Movie” had to get a special award for best visual effects because the Academy felt bad about snubbing it in 1979.

But let’s get brutally honest here… I strongly suspect the reason behind this elitist snubbing and bashing of superhero movies has less to do with some intellectual disdain of the subgenre and more to do with what these kinds of movies bring to the studios, namely money.

Superhero movies have a build-in loyal fan base.  Thousands, even millions of loyal fans that spend money every month on their regular comic book publications, that look forward to spending that money seeing their favorite heroes and villains fight it out on the big screen.  That’s money that the studios use to then cushion the losses from the more “hoity” movies made by people like Mister Gilroy and performed by actors like Mister Black.  So, really, the Hollywood elite are pooh-poohing the very hands that feed them.

And that brings me to the dirty not-so-little secret about these awards show, specifically the Academy Awards.  While the Hollywood elite pretend that these kinds of awards are meant to celebrate the best of the best, in truth they have always been designed to recognize the movies that they themselves think “should” have gotten the box office money.  In other words, movies like “Thor” and “The Avengers” and “The Dark Knight” already got all of the rewards and recognition they deserved.  They got the fans and the box office money.

James Gunn, director of the highly-successful “Guardians of the Galaxy”, penned his own response to the elitist bashing and snubbing of superhero movies, which I agree with for the most part.  Except for this: “If you think people who make superhero movies are dumb, come out and say we're dumb.”  You’re not “dumb”, Mister Gunn.  Nor is the audience.  People that make superhero movies have a pretty high bar they have to meet from their audience.  Jack Black can give a mediocre performance in a grade-Z movie and nobody will really notice.  But Chris Pratt playing Star-Lord or Christian Bale playing Batman have to live up to their comic book characters, and if they fail, the fan base is merciless.  Just look at the ongoing online arguments about “Man of Steel” if you don’t believe me.

Superhero movies are really no different than the legendary tales of old.  Our ancestors used to be enthralled by tales of Hercules, Perseus, Thor, Samson, Ali Baba, the Knights of the Round Table, Robin Hood, the Scarlett Pimpernel, and Sherlock Holmes.  Yesterday’s stories told in the round are today’s big and small screens, and the people that mock them or minimize their importance in inspiring generations past, present, and future, are really the “dumb” ones.

Week of 02/23/2015

Enough With The Food Pimping!
– by David Matthews 2

Okay, I have a beef with the food pimps.

Oh you know who I’m talking about, don’t you?  I’m talking about the people that make it their mission in life to drop in all sorts of “special” foods into our heads.

Remember the diner scene in “When Harry Met Sally” when Meg Ryan’s character would come up with a really specific order for her food?  Now imagine if she specified which kinds of ingredients would be in her chef’s salad, and how that pie should be, and what specific brand of apples should be in the pie.  And now imagine if that were on the menu instead of her specifying it.

That is “food pimping”.

Fast Food giant Wendy’s is probably the most notorious of these food pimps, since they seem to love new “special” food.  Subway does it too sometimes.  Your franchise restaurants are guilty of it as well.  They decide that you “need” to consume what special food is “hip” and “happening”.

I’m not talking about what Taco Bell did when they teamed up with Frito Lay’s Doritos to come up with the Doritos Locos Tacos.  It’s a creative idea, but it’s really just limited to that one menu item.   Now if Taco Bell and Frito Lay put Doritos in pretty much every menu item, and other eateries followed suit, then that would be food pimping.

Food pimping pretty much started with Angus beef.  You see, it wasn’t enough to have just a regular hamburger or a regular steak.  No, you had to have an Angus burger and Angus steak and anything that came from Angus cows.  No other beef would do in the minds of these food pimps.

Then it was chipotle.  Everything had to have chipotle in it.  Every meal needed to be chipotle. Do you know what “chipotle” is?  It’s smoked and dried jalapeno pepper.  It’s a seasoning.  That’s it.  It’s like garlic, only garlic didn’t have food pimps shoving it down our throats like they did with chipotle.

Then it was Applewood bacon.  Not just bacon, which is already an internet sensation.  No, it has to specifically be “Applewood” bacon.  Bacon smoked by fire using wood from apple trees.  Not maple-smoked.  Not hickory-smoked. “Applewood”-smoked bacon!

And then you had to have a pretzel bun or a pretzel crust.  In other words, you had to cover the top of dough with an egg-wash and cook it until there was a hardened brown crust.  And if you were lucky, they took the additional step of adding salt to the egg wash before cooking it.  This was something the local Wendy’s forgot to do with their pretzel buns during one of my rare visits.  But if you don’t add the salt, then it really isn’t a pretzel.  It’s just browned egg-wash.

Then it was Asiago cheese.  Wendy’s got on a kick about Asiago cheese, or cheese that comes from Italian cows.

And then there’s Sriracha.  Subway started adding Sriracha to their sandwiches.  Do you know what Sriracha is?  It’s hot sauce.  That’s all that it is.  It is the name of a brand of hot sauce.

Oh, and let’s not forget Avocados.  Because avocado growers and Subway think you haven’t had enough avocados in your life.  And portabella mushrooms!  Have to have portabella mushrooms!  We need a fungus among us, don’t we?

Enough!  Enough of it all!

Let’s get brutally honest here… these food pimps need to go, and take their specialty foods with them.

None of these pimped foods are guaranteed to make your life better in any conceivable way.  They certainly won’t freshen your breath or lengthen your life.  They won’t make you any smarter, because if you were then you would know better than to waste your money on them.  They absolutely won’t make you wealthier… unless you’re a food pimp, of course.  All these things do is justify paying more for food that you could otherwise get at a local grocery store and cook up yourself without the hype.

You know what would be better?  If fast food places like Wendy’s got rid of the food pimping and concentrate on the things that bring people into the stores to begin with.  Like good food served hot and relatively fast at a good price and with generous portions.  We don’t care how the bacon is smoked or what kinds of cows provide the milk and the beef.  Make it hot – and I don’t mean through peppers – make it good, and make it relatively fast.  And make it look like the food we see on the menu; not something that was sloppily put together by someone trying to race a stopwatch.

Oh hell, all of this talk about food is making me hungry.  I think I’ll just make myself a peanut-butter sandwich on plain white bread using generic store-bought peanut butter and pour myself a glass of plain water to wash it down.