>> ^joedirt:
what kind of loser makes comments trying to blame victims and be apologist when she seems reasonable and recounting events in a non-sensational way for the media.


You are wrong. She was not being "non-sensational." Hell, with the topics of her speech, there is no way she could be non-sensational (No offense to her or you. Rape and gangbang and police brutality is just that, a sensational recounting.)

She does use pre-thought language in a calm (Cold?) manner that would be a great boon for any lawyer, but that is calculated, not non-sensational. She is also very general and very broad (A mitigating fact if she is lying and it also leaves room to make shit up.) In fact, the one thing she states that specifically happened (The men strip searching the women,) was a stutter fest of epic-fail proportions.

You want a comment I find strangely amusing? When she says, "What I would find threatening..."

See, that statement is calculating to me because it makes you think... she was threatened by those threatening statements. Most people in her situation would say, "I was threatened *Insert threatening comments.*" Simple, angry, to the point and not predetermined. But her way makes you think and makes you repusled... I mean, these police obviously thought those statements were not threatening (It is what she is implying without saying such...)

Well, hopefully she is lying but if not, hopefully the police are punished severly. (I am hoping for the least of two evils...)

************************************************************************************Edit

What is a more probable accounting would be around this...

The police threatened that if she goes to prision or jail, she would be raped and gangbanged (by prisioners.) That may be an inappropriate comment, but it is not them actually threatening to rape and gangbang her. Those are two completely different beasts. Hell, Scared Staight, the show about teens, used those threats on kids all the time... It supposedly scared some away from crime... It is an observation, not a threat, because rape is rampant in Prision compared to the street.

Still, if it was unlikely she was going to go to prision, the cops were being hats...

Next, the he said/she said of the finger incident... SHE WAS NOT THERE AND IT WAS SECOND HAND GOSSIP BECAUSE SHE DOES NOT KNOW FOR SURE!!! How dare she assume it happened! All these people have a reason to hate the cops... She lost all credibility there...

Even if it happened, it was probably conducted by a medical person as a cavity search because of some comment the protester/friend of hers made. Cavity searches, when done properly, are not against the law in some areas... I think... But what I think is not the point. Point is, why should she put her story on someone else's word?

when will the masses in the US realize who their government really works for
i mean, they aren't even really trying to hide it anymore
and still people are more concerned about celebrity gossip

the rest of the world hates the US because of their apathy/lack of knowledge about their countries foreign policy, and the suffering it causes around the world

they also pity you because you seem to be too apathetic/stupid to see that foreign policy being turned towards 98% of your population

and yet you still believe you are the shining example for the rest of the world

France exercises more democracy than the US, should chose French Fries over the Freedom Fries I guess

Actually, he committed suicide. "Throwing his life away," indeed.

>> ^blankfist:

Boner is missing. Very timely.
http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/20
10/02/21/2010-02-21_growing_pains_actor_andrew_koening_is_missing.html

dunno, I think this video makes her seem more human. (I guess a majority of women like to gossip, otherwise soap operas wouldn't be so popular)

Also,
blackberry product placement fail (cause she doesn't know how to use search).
can someone make a "carly can has cheezeburger?" pic ?
can't upvote because overall this video is quite boring.

I wonder, with all the injustices in the world, how there will ever be progress or is all of the progress the world's had just an illusion. A prime time gossip show meant to shield human kind from reality. A veritable vestibule of mendacity.

Go back to sleep everything is OK.

Are western civilizations so much different? The same injustices simply, corporate.

A wife could be punished with one of these to "keep their tongue in their head"
ie. If they were nagging their husband, unladylike language, outspoken opinions, or guilty of being a gossip and spreading rumors.

Basically the punishment used to keep feminists in check.

Boner is missing. Very timely.

http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2010/02/21/2010-02-21_growing_pains_actor_andrew_koening_is_missing.html

this analysis

Where I think you, Maddow and Yglesias err is that you commit the all-too common mistake of mistaking 'Republicans' for 'Conservatives'.

Let us be blunt. GWB was NOT 'conservative'. Just because he supported the Military and opposed stem-cell research & abortion does not make him or any other Republican a conservative. No real conservative would have increased spending like GWB did. A true conservative does not increase federal power. He cuts it. He does not increase spending. He reduces it. He does not reduce freedoms (like Bush did). He increases them. There is a big difference between RINO big goverment 'compassionate' social conservatives (So-cons) and fiscal conservatives like Tea Party folks who want to cut taxes & spending. I know that the left likes to lump them all into the same bucket to make an easy target, but I stridently disagree with the position.

Yglesias is saying fiscal conservatives screwed things up. Such a statement is completely false. No fiscal conservative was running the show with GWB in office. He was all about so-called compassionate conservativism, and 'new tone' bipartisan social spending crap. So from where I sit, it is you and Yglesias who are trying to pull the false equivalence rhetorical fast one here. You're trying to have your cake by lambastic fiscal conservatism (which hasn't been practiced for decades) by using a bunch of RINO So-Con liberal Republicans as your example. That may fly with the less educated or the ignorant - but not with me.

In any case, it isn't germaine to the thread. Maddow is neither (A) original or (B) a journalist. Or are you suggesting that O'Rielly, Hannity, and Beck are original journalists? Because they point out Democrat hypocrisy all the time. Journalists report news. Journalism is very dry by nature, and is objective. Hacks advocate. Hacks are sensationalist by nature, and slanted. They are not the same. Which brings me to...

Pennypacker - blah blah moronic blah blah.

Merely because you disagree with my words does not make them moronic. Such a statement is a very Maddowian ad hominem approach. Very illogical.

Journalism is the conveyance of newsworthy material.

If it helps you to compartmentalize - then put the word GOOD in front. I'm talking about journalism as a field that can be respected and considered professional, fair, and neutral. There are all kinds of 'journalism' if you want to Yellow Journalism or gossip rags. But NEWS is another animal (or should be). In the true sense of the word Beck, Maddow, and all other opinion pundits are not 'journalists'. If you want to say guys like Limbaugh and Olbermann are journalists then that's your affair, but most other people are a tad more disciminating.

If he reported objective conditions i.e. facts without blind assertions he would qualify.

If this is your standard, then you have agreed with my original argument. Maddow is just as guilty as the rest at making things up. Her opinions about the Tea Party in particular. She grossly misrepresents them. During the protests last fall she routinely cherry picked isolated fringe radicals out of far larger, less salacious crowds and painted them as if they represented the Tea Party as a whole. This was just like when Limbaugh picked the whacko goons out of the anti-war rallies and said they were all kooks. Don't pretend to me that Maddow is somehow 'journalistic' and the other opinion pushers are not. Sell that bridge elsewhither.

1. She has a popular following. She's part of popular culture.

I would argue 'popular' is a term that only applies to a bigger audience than her measley average. The 3 AM test pattern has as big an audience as her show, but that doesn't make it an 'audience', or popular.

She's a journalist because she diggs deeper into a topic to find accurate support for any commentary she might interject to grab
viewers/listeners.

I perform that function here for the sifters. Does that make me a 'journalist'?

And not simply your subjective opinions/assertions.

Physician, heal thyself.

For me, celebrities that I don't have a huge amount of sympathy for are those who, like mentioned in above comments, milk it with the media and books. It's funny how you don't hear that much about the private lives of some celebrities like Scarlett Johansson or Famke Janssen yet I know everything about Britney and Lohan.
It is very possible to stay out of the gossip column everyday if you wanted.

If a celebrity is going through depression, surely you would be better off trying to get better without absolutely everyone knowing and judging you? And if their intentions are to bring depression to the open and to help others, I would have more respect for them if they did not make money out of it by doing free events or donating earned monies from appearances to charities of the cause.

I know someone who uses the sentence I'm so depressed much too often. Instead of saying how an xyz situation made her upset or downed her mood a bit, she would always say that it made her depressed. I'm so depressed today, going to Tescos and seeing all these people makes me depressed, that dog makes me depressed, my hair makes me depressed, adverts make me depressed.
Guess what I want to say to this person? Stop cheating on your boyfriend, find a job and GET OVER IT.

Anyhoo, something that people may be missing is this is comedy. Do we believe everything that comedians say for a laugh? Many comedians make up situations and opinions posing them as real ones. After watching and listening to Gervais for quite a while, I am quite sure that he wouldn't tell someone with a real issue like depression or alcoholism to "get over it". Here he is addressing the attention whores.
In any case, he generalised and exaggerated because he's a comedian and not a spokesperson for the NHS.

Thanks for this very long response! I think this was my favorite line: Take away everything someone has to live for, and he'll find a cause to die for.

I will remember that line, because I think you are absolutely right.



Thanks.

In reply to this comment by kagenin:
>> ^Avokineok:
I live in The Netherlands. Everytime I'm on Videosift, I get a sense of how bad it must be to be an American.
I see some great entertaiment with all the late night shows, but I feel bad for all of you who have to live in a country that has so many people taking everything said at Fox "News" ("Gossip" might be more appropriate) so seriously..
It seriously makes me said and makes me believe Amerika is not the land of opportunities; it's a land where people with a lot of money tell other people what think.


Who do you think were those first pilgrims from Europe were? Puritans - People who wanted nothing more than to lecture others on the poor choices they made. (If you've ever been to a good Renaissance Faire, they're the street actors wearing almost all black, and almost always carrying their bibles with them. Hang around one long enough and you'll want to tell them to go take a long walk off a short pier too, if they're in good character. That's basically how they made everyone else living at the time feel. Look at modern day puritanicals such as Pat Robertson.) The ones who colonized America had enough money to sail half-way around the world, which isn't terribly cheap.

Paying for the sins of our forefathers is something every culture does. Just look at television and video games. Here in the States, you can put some pretty violent imagery on TV and maybe even some drug use in your video games, but holy hell if you show a nipple, or touch on ANYTHING of a sexual nature. Releasing a game in the three major English speaking markets (US, UK, and AU) means subjecting your content to three different review boards, with differing notions about what is good and decent for the consumers of their country. Sex, violence, drug use - the disparity between opinions on what is acceptable for only adults to see, even among countries with common language, can mean what get's a Teen rating by the US's ESRB can get an "Adult Only" in the UK, and even be banned outright unless edited for an Australian market.

Despite all this, I remain hopeful because of the fact that those like ol' Noun-Verb-9/11 Rudy are in the minority. The fact that he's so focused on using terms like "Islamic terrorist," or "islamist" displays a blunt ignorance, and could be interpreted as flat out racism. Let's remember that he put the NYC Emergency Command Center, setup after a failed World Trade Center fertilizer bombing in the 90's, was picked by Rudy to be put in the World Trade Center, a place that had recently been the target of a terrorist attack (by attackers who were brought to justice within the same judicial system that handles our parking tickets - we didn't need the post-9/11 military tribunals then, and we don't really need them now, despite certain anti-American Right-Wingers who lack requisite faith in the system they serve). It's like he refuses to learn from history or something, and unfortunately it's not an uncommon condition among modern conservative talking heads here in the states.

The fact that our president didn't use words like "islamist" or "islamic terrorist" or any permutation thereof is because he understands that the greater threat to our nation is a foreign policy that takes away everything from poor young brown-skinned people living in the cradle of civilization and gives them nowhere to turn to but bombed out countries, crumbling infrastructure, and eager suicide bomber recruiters. Take away everything someone has to live for, and he'll find a cause to die for. Dealing with the symptoms is one thing. End the root cause, and then you have the potential for peace.

Take the issue with rampant piracy around the waters of Somalia. Sure, everyone's talking about the latest tanker to be overtaken, but how many stories have delved into the root cause? The polluted waters that have killed off all the fish in the region? The fish who fed the people on the land? The fish that drove the local economy? All dead. The Indonesian Tsunami caused a tidal wave of wretched filth to wash up ashore, tainting the land and water supplies, causing pestilential illnesses. If you're a poor Somali 20-something with your family boat, and you can't make an honest living with it, what are you going to do? Grab some weapons, recruit a crew of close friends in the same situation you're in, and take your chances on the shipping lanes within striking distance... yeah, that would seem like something someone EXTREMELY desperate would do. It's happening right now. The Somali Government can't do jack, they can barely govern an area the size of my rural hometown. Sure we can bust out the snipers when someone important gets kidnapped, and we can applaud the heroes who put their lives on the life to ensure the safety of others. But that won't stop the next motley crew of fishermen with nowhere else to turn but terrorizing the high seas.

I've only spent about 4 days total in the Netherlands. What I saw was beautiful. Amsterdam was breathtaking, both figuratively and literally - man, those canals can really wreak in the summer . I hope to visit again soon. Didn't get to check out much of the television, but what brief moments I was allowed rest in front of a TV on that trip was pretty cool. A lot of stuff just wouldn't get past the FCC here without some serious fines being levied for sexual content, and that's a damn shame...

But, like I said, I'm still hopeful. Wow, that was long If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

>> ^Avokineok:
I live in The Netherlands. Everytime I'm on Videosift, I get a sense of how bad it must be to be an American.
I see some great entertaiment with all the late night shows, but I feel bad for all of you who have to live in a country that has so many people taking everything said at Fox "News" ("Gossip" might be more appropriate) so seriously..
It seriously makes me said and makes me believe Amerika is not the land of opportunities; it's a land where people with a lot of money tell other people what think.


Who do you think were those first pilgrims from Europe were? Puritans - People who wanted nothing more than to lecture others on the poor choices they made. (If you've ever been to a good Renaissance Faire, they're the street actors wearing almost all black, and almost always carrying their bibles with them. Hang around one long enough and you'll want to tell them to go take a long walk off a short pier too, if they're in good character. That's basically how they made everyone else living at the time feel. Look at modern day puritanicals such as Pat Robertson.) The ones who colonized America had enough money to sail half-way around the world, which isn't terribly cheap.

Paying for the sins of our forefathers is something every culture does. Just look at television and video games. Here in the States, you can put some pretty violent imagery on TV and maybe even some drug use in your video games, but holy hell if you show a nipple, or touch on ANYTHING of a sexual nature. Releasing a game in the three major English speaking markets (US, UK, and AU) means subjecting your content to three different review boards, with differing notions about what is good and decent for the consumers of their country. Sex, violence, drug use - the disparity between opinions on what is acceptable for only adults to see, even among countries with common language, can mean what get's a Teen rating by the US's ESRB can get an "Adult Only" in the UK, and even be banned outright unless edited for an Australian market.

Despite all this, I remain hopeful because of the fact that those like ol' Noun-Verb-9/11 Rudy are in the minority. The fact that he's so focused on using terms like "Islamic terrorist," or "islamist" displays a blunt ignorance, and could be interpreted as flat out racism. Let's remember that he put the NYC Emergency Command Center, setup after a failed World Trade Center fertilizer bombing in the 90's, was picked by Rudy to be put in the World Trade Center, a place that had recently been the target of a terrorist attack (by attackers who were brought to justice within the same judicial system that handles our parking tickets - we didn't need the post-9/11 military tribunals then, and we don't really need them now, despite certain anti-American Right-Wingers who lack requisite faith in the system they serve). It's like he refuses to learn from history or something, and unfortunately it's not an uncommon condition among modern conservative talking heads here in the states.

The fact that our president didn't use words like "islamist" or "islamic terrorist" or any permutation thereof is because he understands that the greater threat to our nation is a foreign policy that takes away everything from poor young brown-skinned people living in the cradle of civilization and gives them nowhere to turn to but bombed out countries, crumbling infrastructure, and eager suicide bomber recruiters. Take away everything someone has to live for, and he'll find a cause to die for. Dealing with the symptoms is one thing. End the root cause, and then you have the potential for peace.

Take the issue with rampant piracy around the waters of Somalia. Sure, everyone's talking about the latest tanker to be overtaken, but how many stories have delved into the root cause? The polluted waters that have killed off all the fish in the region? The fish who fed the people on the land? The fish that drove the local economy? All dead. The Indonesian Tsunami caused a tidal wave of wretched filth to wash up ashore, tainting the land and water supplies, causing pestilential illnesses. If you're a poor Somali 20-something with your family boat, and you can't make an honest living with it, what are you going to do? Grab some weapons, recruit a crew of close friends in the same situation you're in, and take your chances on the shipping lanes within striking distance... yeah, that would seem like something someone EXTREMELY desperate would do. It's happening right now. The Somali Government can't do jack, they can barely govern an area the size of my rural hometown. Sure we can bust out the snipers when someone important gets kidnapped, and we can applaud the heroes who put their lives on the life to ensure the safety of others. But that won't stop the next motley crew of fishermen with nowhere else to turn but terrorizing the high seas.

I've only spent about 4 days total in the Netherlands. What I saw was beautiful. Amsterdam was breathtaking, both figuratively and literally - man, those canals can really wreak in the summer . I hope to visit again soon. Didn't get to check out much of the television, but what brief moments I was allowed rest in front of a TV on that trip was pretty cool. A lot of stuff just wouldn't get past the FCC here without some serious fines being levied for sexual content, and that's a damn shame...

But, like I said, I'm still hopeful. Wow, that was long If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

he should probably do this once every 6 months.

you know, like at a job, when your job is stressful and everyone you work with is frustrated and annoyed and stressed out and all your customers are freaking out and breathing down your necks and your "leader" is locked away in his office somewhere and you never get to talk to him. so what happens? you start bitching, and complaining and exaggerating and gossiping. and to you, it sounds like venting, but to everyone listening to you it sounds like the fucking world is ending. and things can very easily spiral out of control. and nothing gets done, but you all keep getting more and more stressed.

and i think that the best way to deflate those feelings is a "meeting" where everyone sits together with the "leader" and asks questions, says whats on their mind, gets face time and feels heard and validated and gets a better understanding of what everyone else is going through and where they are coming from. and then everyone feels better and works together nicer. for a while, until things get out of hand again.

i imagine congress is kind of like that.

i also imagine that nancy pelosi is a raging fucking bitch.

>> ^Avokineok:
I live in The Netherlands. Everytime I'm on Videosift, I get a sense of how bad it must be to be an American.
I see some great entertaiment with all the late night shows, but I feel bad for all of you who have to live in a country that has so many people taking everything said at Fox "News" ("Gossip" might be more appropriate) so seriously..
It seriously makes me said and makes me believe Amerika is not the land of opportunities; it's a land where people with a lot of money tell other people what think.


*Applaud* You hit the nail on the head. It's becoming very depressing to live here; it seems your choices are as follows:

1> Believe the lies you're told to believe
or
2> Be depressed that so many others believe the lies.

Based on how I wrote this comment it's pretty obvious that I believe I fall under #2, but often I wonder who is really happier; those who struggle or those who are naive?

>> ^Avokineok:
I live in The Netherlands. Everytime I'm on Videosift, I get a sense of how bad it must be to be an American.
I see some great entertaiment with all the late night shows, but I feel bad for all of you who have to live in a country that has so many people taking everything said at Fox "News" ("Gossip" might be more appropriate) so seriously..
It seriously makes me said and makes me believe Amerika is not the land of opportunities; it's a land where people with a lot of money tell other people what think.


There's another problem with America Avokineok, as evidenced on this site and that is;

Those who lambaste Rupert Murdoch's abortion, fail to see that they are equally as distracted and led like apes by the other worthless news cunts churning out issue after issue, or other complete scat disguised as something you should have an opinion about. They can;t help it, they have been bred to go for this team or that one, one camp or the other, and are to overworked and indoctrinated to care about the world of the real.

Endless mind-numbing editorials on issues which be merely symptoms of the beast, the emperor with no clothes or skin, for that matter.....The United States will fall in lock-step not unlike the UK did when she was welcomed into the EU against the will of the people, and by mandate of her cunt royal family, god-damned empire-building elitist scumbag fucks that they are. Kill them all, scatter their children's ashes on the dung heap of history.

There is no news-only mind control and endless editorial on the same, to give people the illusion that they have a fucking clue about how the world is run.....liberals are pussies, and conservatives, assholes.

Me, I'm a dick.

That's my 10 cents, praise BOB, Hail Eris, Do What Thou Wilt.

Thanks for the info. That's something I really like about Videosift: This is a place where people use arguments. Actually, that's something what really sets it apart from other online video websites.. I won't react on YouTube vids, because it's useless and there is no real debate there.. Just namecalling.

I like Videosift >> ^direpickle:
>> ^Avokineok:
I live in The Netherlands. Everytime I'm on Videosift, I get a sense of how bad it must be to be an American.
I see some great entertaiment with all the late night shows, but I feel bad for all of you who have to live in a country that has so many people taking everything said at Fox "News" ("Gossip" might be more appropriate) so seriously..
It seriously makes me said and makes me believe Amerika is not the land of opportunities; it's a land where people with a lot of money tell other people what think.

It's not true that most people take Fox News that seriously. Of a country of 300+ million people, they average somewhere between 2 and 5 million viewers on any given night (depending on the source), which is about equal to the viewership of all of the other 'liberal' channels combined. The Daily Show has about 1.5-2 million viewers every night.
The real fact is that most people 1) just don't care and 2) trust neither the government nor the media.
Edit: More random numbers, for comparison: 5-year-old reruns of Futurama regularly got ~1 million viewers at 1 am on a channel that shows only cartoons.