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May 24, 2006
"We each create a story, a narrative, a picture, an allegory, a model for what's going on here and then we fight, sometimes to the death, to, if not make others believe in that model, we fight to be able to keep believing in it ourselves."
Tom DeLay's defense fund website uses a Colbert Report piece on their front page, apparently without realizing that Colbert is a satirist...
This is Colbert's greatest triumph I think. They have taken the trojen satire deep into their citadel.
posted by fleetmouse at 8:40 PM EST on May 24
Bruce Schneier has a self study course in block cypher cryptanalysis on his website. via
ZoneMinder is a Linux-based security camera system.
Consuming bad media degrades our ability to perceive, or Douglas Rushkoff cuts American idol a new one:
And as an objective viewer with significant experience directing musical theater performed by people in these contestants' age group, I can assure you: they're not very good.
The girl can carry a tune, and the guy can do a good lightweight if nasal Joe Cocker imitation. They seem like nice, normal people, and I mean them no harm. They're not bad, and any community summer theater would be well served by their talents. He'd be a passable Harold Hill and she could do the girl in Finian's Rainbow, no problem. Not on Broadway, but for their friends.
But they're not particularly good. Any kid off the TV cast of Fame or in the movie Camp could sing them off the stage. And their efforts at becoming idol-worthy appears to have twisted them into even more perverse caricatures of the stars they're aping - or of themselves - than is probably healthy.
I've got no problem with real people singing and having a good time. And I know of many "professional" musicians who are outrageously bad (Coldplay's pathetic imitation of Radiohead is just one sad example). And I wouldn't normally pick on happy amateurs doing their thing.
But these aren't happy amateurs. These are amateurs in the way that amateur porn performers are amateurs. And they're being sold to America as idols through the process of sheer saturation. I assure you, most viewers who look at these two as talented didn't see them the same way back during those first audition programs. The audience as been conditioned to accept this inanity the same way radio audiences are conditioned through ClearChannel programming and TV viewers learn to like the evening primetime schedule.
Consuming bad media degrades our ability to perceive.
Posted by Jon Rubin at May 24, 2006 11:27 PM
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