Friday, July 16, 2004
Quiet Friday....Too Quiet Friday
Remember when the WhiteWashHouse used to dump bad news late on Friday afternoons, in hopes it would be too late for the evening network newscasts, picked up by papers on Saturday which nobody reads, then be Old News by Sunday?
Notice how they have pretty much quit doing that since we let it be known we were onto them? (I would like to claim that this was a Triumph of the Blogotopians but in fact the late lamented Aaron Sorkin-written "West Wing"* used the device in quite a number of episodes.)
But since they've gotten away from the Friday News Dump they're even more devious about putting bad news out in inconspicuous ways. I call it the Sabbath Strategy: from sundown Friday to noon Sunday seem to be the new times to watch.
So any bets on what breaks this weekend? My money's on the screaming boys of Abu Ghraib (see also Sadly,No!'s superb translation link of the original German reports on this atrocity.) This has been out in Europe for a week now, presumably all the American media people currently on vacation over there will hear about it and deign to give us a report any day now.
Readers?
(*No, Sorkin isn't dead, and "West Wing" isn't either, but it just hasn't been the same since they split up.)
UPDATE: In case any of the links, particularly the ones to "Sadly, No!", don't work, Blogger/Blogspot has recently changed their posting formatting and it is giving me fits. I have tried fixing them three times now, and if this one doesn't work I am going to crawl through the monitor, squeeze down through the phone lines, pop back into realspace inside Blogger HQ with a pair of wire cutters and punish the bastards.
Notice how they have pretty much quit doing that since we let it be known we were onto them? (I would like to claim that this was a Triumph of the Blogotopians but in fact the late lamented Aaron Sorkin-written "West Wing"* used the device in quite a number of episodes.)
But since they've gotten away from the Friday News Dump they're even more devious about putting bad news out in inconspicuous ways. I call it the Sabbath Strategy: from sundown Friday to noon Sunday seem to be the new times to watch.
So any bets on what breaks this weekend? My money's on the screaming boys of Abu Ghraib (see also Sadly,No!'s superb translation link of the original German reports on this atrocity.) This has been out in Europe for a week now, presumably all the American media people currently on vacation over there will hear about it and deign to give us a report any day now.
Readers?
(*No, Sorkin isn't dead, and "West Wing" isn't either, but it just hasn't been the same since they split up.)
UPDATE: In case any of the links, particularly the ones to "Sadly, No!", don't work, Blogger/Blogspot has recently changed their posting formatting and it is giving me fits. I have tried fixing them three times now, and if this one doesn't work I am going to crawl through the monitor, squeeze down through the phone lines, pop back into realspace inside Blogger HQ with a pair of wire cutters and punish the bastards.
