Holy shit. Two media posts in a row. Someone at this keyboard is clearly getting ready for grad school. Truth be told my original inspiration for writing material when I started this mess has has dwindled a bit lately. My road trip was cut short and I haven't had any strange dating stories, pretty much all that's left for me is to sit here and watch The Daily Show and scream PREACH ON BROTHER JON STEWART. 

Screw it,  when you're rollin', you're rollin. Everyone gets angry, and some people take out their frustration on small animals and World of Warcraft. I take it out on my keyboard.

I actually managed to watch a considerable amount of the health care summit. I was probably for the first time in quite some time, encouraged by our government...sort of. It's like watching a fat kid in the batting cages. He's swinging wildly at everything, but every once in a while he'll connect with a pitch and you'll think, well if he keeps at this for a few more years he might bat 8th in a park district softball game.

I felt pretty sorry for Obama. There he is, frustrated, trying every tactic he can to just get congress to accomplish something. And instead of producing a bill, all they are doing is sitting there bitching about it. Its honestly like trying to keep a meeting on track for your extra curricular while you decide on a T-shirt. Except it's not a T-shirt. It's the most important issue in the United States right now.

I try not to tow a party line if I can avoid it, but sometimes its inevitable. So, I'm going to just say it. The republicans are irritating the shit out of me right now. Every GOP at that table said. "let's start over, we're not happy with this." You know what guys, how about this? Fuck you. You've had long enough to do it, and you should have done it right the first time. Quit whining.

You start over, and nothing will ever get done. I'd rather the bill have flaws then not exist at all. I believe the great Nike once said, just do it.

And Eric Cantor, you're a moron. If we had the best health system in the world you wouldn't be sitting in the Blair House debating over ways to fix it. You just happen to have the best health care because you have health insurance furnished by the federal government. Anyone who thinks our current system is fine, and that the rest of the world looks to America as an example is a blithering idiot. The kind of idiot who probably wanders through Walmart for fun, and the only time they left the country was to go to Cozumel for spring break.

But look, elected officials will always say stupid things that defy the imagination. What I found most reassuring about this, was that on several occasions, I saw Obama snap at someone. I saw arguing. We need to have more of this. Arguing is productive.

I have a suggestion to make this meeting more effective: Turn the cameras off.

Turn them off for two reasons.

One, I don't want anyone feeling like they need to be overly civil with each other, and just repeat the talking points that got them elected to keep their constituents happy. They should be arguing. Arguing gets shit done. If it means you have to turn the cameras away so you can feel free to say, hey Dick Durbin, shut your pie hole, your idea isn't going to work because of xyz. Then do it!

These are decisions that literally will effect the life and death over 300 million people. This should be a heated discussion. There is difference between respectful and being timid. Cordiallity will not get things done. Bluntness does.

The other reason this shouldn't be telecast is because the mass media is going to do everything they can to undue the progress you might have just made--thanks to the sports frame mentality. No matter what the medium, when you tell a story, you do it with a voice, intentionally or not. Personally, I chose to tell my stories with the annoying-shit-of-a-dude voice of a guy who sits in the back of the room and says stuff that you either hate to agree with, or feel guilty laughing at. The problem is that we live in de facto two party political system in the US. Naturally political discourse gets framed like a sporting event, or "sports-frame" as crotchety old media professors call it. Its 2 parties, 1 vs 1. It's sport. The question isn't which side is doing this, which side says what, but which side wins.

Alright CNN, I'm gonna break this down for you like Jenga. It's not a fucking competition. Politics in America isn't solely a perpetual fight between two ideologies of governance. But why would we assume otherwise when you check the news and see Wolf Blitzer standing between a pundit in a red box, and a pundit in a blue box, trying to score who won.

Turn the cameras off. And fix our health care system for the love of god.





One of my favorite blogs is Adbusters. Their articles are sharp, articulate, and damn inspiring. They campaign hard as coffin nails against the preponderance of hyper-commercialism, and the pervasiveness of advertising in our society. When Verizon finally tattoos their logo on a baby's forehead, I promise they will be the very first to write about it.

The role of advertising in our society, what is ethical and what isn't, how we treat corporate entities, and the effects these things have on us deserve all the attention they can possibly get. Anyone who has a voice on this issue needs to speak up. Even if it means you write the words MEDIA REFORM in your next Farmville garden. But please for the love god, quit playing farmville.

Despite that, for an organization as socially progressive as Adbusters, I got a bone to pick with them. I want to throw down for a second. In a stern, but let's be friends later kind of way. The kind of fight that you get into with your roommate after he vomits in your bed and pisses in the oven. Sure you might have to give him a swift closed hand crack across the face, but when he wakes up you'll have a laugh about it and he'll clean the oven and wash your sheets.

My beef with them, is that they have endorsed a campaign to remove Glenn Beck off the air:

Stop Glenn Beck. Stop Glenn Beck? No, fuck Glenn Beck.

Look, don't get me wrong. Glenn Beck is a socially awkward, mean sprited little troll. He's the dickhead that sat in the front of your intro to Political Science class and would interrupt the professor 5 times a day, trying to make some unfunny sardonic joke for attention.

"Thomas Jefferson wasn't racist---he had sex with lots of black women!" he'd say.

The professor groans, and you usually write down the joke purely to show your friends what a dickhead he is. Later on Glenn Beck goes out to a bar by himself, tries to pick up an ugly girl, fails, and then passes out after 4 Smirnoff Ices. I've seen it a hundred times. Glenn Beck is a racist, mentally unstable, crybaby piece of shit. He's marginally more articulate then the typical corner crackhead---in fact he's so high strung he went into drug rehab (predictably).

That being said, in principle I can't agree with a campaign to pull him off the air.

Look, Adbusters...let's have a heart to heart. Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Pour yourself a nice little snifter of bottom shelf courvosier and take your shoes off. Because I'm about to break this shit down for you like Mr. Kool aid coming to party.

You are ADBUSTERS. Haven't you people heard of media literacy?

Here's the problem, while fighting the good fight, you're on a real slippery slope in hurting our communal right to free speech. Glenn Beck is a bag of dicks, no one is disputing that. But that's all he is, a bag of dicks with his own show. Even bags of dicks should be allowed to say what's on their mind. We don't prejudge your speech in this country. You are allowed to speak, and if it turns out to be some retarded insane banter about God hating sweden, society ignores you, ostrocizes you, and then makes fun of you behind your back.

The punishment for abuse of free speech always should be wrecking the perceived image of yourself or your cause, not restriction of further speech. If you don't want people to think you are a bag of dicks, don't say things that a bag of dicks says.

I'm a firm believer in the 1st amendment. I think even the most socially repugnant, uneducated, dimwitted bigots should be able to say whats on their mind. (After all I'm allowed to say what's on mine right?)

Trying to remove him from the air because he says things that you don't like is the wrong way to go about this. Adbusters, you're a media company, just like Fox network. What gives you the right to publish, and them not to broadcast? I know, it sucks. Slippery slope is a bitch. But like I said, I want us to be friends after this, so let's get back to the right solution to our Glenn Beck problem.

Media Literacy. Focus your efforts on Media Literacy. Glenn Becks audience knows he is outlandish. They might not know that he is an actor. Glenn Beck is playing the part of the obnoxious pundit because people watch him to see what he might say next. It's the same mentality that gets viewers to tune in to Jersey Shore. Nobody watches the show because they like or respect the characters, but goddamn it's entertaining to watch stupid people get drunk and act like morons. That's the best part about having a balcony with a view in college.

Taking Glenn Beck off the air is no different than trying to get HBO to remove the Sopranos from syndication because you don't like seeing Tony kill people.

But maybe you would say, hold up. Glenn Beck is on Fox News. They are a news organization. Not an entertainment company like HBO is? Wrong. It's 2010, time to wake up and smell the paradigm shift. News IS entertainment.

Adbusters, I'm saying this out of love. You guys are smart enough to use your resources to do what's needed in this world of greyed lines between ugly pundits and genuine journalism.

You want to take away the power of someones speech? Quit listening to it. In college, there were these religious zealots who would stand on our quad with giant signs telling us that we were going to hell. Personally, I don't think a college career littered with drinking and swearing is anywhere as close to damning as trying to tell another person how to live their life with fear tactics, but hey---free speech.

Believe me, mothing was more satisfying then watching students in between class walk right past these people, going about their business and ignoring their idiotic diatribe, while they stood in the sun for 8 hours looking like jackasses.

If people are educated enough to understand that Glenn Beck is no different from any other television character, they will quit watching him. And Glenn Beck will go away. It's time to shift tactics Adbusters. Media Literacy. It's the only way.