Marina Orlova's terrific show has a new and interesting segment on a kind of shotgun called "The Blunderbuss."
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Erin Andrews peephole tape draws Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Beisner
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The search trend that will not die, "Erin Andrews peephole tape" just drew in its latest mainstream media victim of the drug of titillation, Bill O'Reilly, then for good measure, Jason Witlock of the Kansas City Star unwittingly throws Michelle Beisner into the mix.
Now, Michelle Beisner's the top search on Google Trends because of the Erin Andrews peep show video scandal, Witlock digging up that story, and the male desire to see her, too, (90 percent of my 34,000 video viewers - as of this writing - on this matter are men) and Bill O'Reilly has the nerve to bring two more blondes on his show to talk about a blonde, Erin Andrews, who's privacy was violated, and show the offending video mainly because CBS decided to do it first within the mainstream media camp! Oh brother.
Plus, what we have is a great case of racial profiling.
My video on this matter (which has one very cool photo of Erin Andrews just being the normal person she is and using an Apple MacBook) of the CBS action stands:
And regarding, Bill O'Reilly, I will add more. First, I did not embed the video of Bill's show for obvious reasons, but for those who feel I should at least reference it, here it is - LINK - within a great blog post by Will Brinson at FanHouse, who takes the popular conservative hothead to task for his segment. Second, I'll go a few steps beyond where he went.
What Bill O'Reilly does is add sauce to the "Erin goose" by inviting Fox News.com correspondent Courtney Friel and Fox News assignment editor and blogger Jane Skinner on, both blonde and famous for errors of a titillating nature. In Skinner's case, she's known for mistakenly saying "top cock" rather than "top cop" twice in a Fox News broadcast, leading to a yet another viral video on YouTube. Friel's claim to fame is posing in a bikini for the soft-porn magazine Maxim. Gawker discovered the photos after Friel removed them from her website. Then, Gawker's Ryan Tate (who's now the editor of Valleywag) wrote a new post about her pictures, calling her a "bonehead" in the process.
Bonehead? Bonehead? That is racial profiling, folks, piling on the classic "dumb blonde" image, but more on that later; O'Reilly uses titillation to talk about, well, titillation. What was done shows the primal genius of Fox News and explains why their ratings are so high. Bill's 100 percent correct that what was done to Erin - and I stand corrected that it was in a hotel room and not an athletic club as I reported - is cyberstalking.
But given that the audience for this news is male, Bill should have had Fox News male anchors on his show talking about the matter, and not Jane Skinner and Courtney Friel. Why? Because first, it would send a message that men in media have a level of respect for their female collegues, second, the obvious question given the backgrounds of Frier and Skinner is "Have you been cyberstalked?" but Bill didn't even go in that direction and thus had the wrong guests on. He focused squarely on the view that a crime was committed - and he's right - and that's it. But in fashioning the segment O'Reilly caused a "snails tail" relationship: we talk about the blonde with blondes who have the same level of Internet popularity as the blonde, just like Michelle Beisner.
Who?
Michelle Beisner's described by Witlock as "former Denver Broncos cheerleader and aspiring D-list Hollywood actress-type. Blonde. White Woman" (but forgot to note, or perhaps didn't care to discover, or didn't see it as important that Beisner's an NFL Network correspondent) who's innocent reply to a text sent by ESPN's star anchor Stuart Scott (who's black) was picked up by an over-the-shoulder peering Al Daulerio - a sports blogger and editor with Gawker media product Deadspin - at a Super Bowl party, then was repeated by Daulerio in Deadspin.
The result was to imply that Scott and Beisner were having an affair as opposed to what commonly happens in the days leading up to a Super Bowl (I've been to seven of 'em): the late night search for a way to get into the next party and go all night long. I'd bet even money that's what the text was about; Beisner may have contacted her friend, the well-connected Scott, who's married, regarding help getting into another party.
Deadspin has never appologized for the blog post.
While Witlock is correct in bring up how Deadspin poorly handled that story as well as how Deadspin started reporting on the Andrews video, Witlock's depiction of Andrews and Beisner (Andrews as "Barbie" and Beisner as "D-list...Blonde. White Woman" rather than NFL Network correspondent) is tasteless and smacks of the same racial profiling we complain about as African Americans. (And I will follow up later, on regarding what happened to Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates at the hands of the Cambridge Police.)
No one wants to be placed in a box where they're expected to be a certain way because of their race and sex. Just because someone's white and blonde doesn't mean they don't know anything; in my experience, perhaps as a reaction to society, it's the reverse. I had a long tearful talk a while back with a friend of mine who's in San Francisco real estate (and blonde, and tall, and attractive, and smart) about this because she'd had it with people at the time and went on a drinking binge. (She's fine now.)
It doens't matter if the person's white and blonde, or black and male, we as a World industrial society must stop placing them in a box assuming that they're dumb or dangerous. Bill O'Reilly did this, Jason Witlock really did it, the Cambridge police "acted stupidly" (to quote President Obama), and Erin Andrews and Professor Gates have been the victims of it.
Enough, already.
Erin Andrews peephole tape draws Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Beisner
More at Zennie62.com | Follow me on Twitter! | Get my widget! | Visit YouTube | Visit UShow.com
The search trend that will not die, "Erin Andrews peephole tape" just drew in its latest mainstream media victim of the drug of titillation, Bill O'Reilly, then for good measure, Jason Witlock of the Kansas City Star unwittingly throws Michelle Beisner into the mix.
Now, Michelle Beisner's the top search on Google Trends because of the Erin Andrews peep show video scandal, Witlock digging up that story, and the male desire to see her, too, (90 percent of my 34,000 video viewers - as of this writing - on this matter are men) and Bill O'Reilly has the nerve to bring two more blondes on his show to talk about a blonde, Erin Andrews, who's privacy was violated, and show the offending video mainly because CBS decided to do it first within the mainstream media camp! Oh brother.
Plus, what we have is a great case of racial profiling.
My video on this matter (which has one very cool photo of Erin Andrews just being the normal person she is and using an Apple MacBook) of the CBS action stands:
And regarding, Bill O'Reilly, I will add more. First, I did not embed the video of Bill's show for obvious reasons, but for those who feel I should at least reference it, here it is - LINK - within a great blog post by Will Brinson at FanHouse, who takes the popular conservative hothead to task for his segment; Second, I'll go a few steps beyond where he went.
What Bill O'Reilly does is add sauce to the "Erin goose" by inviting Fox News.com correspondent Courtney Friel and Fox News assignment editor and blogger Jane Skinner on, both blonde and famous for errors of a titillating nature. In Skinner's case, she's known for mistakenly saying "top cock" rather than "top cop" twice in a Fox News broadcast, leading to a yet another viral video on YouTube. Friel's claim to fame is posing in a bikini for the soft-porn magazine Maxim. Gawker discovered the photos after Friel removed them from her website. Then, Gawker's Ryan Tate (who's now the editor of Valleywag) wrote a new post about her pictures, calling her a "bonehead" in the process.
Bonehead? Bonehead? That is racial profiling, folks, piling on the classic "dumb blonde" image, but more on that later; O'Reilly uses titillation to talk about, well, titillation. What was done shows the primal genius of Fox News and explains why their ratings are so high. Bill's 100 percent correct that what was done to Erin - and I stand corrected that it was in a hotel room and not an athletic club as I reported - is cyberstalking.
But given that the audience for this news is male, Bill should have had Fox News male anchors on his show talking about the matter, and not Jane Skinner and Courtney Friel. Why? Because first, it would send a message that men in media have a level of respect for their female collegues, second, the obvious question given the backgrounds of Frier and Skinner is "Have you been cyberstalked?" but Bill didn't even go in that direction and thus had the wrong guests on. He focused squarely on the view that a crime was committed - and he's right - and that's it. But in fashioning the segment O'Reilly caused a "snails tail" relationship: we talk about the blonde with blondes who have the same level of Internet popularity as the blonde, just like Michelle Beisner.
Who?
Michelle Beisner's described by Witlock as "former Denver Broncos cheerleader and aspiring D-list Hollywood actress-type. Blonde. White Woman" (but forgot to note, or perhaps didn't care to discover, or didn't see it as important that Beisner's an NFL Network correspondent) who's innocent reply to a text sent by ESPN's star anchor Stuart Scott (who's black) was picked up by an over-the-shoulder peering Al Daulerio - a sports blogger and editor with Gawker media product Deadspin - at a Super Bowl party, then was repeated by Daulerio in Deadspin.
The result was to imply that Scott and Beisner were having an affair as opposed to what commonly happens in the days leading up to a Super Bowl (I've been to seven of 'em): the late night search for a way to get into the next party and go all night long. I'd bet even money that's what the text was about; Beisner may have contacted her friend, the well-connected Scott, who's married, regarding help getting into another party.
Deadspin has never appologized for the blog post.
While Witlock is correct in bring up how Deadspin poorly handled that story as well as how Deadspin started reporting on the Andrews video, Witlock's depiction of Andrews and Beisner (Andrews as "Barbie" and Beisner as "D-list...Blonde. White Woman" rather than NFL Network correspondent) is tasteless and smacks of the same racial profiling we complain about as African Americans. (And I will follow up later, on regarding what happened to Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates at the hands of the Cambridge Police.)
No one wants to be placed in a box where they're expected to be a certain way because of their race and sex. Just because someone's white and blonde doesn't mean they don't know anything; in my experience, perhaps as a reaction to society, it's the reverse. I had a long tearful talk a while back with a friend of mine who's in San Francisco real estate (and blonde, and tall, and attractive, and smart) about this because she'd had it with people at the time and went on a drinking binge. (She's fine now.)
It doens't matter if the person's white and blonde, or black and male, we as a World industrial society must stop placing them in a box assuming that they're dumb or dangerous. Bill O'Reilly did this, Jason Witlock really did it, the Cambridge police "acted stupidly" (to quote President Obama), and Erin Andrews and Professor Gates have been the victims of it.
Enough, already.
Are the "Obama's foreign born" folks being racist?
I'm not sure most of the people who are harping on this "birth certificate" issue even believe it's true; I think they're mostly looking for something to badger the winner with. It's amazing what people will do when they're feeling bitter.
Are there racists among them? I assume so, but I'm not sure what fraction it is, let alone if it's the majority. As for the rest of them, logic isn't at issue with most in this situation. It's an emotional response, just as many reactions are in the political arena. There were nut-cases dogging every President in recent memory, forcing them to spend time and attention on trivia - taking their time and energy away from the larger problems facing the people of this country.
Many of them, in this case, have trouble feeling any sort of sense of commonality - or community - with the duly elected former Senator for any number of reasons: some because he's not white, some because he's a Democrat, some because they think he's trying to impose socialized medicine, some simply because they thought we were doing well under the previous administration.
Right or wrong isn't at issue - logic won't change their position; they aren't open to debate, they aren't even listening. Sadly, it's the same sort of "we vs. they" thinking that is so easy to see as problematic in places like the middle east, but when we're caught up in it ourselves we lose our objectivity. It's great in a game of bridge, or as a fan at a sporting event, but inappropriate and counterproductive in this case.
So they pick something to hammer away at, something that doesn't sound - on the surface - like they can't abide a Democrat, or a man who's not another good ol' white guy, or whatever their particular thing is, in the White House. It's a mantle of plausible deniability, distancing their words from their true objection. As such, they're no more objective, or amenable to logical discussion of facts, than the Emperor in the parable that teaches us (or at least tries to) about keeping our perspective.
It doesn't take mental illness, or racism, to account for what's going on. All one of these conspiracy theorists needs is to be a little bit stubborn: pleased to believe that you can't call them anti-black, or anti-Democrat, while they hide behind the story that there's something suspect about a guy who beat out their guy.
In due time some will realize, like the emperor with the "new" clothes, that they've not got even one scrap of evidence to hide behind.
Some few may even expand their view, and decide our President is a lot more like them despite having parents of different colors, and a lot more interested in their welfare than, for instance, a Saudi prince.
But the man's only been in office about 7 months, and that's not a lot of time to win over the opposition while he's busy trying to dig us out of the hole the economy fell into during 2008. He's adopted an ambitious agenda: health care reform alone would be a major task, but he's working international diplomacy, education, and climate reform as well. He's got supporters who think he's not moving fast enough on their own top priority, be it civil rights for gay couples or reforming and regulating Wall Street.
The extreme cases, of course, will remain unswayed no matter how much success Obama has. Like extremists for other points of view elsewhere, they will make a lot of noise because they crave the attention more than anything.
Weekly Address: President Obama Calls for Real Health Care Reform
This is a brief presentation of Obama's Health Reform effort. This was in June. Once I get the full press conference I will post it.
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