re: #132 publicityStunted

Even if they were, they probably figure they could just pull themselves out by their own bootstraps. 9_9

Man I fucking hate bootstraps. Three decades alive and I have yet to hear that ragged-ass meme used as anything other than a guilt trip. Even if someone needs to take an issue into their own hands and deal with it, the invocation of “bootstraps” is invariably a dismissal.

re: #131 ConservativeMe

It doesn’t. But I’m a pretty anti-union guy, and when I saw the edited clip I didn’t think for a minute Hoffa was calling for massive violence. I recognized it as rhetoric aimed at his audience. So, for at least one viewer of the clip, the dishonest edit didn’t matter, as I picked up what was going on regardless. I wonder how many others did too?

I’m not understanding why it doesn’t matter…even to you personally.

Seriously—not being nasty or anything—doesn’t it bother you that a news program has perpetrated a deception?

I mean, chopping out context…and in particular, that middle sentence…spins the meaning of Hoffa’s speech. Even if it’s not taken a a call for direct violence, lifting out the part about voting changes the tone of the speech quite radically. With the sentence in, the extended martial metaphor is explicitly tied to voting…without it, the metaphor is not anchored in a specific (non-violent) act, and is thus open to broader interpretation.

That is not reporting of news…that is explicitly altering information to create a narrative, then carrying forward that narrative while presenting it as fact. And now that narrative has a life of its own, and it will propagate, and people will make decisions based upon it….

That scares the crap out of me as a societal trend, as I’m aware of the occasions in the past where such counterfeits have led to horrible things.