Online Blogintegrity

Who's the more the foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows him?


Update by egn: Just so joo know, joo actually can follow us.

Just click on the above leenk, or go here: http://www.blogintegrity.net/

¿Ho-kay?

¡Vamanos!

¿Theocracy?

Phfffft.

Pipples should just go back to worsheeping gatos, no?

so.

Update: by ¡egn!

From the above leenk (written by Caroline Seawright)

Herodotus describes the 'Festival of Bast' where thousands of men and women travelled on boats, partying like crazy. They had music, singing, clapping and dancing. When they passed towns, the women would call out dirty jokes to the shore-bound, often flashing the townsfolk by lifting up their skirts over their heads! When they reached Bubastis, they made their sacrificies of various animals, and drank as much wine as they could stomach. No wonder it was such a popular festival!!

When the people are on their way to Bubastis, they go by river, a great number in every boat, men and women together. Some of the women make a noise with rattles, others play flutes all the way, while the rest of the women, and the men, sing and clap their hands. As they travel by river to Bubastis, whenever they come near any other town they bring their boat near the bank; then some of the women do as I have said, while some shout mockery of the women of the town; others dance, and others stand up and lift their skirts. They do this whenever they come alongside any riverside town. But when they have reached Bubastis, they make a festival with great sacrifices, and more wine is drunk at this feast than in the whole year besides.

¿Now, amigos, does thees no sound more fun than sitting een some stuffy box, wearing itchy clothes while some old man harangues joo about the death of some hombre wheech happened 2000 plus years before joo were born?:


Absolutamente.

Ho-kay, so, sometheeng that Cabrone perezoso borracho posted last week on one of hees other, lesser, blogs reminded me of a certain leetle brou-haha-haha that percolated over during the heady post-election glow of the 2006 elections.

A few members of el sociedad de los frotacíonados profesíonales*, using some derogatory spleet-screen imagery, had been having some fun at the expense of Senadore Obama. As I recall, they were pretty roundly smacked down by pipples from across la blogsfera.

Here at the "Leetle-Blog-on-the-Integrity", we were not long delayed een taking our own tiny, smug, jabs as well:

Primero, I noted that Obama supporters could play the same game, likely to better effect.

Segundo, Thersites played the argumentum ad captandum card, allowing that los frotacíonados had many ridiculous tropes they would most likely use, such as Scary Asians, and Democrats as Girly-Men, not to mention the whole usual poisonous stew of American Media Prejudice against Black pipples.

NTodd chose to abandon the dog-whistle subtext for a more straightforward reductio ad absurdum (the FOX gambit).

And the game ended there, although I remember theenking there was at least one other candidado who was rrripe for the same treatment.

(...y tambien, tomorrow we start on Lumpy-haid McCain peectures.)
so.
# posted by ¡El Gato Negro! : 10:03 PM

So, as I read Thersites post on Kyle Sampson's doppelganger quality (for a fictitious alien), she immediately brought the unmet blogging-opportunity to mind.

¡Immediatamente, I had pounced onto the Google! Hunting the photos of el Cabezazo-trozo weeth fierce abandon and casting about the net for similar images, fictional or metaphoric.

Phffffft...

There are so many that could be employed, I hunted them like slow mice.

Mine for the catching.

Thees has been almost entirely too easy. Senadore Lumpy-haid has many exploitable weaknesses. The most obvious ones involve age, political inconsistency, and a naked lust for power wheech he has a hard time concealing.

¿¡Que divertido, no!?

Si, hilarity indeed, and jet, sometheeng important, she was lacking.

My image searches had led me to a stark realization about poking-the-fun at los Republiculos.

There are no spleet-screen images that one could exploit wheech would cut deeper than the real images of the pipples weeth whom the Republiculos candidates choose to associate.

To put eet another way: There ees no personage that joo could stick John McCain's head next to, wheech would be worse than the pipples whom he actually sticks hees head next to by choice.

...and Senadore Lumpy-haid ees no the only candidado Republiculo to have thees leetle problem, no? The other two hijos de putas enculamientos have also been buddy-buddy weeth the kind of pipples who are no good for the long-term health of any national campaign.

¿Seriously, can one possibly create a spleet-screen image that ees more troublesome for Mitt Romney than the existing shot of hees overlarge, brilliantined cabeza going mano-a-mano tête-à-tête weeth Annathema Coulter?

¿Likewise, ees anyone likely to manufacture an image of Giuliani wheech would have a more malign effect on hees Presidential ambitions than the very real photo of Rudy embracing hees B.F.F., the incompetent, mobbed-up adulterous gomberro, Bernie Kerik?

Eet seemed that I had reached an impasse. The Republiculo frontrunners, by and large, should receive far more ridicule from actual peectures for wheech they have posed than any self-satisfactory leetle mash-up wheech my poor mind could conceive.

Thees ees how matters stood, until thees week, when Las Dias-Felinas de Risa looked down upon their humble servant and smiled.

¿Now, who ees up for Rrround three?

¿eh?





*No leenk, joo can find eet easy enough eef joo are curious.
McCain in Baghdad photo via Jesus Generale

¡Happy Two-Year Bloggiversary to Driftglass!

Eef joo are among los unfortunados who do no read Driftglass on a regular basis, I can only promise that I weel try to express my profound sympathy for joo een a way wheech weel no be too embarrassing, publicly.

Happy Bloggiversary to Driftglass, whose regular readers have the joy of a perpetual drive-in movie, where the concession stand is a library, and up on the screen you can see the work of a human whose love of the English language allows him to use it as a scalpel, a reservoir, and a bulldozer.

¡Simultaneously!

¡Vamanos!

Today, la blogsfera says adíos to one of eet's most beloved members.

Teddy was one of the gatas primeras, one of the first cats that I ever encountered by thees curious and marvelous practice of "Cat Blogging",
the regular maintenance of said habit having an unmeasured yet inarguably beneficent effect on the level of discourse throughout la blogsfera.

Por favor, go over to First-Draft and help the wonderful Scout Prime say farewell to Teddy, one of the most vivacious gatas ever to grace la blogsfera weeth her loveliness.

En la paradiso de los Gatos,

the mice are just as slow or as fast as you choose,

the dogs all carry trays brimming with delicious kitty-treats,

and all the people who hated them on earth are put to work,

cleaning the solid-gold, heated and perfumed litter-boxes.

Adíos, Teddy.

Amigos, thees seems to be fundraising week for many across the public media.

Now, our leetle treehouse-of-integritude runs no ads and accepts no donations
(bathe, bathe), so I could no raise money from our two dozen readers
(las bendiciones de la madre de las dias de las gatas de paradiso be upon joo)
even eef such was my weesh.

Amigos, leesten to the gato, verrry, verrry, carefully.

Take all the dinero that joo used to geeve to Nacional Públicos Relacións and put eet to work over at Orcinus.

David Neiwert and Sara Robinson are experienced journalists whose site helps fulfill a necessary role of la blogsfera.
Sr. Neiwert has done valuable work een showing how hard-right extremist thought has tried to spread eetself throughout the public discourse. He has related een a very thorough way where these ideas originated and who has largely been responsible for transmitting them een the traditionally compliant media.

Now Sra. Robinson and Sr. Neiwert have begun to address how to effectively respond and marginalize those extremist ideologues who profit from mixing together hate and nonsense and modern media.

Todays post from Sr. Neiwert, por ejemplo, looks at the hierarchical model of the media, originally promulgated by Walter Lippman (who has geeven the U.S. such wonderful curiosities as "The New Republiculo"), and what happens when that model breaks down, and why the whiny leetle sociedad des frotacionados profesionales stuck on the broken down heap expostulate so intemperately against their newer, faster, more accurate and si, less arrogant counterparts en la blogsfera.

¡Vamanos!

Last Monday, ¡El Gato Negro! wrote about how the traditional media can best begin to show respect for la blogsfera.
(Stossel, that litterbox weel no clean eetself, joo know.)

At the end of the post I offered what I felt was an insructive visual metaphor for the relationsheep between the traditional media and la blogsfera.

Thees involved a brief run-in between one Kathleen Cochrane, a reporter for Cleveland FOX affiliate WJW, and Becky, a Calico Cat weeth some strongly held views.
That wheech makes thees piece a perfect example of the media/blog dynamic ees made a leetle more clear when joo take into account not just what was said by Ms. Cochrane, but also the statements Becky made throughout the piece.

I know that thees was promised for earlier een the week, yet due to an extended bout of hairballs, I was unable to provide the full transcript of the encounter until today, but I am certain joo weel find eet an enlightening read for a Friday.

_____________________________________________________________________________________



-Female News Presenter: "Hi, everybody, thank you for joining us tonight. (camera change)
Jail is not enough for the judge who sentenced the pair on animal abuse charges."

-Male News Presenter: "Fox News Reporter Kathleen Cochrane, live in Russell Township-"

(camera shows Kathleen Holding Becky)

-Becky the Calico: "-ust want it on the record that this is under duress."

-Male News Presenter: "-has the details."

-Becky the Calico: "Please, let me go!"

-Kathleen Cochrane: "Hi, Bill and Stacy, well, the couple is accused of throwing two cats like this one here -"
(Kathleen hefts Becky the Calico, and jiggles Becky like the cat was a human child (Cats hate thees-egn))

-Becky the Calico: (looking directly at Ms. Cochrane) "Set me down! Who are you people?"

-Kathleen Cochrane: (overtalking) "-out of their car and killing them."

-Becky the Calico: "They did WHAT!? Oh my god! I have to get away from these lunatics!"

-Kathleen Cochrane: (overtalking again) "Now, as part of their sentence- this little guy (sic) is having fun-"

-Becky the Calico: (looking directly at floor, reaching down towards floor with her paws) "Please let me down, please?"

-Kathleen Cochrane: (still overtalking)- "having fun. But now, as part of their sentence, the couple is going to have to come right-"

-Becky the Calico: (fed up) "I said unhand me foul news creature!" (lunges towards Kathleen Cochrane's face)


-(crosstalk)-


-Kathleen Cochrane: (drops Becky, makes tiny noise) "ooooooerp!" (looks at camera for half a second, then bursts into tears)

-(Brief moment of silence as camera switches to shot of the floor of the shelter entrance, Becky the Calico is trying to claw the door open to get back inside, then camera switches back to Kathleen)-

-Kathleen Cochrane: (arms crossed protectively over chest for rest of piece)
"Well, there are lots of cats here. All of them are nice, y'know? And, honestly it's just my luck that something like that would happen. I'm obviously not a cat person. But the people here do say that they are looking forward to the people coming in and hope that they can leave here withsome type of education. You know, I had been holding that cat, everything had been going well until right when we came on the air, but I'm fine. Maybe just a little... scratches" (sic).

-Male News Presenter: "Uh, you know about reporters and animals, and that will end up on a reel for some reason."

-Kathleen Cochrane: "Oh, no kidding, that was like an out of body experience, how embarrassing."

-Female News Presenter: (suppressing a smile) "No, we're glad you're OK, that's all that matters."

-Male News Presenter: (suppressing smile) "Thanks, Kathleen."

-Kathleen Cochrane: (voice breaking) "I'm just fine." (gives half-hearted "thumbs-up" gesture)

-Female News Presenter: (suppressing smile) "Thanks."

-Kathleen Cochrane: (arms crossed protectively over chest) "Thanks."
____________________________________________________________________________________________



Amigos, I theenk the lesson here ees that eef reporters do no pay attention to what ees going on right een front of them, they may become the story themselves, eh?

**¡Koff! ¡Koff!** ¡Hrnrnrnrnrnrnrrrrnnn! ¡Koff-Koff! ¡Kinsley! **Koff-splat**

(Perdona mi)


Eet should be noted for the record, that een the follow up to the first piece, Kathleen Cochrane denies having broken down in tears. ("I was instantly laughing...") Also Becky ees shown having suffered no ill-effects from her ordeal.

Reached for comment, Becky said "I expressed myself rather forcefully, [and] felt better after I had done it,"

Oh, and as for why Kathleen Cochrane was ignoring the impatient and rapidly-becoming-cross ball of fur that she was holding, she says: "I just got into reporter mode"

(facepaw)

Thees, then, ees emblematic of what ees wrong weeth so much of what passes for journalism these days.

But as to Kathleen, well, eef she can maintain that oblivious "reporter mode", and lie weeth a straight face about what we all saw on camera, I'm sure she has a long, prosperous career ahead of her on FOX.

so.