respublica

Branding the Two Americas

It's a good thing the election is getting close because news outlets have reached the point of absurdity in attempting to define liberal and conservative Americans. Take this Simmons Research survey posted by Politico, "Do you eat Republican Cheese" with a sub-title reading, "The Two Americas, a snapshot in brands."

The point is to inform us on the differences in products purchased or eaten by republicans and democrats and thus our cultural/tribal thinking. I mean, this is seriously off the wall. I'm putting up the survey graphic, but you'd see it better if you clicked the story link. The cheese preference which heads up the story title isn't even real cheese in either case. The category isn't even cheese, but dairy. Liberals supposedly prefer Stoneyfield Yogurt while conservatives go with Kraft Velveeta.

Neither are really cheese and with this first brand I can see that the survey publisher and Politico are defining liberals as more sophisticated and educated and refined. Take the magazine preferences they show: Liberals- The Atlantic, Conservatives- Guns & Ammo. And, under Health and Beauty Product we see, Liberals-Burt's Bees Lipstick/Gloss and Conservatives-Right Guard Anti-Perspirant.  Under meat preferences, liberals-Aldells sausages, conservatives-Swanson canned meat.

Come on. Was this really necessary? It's embarrassingly bad and insulting. One more reason why journalism is viewed with some skepticism.  Most of us eat food we like without worrying about politics

click to enlarge or check out the actual story link

 

What next?

Once again, local tv news has outdone themselves in posting the most outrageous stories on Facebook. This has to be done to get clicks for advertisers but, boy, do they find the stuff.

Two stories involved drinks. One told of a pregnant woman who went to McDonalds and her soda was actually cleaning fluid. Another man got a soda from another McDonalds and his was spiked with opiates. Supposedly. So much for McDonalds.

And a story about a woman who was not given anesthesia during a C-Section. Her husband her her screams.

There are way too many stories on horrible child abuse which I won't share here. Needless to say, though, most are linked by KMOV, Fox2Now, KSDK. And, I won't even link two separate similar stories in which a puppy and a baby were thrown off bridges.

Here's a headline, locally, guaranteed to get some clicks. "Mysterious foul odor has city telling residents, "If you smell something, say something."

Is this who we are, that we most enjoy reading about the worst of ourselves..  Local news outlets seem to think so.

IMHO

Cable news is now just theater.

Click bait

One thing about Facebook and Twitter, it gives local news outlets the opportunity to post links to stories from other areas which are just bizarre. And that could just be the point, the headlines are written to get you to click and read. This one from KSDK in St. Louis is an example. Just so you know, no way did I click to read this story.

"A man with no arms stabbed a tourist in Florida."

Finally talking about Missouri lane lines

 At last one of St. Louis' local news outlets did a story on how highway lane lines disappear when the pavement is wet and also dark. I've harped on this for years, at least since 2012. Driving in the midst of traffic and not being able to see any lane lines is one of the scary parts of living in this area and if other states can use paint which stays bright why can't MoDOT. So I was amazed and thrilled that KSDK had a news story last night on just this issue. They linked it to Facebook as well where so far there have been over 1000 comments, 541 shares and 2.9 thousand likes. Glad to finally see this issue, which obviously affects so many, brought to light...so to speak.

Back in 2012 I put up a post on lane lines on Washington DC highways, lines which were so bright and clear it was heart-stoppingly beautiful to those of us not used to having visible lane lines. It was so astonishing that while Dale drove I took a 15 second video of how the road looked and put it on a blog post. Take a look and see if you aren't envious.  The way YouTube has me set up is that after this short video another of my videos will show up. Just ignore if you don't want to see family videos.

We've lost our sense of common decency

I've been bothered by the practice of people using the comment areas of social media, whether it's Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, news sites, whatever, to write the most vile thing that comes into their heads. This is true in secular politics, food reviews, crime stories, etc.  Today this tendency is out for everyone to see after the train carrying republican members of congress to a retreat, crashed into a trash truck which was in the middle of a set of tracks. The comments make me sick. You can disagree on politics but this kind of thing is beyond the pale. For example from Twitter:

"An AMTRAK train carrying Republican members of congress has hit a dump truck near Charlottesville: Hazmat workers on the scene are reportedly having trouble discerning which garbage is more hazardous — Republicans or the trash from the truck."

"Author and self-proclaimed CNN “talking head” Jonathan Tasini took to Twitter on Wednesday to declare that “God is working hard today to clean up the stink” because a “train full of Goopers” slammed into a dump truck moments after news broke that GOP lawmakers were in a collision that resulted in at least one death."

"Darn. The wicked spared."

There were many more.  Some have been taken down, but the internet is forever and others do take screen shots. The worst part is this is not unusual. For some reason people think they can say anything, rip anyone, call others names while on their phone or computer and it's ok. Because you think differently from me, I can lash out in any despicable way I want.

We're living in out of control times.

 

 

Throw up your hands kind of day

This was one of those mornings where finding a watchable morning news channel was almost impossible except for traffic and weather. The 3 cable channels had people on who obviously lost their minds in any number of ways and the first news headline I hear on one of the local channels was this:

"How smart is your underwear?"

Just a throw up your hands and turn off the tv kind of news day.

This is so annoying

The Post-Dispatch has a practice of making readers answer a survey if they want to read a story the paper has gone to the trouble of linking on twitter/Facebook. If you put a story good enough to link on these places, let it be read.  Here is the survey for the story on Circus Flora moving to Washington Avenue which I did want to read mainly because one of our daughters does trapeze out in DC and I enjoy seeing circus stuff locally.

Please select the businesses that you've had experience with in the last 12 months.

1. Jet Blue
2. K&G
3. Sleepgram
4. Lenox
5. Answersite
6. G-Star
7. None of the above.

Then came a box with the word--Next

Or-show me a different question

sign up for access

Since I refuse to take these things just to read a story the paper thought good enough to link, I have no idea what came next. And we do subscribe and we have access when we go to the actual P-D website so this is even more annoying.

We're scraping the bottom of the news bowl

Overnight our local news outlets must have given the keys to their social media sites and the stories are just nutty.

KMOV

"Is it OK to put your child on a leash? Answer-It's complicated"

"Couple pleads guilty to punching mom, daughter, over cold chicken"

"Couple finds dead frog in drink at Waffle House"

KSDK

"Ask the Captain: Do airlines fly bigger planes for the holidays?"

 

Pop-ups that remain in place

I was reading through many overnight local news stories this morning and when I clicked open this one from KMOV, suddenly this pop-up appeared.

The problem is two-fold here. First of all this pop-up could not be closed. There was no x to get it off the screen and the text bothered me in a way which made me think it might be a hack. The only option was to click that OK.  For a few seconds I debated what would happen if I clicked the OK. Would I be sent to some fake site or a real site? Supposedly as thanks to my customer loyalty, Charter Communications was offering me a chance to win a 1000 dollar Walmart gift card today and all I had to do was choose the right gift box.

I say baloney. No way was this anything more than a con. It's easy enough to ignore these things most of the time, just close the box and get on with the real story. But the rather unsettling part was that there was no way to close it. So I left that page without reading. You just can't be too careful and I wish that local news websites which so often have stories warning us about hacks, would check their own sites once in a while.