Thursday, January 31, 2008
The Best Thing on Television
(sic).
Friday, January 25, 2008
TV Doublespeak
There's hype, and then there's illiterate hype, and most of it is on TV, by TV, for TV.
One of the latest examples is that commercial for a pickup truck, a Toyota, I think. It shows the advertised trucks doing amazing(?) feats of truckiness, like screeching to a stop (well, we don't actually hear the screeching) at the edge of a cliff and pulling a huge box of something up from the bowels of the cavern next to the cliff. All of these are labeled, in small print down in a bottom corner: "Actual demonstration."
As opposed to what? A fake demonstration? These images would only be actual if people did them for any other reason than selling Toyota trucks. Otherwise, they're just demonstrations set up for the benefit of the cameramen, nothing more and nothing less. Nothing from what we like to call actual reality.
This follows in the grand tradition of my all-time favorite(?), those promos for TV shows that promise "All New" episodes. As opposed to "Partly New" episodes, I presume? The cake-taker, though, was this week's promos for "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" that ballyhooed the next episode as "All New" and wasn't even that. It was only "All New" to the NBC network; it had been aired a few weeks earlier on the USA cable network!
My other sad example is that ad for a motorized wheelchair that begins, "For some time, this woman was limited by her mobility." If she had the mobility, she wouldn't need the damned wheelchair, would she? Surely, she was limited by her lack of mobility, not the presence of it.
Who writes this stuff, fifth-graders? Oh, no, I forgot, they're smarter than that (I learned that from TV, too, and, unlike these others, it is mostly -- but not all -- true).
One of the latest examples is that commercial for a pickup truck, a Toyota, I think. It shows the advertised trucks doing amazing(?) feats of truckiness, like screeching to a stop (well, we don't actually hear the screeching) at the edge of a cliff and pulling a huge box of something up from the bowels of the cavern next to the cliff. All of these are labeled, in small print down in a bottom corner: "Actual demonstration."
As opposed to what? A fake demonstration? These images would only be actual if people did them for any other reason than selling Toyota trucks. Otherwise, they're just demonstrations set up for the benefit of the cameramen, nothing more and nothing less. Nothing from what we like to call actual reality.
This follows in the grand tradition of my all-time favorite(?), those promos for TV shows that promise "All New" episodes. As opposed to "Partly New" episodes, I presume? The cake-taker, though, was this week's promos for "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" that ballyhooed the next episode as "All New" and wasn't even that. It was only "All New" to the NBC network; it had been aired a few weeks earlier on the USA cable network!
My other sad example is that ad for a motorized wheelchair that begins, "For some time, this woman was limited by her mobility." If she had the mobility, she wouldn't need the damned wheelchair, would she? Surely, she was limited by her lack of mobility, not the presence of it.
Who writes this stuff, fifth-graders? Oh, no, I forgot, they're smarter than that (I learned that from TV, too, and, unlike these others, it is mostly -- but not all -- true).
Friday, January 11, 2008
Tell Me When This Hurts
One of the syndicated columnists published in the closest thing we have to a metropolitan daily in Indiana tackled the ongoing arguments about the death penalty earlier this week. The point of contention for her -- and, apparently, the rest of America that doesn't have anything better to do -- was the argument that lethal injections inflict undue pain on the person being executed.
The pull-out quote was especially interesting, and at the same time bewildering: "No one has proven than an executed inmate has felt any pain from the three-drug cocktail."
Well, duh. Do we need some kind of genius to tell us that there are no exit polls on lethal injections? What part of the word "lethal" doesn't the columnist get?
That's like saying that no one has proven that a fetus has felt pain from an abortion (a question that, believe it or not, Indiana legislators are currently being urged to incorporate into law, and thereby into the "information" physicians provide to pregnant women). How exactly would one interview an aborted fetus, or an aborted murderer, on the subject?
Face it, some things are unknowable, unprovable. Like the existence of God, the number of the million-dollar case on "Deal or No Deal," and what makes Michael Jackson tick.
We don't know if Timothy McVeigh's brain went, "Ouch, that stings a little," when they injected him. All we know for sure is that the return of the guillotine would cut off the debate, so to speak. Who says the French always get it wrong?
(For the record, I am actually opposed to the death penalty in all forms. I just couldn't help noticing the idiocy of that column quote and the whole notion of trying to use the "unproven" as some kind of scientific argument instead of what it really is, one person's uninformed-by-any-facts opinion.)
The pull-out quote was especially interesting, and at the same time bewildering: "No one has proven than an executed inmate has felt any pain from the three-drug cocktail."
Well, duh. Do we need some kind of genius to tell us that there are no exit polls on lethal injections? What part of the word "lethal" doesn't the columnist get?
That's like saying that no one has proven that a fetus has felt pain from an abortion (a question that, believe it or not, Indiana legislators are currently being urged to incorporate into law, and thereby into the "information" physicians provide to pregnant women). How exactly would one interview an aborted fetus, or an aborted murderer, on the subject?
Face it, some things are unknowable, unprovable. Like the existence of God, the number of the million-dollar case on "Deal or No Deal," and what makes Michael Jackson tick.
We don't know if Timothy McVeigh's brain went, "Ouch, that stings a little," when they injected him. All we know for sure is that the return of the guillotine would cut off the debate, so to speak. Who says the French always get it wrong?
(For the record, I am actually opposed to the death penalty in all forms. I just couldn't help noticing the idiocy of that column quote and the whole notion of trying to use the "unproven" as some kind of scientific argument instead of what it really is, one person's uninformed-by-any-facts opinion.)
