Recently, Jon Stewart, host of The Comedy Network’s “The Daily Show,” has been launching hilarious barbs at CNBC for faulty financial reporting. Coming under particularly heavy fire were Jim Cramer, the rambunctious host of “Mad Money,” who has offered some blatantly bad advice, and Rick Santelli, who, in a recent video explosion, called unfortunate mortgage-holders […]
television
The CRTC’s meddling ways
By Frank Moher I like a good government intervention as much as the next failed banker, but the current CRTC meddling with the internet should send chills down the spine of anyone who uses the instrument — like, say, you. The commissioners are looking into the question of whether or not internet service providers should […]
Why is Canadian cable TV so bad?
By Frank Moher One of the mixed pleasures of a writer’s vocation is afternoon television. With the advent of notebook computers, one can sit on the couch and do all manner of quotidian things — like writing blog posts — while CNN and NewsNet and A&E dance across the flatscreen. Of particularly morbid interest of […]
Disney’s tragic kingdom
The Disney corporation is a piss-poor parent. While it may be responsible for some of the finest keep-your-kids-busy-for-an-hour films ever made, it has done a reprehensible job of raising up its own young stars. If any real-life parents had Disney’s track record, social services would be on their asses before you could holler “High School […]
Tweeting Gustav
By Frank Moher I followed Hurricane Gustav not on CNN, not on the newspaper websites (and certainly not on the newspapers themselves), but via Twitter. What, you may ask, is Twitter? Twitter is a service that allows you to post messages to the web of up to 140 characters. Initially the idea was to tell […]
Part II: “We do not talk about things that we do not have enough experts to tell us about”
By Frank Moher In my post of a few days ago, I asked some questions of CBC and Maclean’s pundit Andrew Coyne, about his answers to a 9/11 Truther after a television taping. I said I’d e-mail him a link to the article (did) and advertise it on a few sites, including his own (did). […]
“We do not talk about things that we do not have enough experts to tell us about”
By Frank Moher While researching my next-to-last post (and did you realize that “blogging” and “research” are not necessarily mutually exclusive?), I came across the following video: In it, a very earnest and nervous woman confronts Alan Gregg, Chantal Hébert, and Andrew Coyne after a taping of the CBC political panel “At Issue,” with a […]
Headlines we wish we’d never read
Yes, you read that right. MSNBC regards its country’s debate as to what constitutes torture — which I thought had been resolved in Geneva a few decades back — as cause for a bad bit of frat-boy humour. And this is the States’ supposedly leftish cable network.
The issue with “At Issue”
By Frank Moher Calgary Herald columnist Don Martin offered an unfortunate comment during last night’s broadcast of “At Issue,” The National‘s equally unfortunate political affairs panel. Discussing the Conservatives’ plunging poll numbers, Martin derided the “line of pale male faces, with one exception” on their parliamentary front bench. He was sharing the screen at the […]
Psst, kid, wanna buy some eyeliner?
Recently I met a mom who’s had enough. I was in a mall washroom when I noticed the media-awareness.ca sticker on the tote bag of the woman next to me at the counter. I asked her about it, and got a quick lesson in what it’s like to raise children in a media environment that’s […]
