Thursday, October 27, 2005

It Ain't Necessarily So...

Probably one of the blogosphere's best kept secrets is Sportin' Life's blog It Ain't Necessarily So.... It's become one of the blogs that I read most often, and for three reasons:

  • Freshness of topics
  • I never feel like he's beating a dead horse. The topics generally all involve religion somehow, but are often looking at religion from different angles such as the Bible in schools, a comparision with christianity to the message of the KKK, religion in U.S. politics, and something that isn't reported on as much-religion in foreign politics.

  • Conciseness
  • As a graduate student I'm finding myself having less and less time to read blogs. His articles are long enough to give me interesting information yet still give me time to finish reading the article so that I can formulate a worthwhile comment before I finish my morning coffee.

  • Frequently updated
  • Probably the most frequently updated blog that I read. It's not unusual at all for him to have two posts in a single day.

    But don't take my word for it, check it out yourself.

    Friday, October 21, 2005

    Become a Republican

         This is kind of cute. They make quite a few jabs at religion and today's christians.

    Saturday, October 08, 2005

    Movie Review: OUTFOXED-Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism

        Last week I watched a documentary about the Fox News Channel. Now as you may know, I believe all major corporate media to be propaganda for the wealthy, controlling members of society. However, I generally view this to be a result of market forces, rather than some overt political conspiracy. I thought that Fox News, or Faux News as it's often called, was simply a very conservative, right-wing news group because there was a lot of money to be made by being biased, but that the people who ran Fox News had no specific political goal in mind. This documentary changed that. It made a very good case for Fox News, having as its main goal, the misrepresentation and distortion of the news. It featured interviews with former Fox producers and anchors who speak about the intense pressure on them for supporting the Republicans and making the Democrats look as bad as possible. Hell, Roger Ailes, a former media advisor to Nixon, Reagan, and George Bush, Sr. is the CEO and President of Fox News. The documentary also featured internal memos that were obtained from Fox News which show a concious effort by Fox to make its shows and its affiliates give the same spin on a particular issue. Now maybe this wouldn't be a big deal if it were just Fox, but Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, owns A LOT of media around the world. Hundreds of newspapers and magazines, and TV news that reaches billions of people worldwide. And he is a VERY big conservative. In 1988, he made the remark on Pat Robertson's bid for president that Pat Robertson was "right on all the issues." You can watch a trailer of the video here but it really doesn't do the film justice.

        The media, being the main way that most people learn about what goes on in the world, is being centralized and controlled by corporations that guess what, have very conservative views. Fiscally of course they're conservative, they want huge profits. But they will also cater to conservative religious views, since religion keeps the people in check and makes it trivial to control them. Without independent media or at least the understanding that the mass media is worthelss, we will never be free from religious bullshit and we will never have a true democracy where ideas are freely debated. I encourage you to buy the DVD here. It's $9.95, only twice the price of what you would pay if you rented it (assuming that option is available in your area).


        Also, unrelated to the DVD, the House passed an energy bill recently 212-210 which is essentially a giveaway to energy companies. It was intended to be a 5-minute vote, but when the Republicans saw that they were losing 209-212 they held out for almost an hour as Tom Delay and others got a few more Republicans in the boat. The Democrats spoke out against the corruption and shouted "shame shame" as the vote finally ended. You can watch this video here.