satori001

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Can you feel the power? Do you feel the power? Does the power attract you? Did that black guy have a mullet?

Deja vu-du?

These aren't for the short of attention span, or the tin of ear, but for the rest of you, magic. Just a taste.

Did I just hear right? Did that one guy call the Chicago Tribune a liberal newspaper?? THE TRIBUNE?

Probably meant the other paper.

By asserting the Fox News guy has “biases” and labeling him a “right-wing Republican,” while characterizing the CNN fem as “gutsy,” I was, of course, satirically playing the Democrats’ advocate – attempting to illustrate a (mis)labeling tactic used by Democrat operatives to smear critics and make supporters into seemingly respectable figures.

Satori,

Your avatar looks familiar. Were you once president of a National Organization for Women chapter? A waitress in a Unitarian Universalist coffee shop?

I am not not, nor have I ever been... though I am often mistaken for non-celebrities.

Satirize away, but always, never forget who is most biased.

Satori,

That Fox guy clearly has biases that go with being a right-wing Republican with a cushy income, but why do you have to be so vicious and mean-spirited that you pick on a gutsy female CNN reporter who is apparently so gifted with judicious composure and analytical abilities that she reports that “President Bush didn’t just drink the Kool-Aid; he made it....”?

I report, you decide.

Yeah but hardly a fair and balanced one you assume that your opinion regarding fox news is the truth. Lets agree that CNN is more biased.

As long as we agree that Fox is the most biased.

Note to moderators (if necessary): everybody watches the news, and few really follow politics. In an effort to bring political influences in TV news out into the "open," the best place for doing so at Greasespot is probably the Open forum.

This thread does not take a political position, but rather it makes an observation, several observations, with maybe more to come. Rather than have a food fight over who is more "biased," let's agree for discussion's sake, here and now, on the record, that Fox is the MOST biased of all. And that's pretty biased!

The examples below illustrate that while the NY Times, CNN, CBS, and CNN again, may not be as BIASED as Fox, we may still ask, are they also biased, and if so, how much less so than the worst of all (Fox)?

This is about TV news and life, not the particular political views. Again, it warrants the Open Forum, rather than either of the two mostly overlooked forums wherein political discussion is relegated.

Lastly, to those who would pepper this thread with examples of Fox or "Faux" News, please don't. We already know how bad THEY are. After all, we hear about it all the time, on CNN, CBS, and read about it in the NY Times. Moreover, Fox News doesn't even try to hide it. They are conservative. This is about the other guys...

Why Paul Krugman is a pessimist (for now):

CNN reporting the facts, just add water and stir

Andy to Dan: "Shhhh, don't be so obvious"

Surge strategy? Bull?

Another Israeli perspective, er, "good points, obviously battle lines are drawn between journalists as well." Really? Battle lines?

satori, i definitely agree about does baldwin call because he loves her or to use her ?

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and i agree with what you said here too

but i have a question for you about the part where you couldn't keep her away from the phone. what if the mother is a nutjob and won't let her near the phone ? do you think that's a possibility ?

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i want to strongly agree how pathetic he is about being humiliated time and time again by his little girl. sicko

Baldwin doesn't seem to think Basinger is the problem. He's close enough to the picture to know who isn't answering the phone, even if he doesn't quite know how old his daughter is. He just can't conceive of, or accept, the reason why. He's too much of a narcissistic creep to allow himself that perception.

The problem to Baldwin is simple, as he states it: an 11-year old girl is refusing to play by adult rules that validate him - and he is completely emasculated by that, humiliated, made a fool of. For that offense, he calls her stupid, and a "pig." For that, he is gonna "fly out there and straighten her out." You know, what bothers me is that he seems to be treating her the way an abusive jerk might treat a girlfriend when a relationship goes bad. It's as if he's forgotten that he's her father. He's yelling at her like he's her irate and "humiliated" boyfriend. I don't think that's evidence that he took it any further, but it suggests just how disturbed he really could be.

Now, if mom was an over-possessive, controlling, mommy-dearest variety nut-job, Ireland could let any number of people know, directly or indirectly. She could tell Baldwin, and he would understand it wasn't her fault. Problem is, we already know he is a controlling nut-job. So mom doesn't have to keep Ireland away from the phone. She just doesn't want to talk to him. Does anybody (almost anybody, anyway) wonder why? If Basinger is equally at fault, how is she going to go to her father, when he's like that?

Basinger married the SOB, so there must be something wrong with her too, but it doesn't mean she isn't a good mother, or at least, trying to be. I don't know enough about her. Baldwin's "message" is enough for any outsider to get the message about him.

If Baldwin had understood that, he might still be happily married to Ireland's mom.

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You can look at all the mitigating factors, and Krys brings up a good point about the custodial parent's responsibility. Regardless, this is not a man driven to the point of such exasperation he lashes out at an 11, no 12, no - whatever, who cares - year-old. This is about an adult's tantrum, about berating a child in the strongest terms, about an implied threat ("I'll straighten you out..."). Exasperation (and this jerk feels exasperation the moment he doesn't get his own way) is not a justification for browbeating a child. Sure, it happens all the time. But it is shameful, and let's heap shame upon anyone caught in the act, or risk condoning it.

I keep wondering if Ireland herself didn't have a hand in this. Probably not, because a kid would favor MySpace over TMZ. Even so, she's bound to be a pretty sophisticated kid living in that environment, and it's conceivable she knows more than a few sympathetic/opportunistic reporters on a friendly basis.

One other thought... does Baldwin call Ireland because he loves her, or does he call her to use her, to fight his fight with Basinger through his daughter, with all the mind games you might expect? If he truly hates Basinger, he may attack Ireland's relationship with her mother in a hundred subtle ways. The kid may just not want to deal with it. I'd like to think some professional third-party could listen in and nail him to the wall for that kind of thing, but it's just him (and you've heard him) and an 11-year old.

Kids don't like adult mind-games last I checked. Head-games are toxic to kids, anathema, poison. Kids flee and hide if they hear it coming. If Ireland had a reason to love her father, you couldn't keep her away from that phone. But poor Alec is humiliated "time and time again," by an 11-year old girl. Isn't that pathetic? He makes me sick.

Whatever the mom's motives, there will be considerable attention from the court. If their celebrity status mattered before, it should matter little now. All that matters is the child. The court knows it is being watched too. This story is being talked about everywhere.

I think it was a good move to expose Baldwin. The daughter will get the support she needs because of it.

... the horse died a long time ago.

That, it did. Evan & Ron must have a lot of free time on their hands.

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As for Baldwin, here's a typical, rich leftist - 100% hypocrite. All that publically professed, moral nobility stops at his own front door. I have no doubt his humbris-laced show of liberal "compassion," giving money to kids with AIDS, etc, is nothing but a tax-deductible smokescreen to conceal (or make amends for) his true, low-life self. It's not just little girls that he bullies, though he prefers the odds in that sort of match. He's been a spoiled f-tard throughout his career, maybe longer.

Didn't he promise to leave the country if Bush were re-elected? Maybe he needs more encouragement.

Satori, meet "OTHERS". Your reading comprehension has really gone downhill if you couldn't figure that one out.

Is there learning to be had? Sure! But could more have been done than already was done? Possibly, but I don't think so and I think it's a tragedy to lay blame at the feet of anyone other than the killer himself. Questioning is one thing, out and out saying that you know darn well how they should have done things better, especially when you don't know jack about law enforcement, is another thing.

Belle,

You're right. We should not expect the police to do anything but string yellow tape around crime scenes and tell people to "keep back" while they do a body count.

"Strategic planning" is just too much to expect - especially when they had NO warning that something bad could happen there, other than those recent bomb threats and stuff.

As for us armchair generals, we just need to accept that the authorities are always doing their very best possible, with no room for improvement, and any criticism from outside the law enforcement community is hot air.

Sorry Belle, but much of what I know of law enforcement and security is from what law enforcement has done in the past. In other words, the precedents are there. We'll just wait and see though.

Besides that, my criticism has been leveled against the school's administrators, not law enforcement (as you seem to say here), or the press (as Raf has suggested).

"Believing Equals Receiving"

In the 2nd part of this film, gun shots coming from one of the buildings can be heard.

this is not war, these are kids going to college

i felt the same about those going to work in manhattan

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i just hear the president say none of these kids deserved this or something like that

big frucking duh

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While his adversaries never fail to disgust me, Bush never fails to disappoint me.

I don't think this is so different from what's going on in Iraq. The forensic psychologists are saying the killer took his need for control to a monstrous extreme, murdering the people who did not live up to his expectations, beginning with his former girlfriend, and eventually killing anyone with a pulse and a mind of their own. In his last act of "control," he took his own life, so preventing the police or the courts or the victims' families from dealing with him.

Are the genocidal Islamists so different? They want to kill whomever they can't control, and they'd prefer to die than give up any control to captors. They invite death, if by dying they can deny life to anyone who chooses to live on their own terms. There's some sick validation for you.

Extremist Islam is a uncompromisingly controlling cult. This little murdering dang was just an extremist cult of one.

I am just as disgusted by every car bomb reported out of Afghanistan or Iraq or Casablanca or Indonesia or Gaza - it's always the same, the innocent are slaughtered for the crime of "innocence."

As for satori and full circle, I totally understand where you're coming from. However, I hope others can see, because of that, why it's unfair to blame the media for raising the issue of possible wrong steps that were taken at crucial moments. It's a natural part of the discussion, and last I checked, neither satori nor Full Circle have a column or a cable news show.

Raf, I haven't even mentioned the cynical, irresponsible, biased, exploitive ("And how did you feel, Betty, when the killer's bullets hit your boyfriend in the chest, knocked him to the floor, and you watched him die in a pool of his own blood?") left-wing media jackals. What makes you think I have anything against the media?

My criticism is for those responsible for implementing policies and procedures that ought to protect kids on a college campus. I haven't given the media much thought, except to suggest they have at times seemed more interested in the "opportunity" to promote the next gun-control initiative than in the facts. Solid journalism, that. It almost sounds as if the real killer was not the Korean student, it was the NRA.

I first heard the second guessing on talk radio yesterday. Don't blame the media for this one: the media are relaying what they're hearing on campus and from families. It's natural, just as natural as wanting to know whether the guy is here legally or not. It's a distraction from the tragedy: our natural reaction to tragedy is to somehow undo it. Why didn't airport security work properly on 9/11? Why didn't authorities know what McVeigh and company were up to? Why didn't the V-Tech campus go into lockdown right away? It's just a natural response.

But here's the truth as I see it: if the campus had gone into lockdown or something, that student (I won't dignify his memory by naming him) would have shot up his dorm instead of the classrooms, and people would have been wondering if the lockdown just made his dormmates sitting ducks instead of protecting them. If only they had not ordered a lockdown, maybe he would have tried to escape and not done any more killing!

Alas, there was no lockdown, and he continued to kill. No matter who is second-guessing the police, be it other students, their families or "the media," it is wrong-headed to second-guess them. It's natural, understandable, downright instinctive. And flat-out wrong.

Let's see. If he was in his dorm, and the lockdown occurred after the first two murders at his dorm, he would have been processed with everyone else. He would have been searched. His room would have been searched.

If he was already away from his dorm by the lockdown, he would have been turned away from the classroom building, or told to evacuate. There would have been any number of armed, watchful cops in the area, possibly checking ID's, possibly separating out anyone from his dorm...

If he'd gotten off campus, there might have been time to find evidence or witnesses and discover who he was before he could strike again.

About a year ago, there was a prisoner escape which resulted in the death of a VT policeman, I think. In the days leading up to this massacre, there were several bomb threats. On the morning of the massacre two people were shot to death on campus.

It should have been a by-the-book drill by now. The school should have been closed. I think it will come out that somebody advocated the closure of the school, and the administration decided not to. It costs a fortune to shut a school of that size down. Somebody probably made an "intuitive" decision rather than adhering to the appropriate policy, and whether they ever admit it, cost was probably the underlying consideration.

The impending violence was an unfathomable improbability, but that's why safety measures are put into policy. It's why you don't go back into a building after the fire alarm has triggered until the fire department has done a full inspection, even though everything "looks okay."

Even the FD can miss something. The wire services had a story recently about a woman who smelled smoke, called the fire department, they came, inspected and left. A rapidly spreading fire killed two members of her family later that night.

There was a school hit by a tornado recently and several kids were killed. The administrator knew if he could keep the school open just a little longer, he would not have to make up the day at the end of the year. Cost was the underlying consideration

Err on the side of caution. Somebody, not necessarily the law enforcement, did blow it. Either they failed to institute a necessary procedure, or they failed to follow it.

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