Wednesday, July 26, 2006

The Fifth Estate skewers the Fourth

I’ve been fond of quoting S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications professor and Center for the Study of Popular Television founding director Robert Thompson from Radio Open Source last spring:

[34:45] Comedy has moved in as the Fifth Estate when the Fourth Estate had dropped the ball. The press, of course, as others have said, completely rolled over in the lead-up to the war and the only good commentators out there were all coming from the perspective of the support of the president - the Bill O’Reillys, the Rush Limbaughs and so forth and so on - and comedy moved into that vacuum.

Yesterday GMA and The Today Show both did stories on Robert Wexler playing along with Colbert on the topic of cocaine.

Last night Colbert shot back. Before bluntly endorsing Wexler - “my friend” - he went after the network news folks with a comic ferocity that was finely targeted and absolutely 100% effective.

The python that ate the electric blanket, tanorexia, uncomfortable shoes, fake flood shots, getting peed on causes stress, the chimp playing Texas Holdum… all stories he excerpted from those real news shows to illustrate the point.

Watch it.

A hookah’s not a bong

Demetri Martin’s Trendspotting segment on The Daily Show last night (Part 1, Part 2) looked at hookahs.

Somehow I had missed that they were a trend.

But it does give me reason to recall that I only learned a month or so ago how hookahs work. From an article in Slate on medicinal marijuana:

Marijuana need not be burned to release its medicinal components. When the plant is heated to a degree short of combustion, its active ingredients become vapor and are released without the accompanying smoke.

That’s the secret of the hookah - vaprization! No nasty tar and nicotine. So does that mean when you use a hookah you are not really “smoking?”

Making up with Windstream

Calmer voices prevailed today.

This morning Doug called Windstream. When he did he said that there was a long pause as the Customer Service Agent read the notes from yesterday’s series of calls. Doug asked that the agent read the notes from the last call verbatim:

Customer became upset, customer shouted. I asked him to stop but he would not.

Doug told the agent that he thought I might dispute that recollection (I would) but that he did not. And the upshot is a new modem overnighted to us, a move up to 3 MB “Tier 2” DSL and a one-year contract at $29.95. Apparently our old contract expired in June so we had moved to a higher rate.

I did discuss with colleagues this morning how, in the cold light of the day after, it does seem that I had overreacted. And I must say that I do genuinely admire that Customer Service people - who are not responsible for the problems they deal with and are hardly paid enough for what they go through - are typically able to cool and calm those difficult situations they deal with.

For the moment, I guess this is the closest I can come to an apology.

What’s a bus stop?

The judge permitted the new Georgia sex offender law, but then explained that it can’t be enforced anyway:

A federal judge Tuesday refused to extend an order blocking enforcement of a new Georgia law that bars sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of school bus stops.

U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper conceded that his order would result in more confusion over the law - other parts of which have already taken effect - and said he was “deeply troubled” by the law’s potential for displacing thousands of offenders.

However, he said blocking the bus stop law from taking effect would be premature. The law says each bus stop must be officially designated by the local school board and so far none have been authorized.