Also, and more patriotically, The Fast Show’s Chanel 9 Neus – http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ctaszjeaDK0.

There’s a good selection of literary examples in the Chatto Book of Nonsense Poetry, edited by Hugh Haughtoneroonie.

The Couric interview illustrates what happens when she gets caught without her ducks lined up … the waffling becomes almost satellite-like in its orbit. But even when talking complete and utter shite, she still manages to put on an expression that suggests she is imparting something we all desperately need to know – which I suppose is simply doing what politicians do.

Worst of all is the rhyming couplety student voice that goes up and down – sort of like a 10th grader reciting by rote. The voice seems detached from her brain, which is why it is so irritating … also because it is piercing (notice I didn’t say ‘shrill’). No matter how superficially informed it seems, you know that deep down Palinochio is really a complex hybrid – part-human, part-parrot and part-witchhunter cult member.

The one hope is that while shooting wolves from a helicopter, she falls out and impales herself on the antler of a passing elk.

Forward:
“As we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone to fight for democracy and freedoms, including freedom of the press, we’ve really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship here with those fighting the freedom of the press, and then the press, though not taking advantage and exploiting a situation, perhaps they would want to capture and abuse the privilege. We just want truth, we want fairness, we want balance.”

Backward
“We just want truth, we want fairness, we want balance. Perhaps they would want to capture and abuse the privilege, though not taking advantage and exploiting a situation here, with those fighting the freedom of the press. And then the press, we’ve really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship, including freedom of the press, to fight for democracy and freedoms, as we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone.”

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_10/015023.php#1385826

That’s surely true to some extent, but it’s more complicated. See for example various things here about how the fundamentals of “baby talk” appear to be cross-cultural, cross-species, and specially suited to helping babies learn language.

Palinese, on the other hand, seems to have some of the opposite attributes . . .

Maybe she’s speaking in tongues?

vote/view > http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html

If they just could have had a script and some actors, Idiocracy could have been a great film. But I suppose the same could be said for Freddy Got Fingered.

Hey, you know, Greenspan still sees little need for regulation, we just need more honorable folks. If we had eliminated ships and navies centuries ago we would have put a stop to empire building. Hammers don’t hit thumbs, people do. I’m not saying the medium is not abused and largely corrupt, only that it’s the human factor not the tool; those who seek to corrupt will regardless of media, if allowed. The net does allow for your bidirectional inputs but is also readily corruptible if/when allowed. Digital bidirectional capabilities work both ways and offers new, quite scary potential. We know those in the ‘neutral’ middle are not always, and that money can sway in ways altruism never dreamed of.

I believe in instrumentality effects. Crimes of passion are more serious when firearms are involved, as are international confrontations when nuclear weapons are available.

Internet activity is bidirectional. TV watching is unidirectional. It can easily be argued that unidirectional information media tightly controlled by the plutocracy are far more pernicious than bidirectional media with no central control. Commercial TV broadcasting is intrinsically corrosive to informed discourse because of its unidirectional and capital-intensive nature. It is a perfect propaganda tool, and that is why it has dominated and degraded American politics.

In twenty years they’ll likely be saying the same about the internet, who knows though, by then 90% of capacity could be 3-D porn and nobody will remember to ask the question. Seems to be a similar argument to, “government is the problem.”

(Corey has been compared to Unwin.)

1. The Leni Riefenstahl effect: magnifying the emotional impact of theatrical propaganda displays arousing primitive emotions.

2. The Attention Deficit Disorder effect: conditioning people to consume facts and decide on them in 30 and 60 second commercial spots.

3. The Superficiality effect: collapsing evaluation of an individual’s character into a TV personality that must be instantly agreeable to the befuddled viewer.

4. The Production Values effect: conditioning people to endorse the most attractively produced message.

5. The Dueling Sophistry effect: programming people to believe that there are knowledgeable “experts” on both sides of every controversy, and alternative “truths.”

In Neil Postman’s words, TV has amused us to (societal) death.