Eight Feet Deep

Four months have passed since I signed on to Twitter and I have six posts under my belt. Amazing productivity? You betcha Sarah Palin.

The problem is that I just haven’t figured a way to work Twitter into my life which is already filled with assorted technotivity (technical activity) such as this thing (EFD), Facebook, using a computer at work, other applications on my personal computer, my phone which doubles as a camera and camcorder, not to mention I have another blog sitting below this one on my Blogger profile just waiting for me to do something with it. I feel like I need to reboot my life.

I get what Twitter is. It is a microblog that allows communication within 140 words or less at a time. It was used quite extensively during the recent presidential inauguration. Every newspaper worth its salt and quite a few not worth a pepper had some local person Twittering from the Inauguration back to the home planet.

The trouble is, I just don’t know where Twitter might fit into MY life. And my pondering is all the more exasperating by learning that Twitter, the current big thing, isn’t making any money. What? Not making any money? Hell’s bells, even I make money. Not much money, but some.

The Motley Fool points, however, to Twitter being an emerging platform which could wind up in the money like Google and eBay. Maybe that’s the fact, perhaps Twitter is meant to be the latest Techno crack addiction, like the Crack Berry. Poor old Barack, our BlackBerry jonesin’ president, can’t even give it up. Part of my reticence toward Twitter could be that I am afraid that if I start obsessive use of Twitter, the powers that be will start charging for it and I will have to shell out bucks for it.

Until I figure out what if anything I can do with Twitter, it will just have to remain a dormant non-obsession in my once simple world now overrun with all types of technocrap. Tweet. Tweet.

Lou Dobbs and U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.

Two peas in a right-wing pod.

My mind is turning over at the moment the thought of whether I should unsubscribe to e-mail from the person who “represents” me in the U.S. House. That would be Ted Poe from the Houston area. I use the quotation marks because Poe represents me in Congress only by virtue of the fact he was elected — with no help from me — and that his being in the House is a matter of Constitutional fact. However, in the use of the word “represent” in which one speaks on my behalf, Poe certainly does not fill that bill.

Nonetheless, I continue to receive e-mail from him because I want to see what kind of claptrap he is up to and to take the opportunity to criticize him for his shortcomings. After all he does “represent” me in Congress.

Poe notes with pride in his message that he has been anointed as “Deputy Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee Crime Subcommittee.” That means he is the number two Republican member of the subcommittee which he says handles most legislation on border security and victims’ rights. The border, of course, is a big thing with Poe. The former judge who came up with all kinds of ways in sentencing criminals which would get his name in the media was one of the cheerleaders for having the two convicted border patrol agents released from prison. GW Bush commuted those criminals’ sentences before he left office Tuesday. Strike one blow for law and order!

During his campaign to free border agent-convicted criminals Ramos and Compean, Poe spent an inordinate amount of time on right-wing talk shows such as that of CNN’s Lou Dobbs and any other nut job Poe could get his mug on. It’s so nice to know Poe can represent the people of El Paso, almost 800 miles away from his own district, so well while his own constituents need assistance for little things like FEMA housing and help with veterans benefits.

Poe also predicts the end of mankind as we know it if President Obama goes ahead with his plans to close the detention facility for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. The last president and his evil puppet-master Dick Cheney had that facility used because it wasn’t on U.S. soil, thus thinking we wouldn’t have to give prisoners such niceties as human rights, we could torture them and we could ensure they have fair trials in which they would end up guilty and executed. Here is what Poe says about Gitmo:

“I have toured prisons all around the world and I have personally visited the Guantanamo Bay facility. I can assure you this facility is more than acceptable to house terrorist suspects. In my opinion, it is far too nice for the ‘worst-of-the-worst’.”

What kind of facility would you suggest for terror suspects Judge? Should they be hung outside in frozen weather on meat hooks? Should they be beaten every day? Should they be put in a dingy little room 24/7 and be forced to listen to recordings of your speeches?

Poe has introduced legislation which would prevent suspected terrorists from being imprisoned in the U.S. Hmmm. It seemed U.S. federal prisons were good enough to hold the likes of domestic terrorist monsters such as Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski as well as Islamist terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called “Blind Sheikh who was convicted of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

I would be willing to bet given the political climate right now that Poe’s “big time” stature as being a 2nd-in-command on the minority side on a congressional subcommittee might not be enough to guarantee passage of such a bill with a predominantly Democratic House, Senate and not to mention a Democratic president who has a mandate to shut down the Gitmo prison. I could be wrong though.

In the meantime, I guess I will humor Poe by continue receiving his e-mails until they just get too damn silly for me to read without upchucking.

Although I write an occasional freelance newspaper article I have largely said adios to the industry which was my career for almost 20 years. To be brutally honest, I can say there is quite a lot I don’t miss about working for a newspaper. Being even more forthright I also must confess to being very happy not having to depend on an industry in so much economic turmoil which is likewise fused with never-ending hand-wringing.

Newspapers are in trouble today. That is no lie. But then a lot of businesses and industries are in trouble. Many newspapers are owned by large corporations and many corporate entities have been faltering lately with the current economic crisis.

One only has to look at the news to see how that business seems in such a fiscal freefall. Gannett, which publishes USA Today and other papers, told their employees company wide that they must take one week’s furlough without pay. That, supposedly, is everyone from the janitor to the editors to the suits.

The long-dwindling number of two newspaper towns seem headed to one paper standing.

These problems for newspapers have been a long time coming. Most cited as demons by my publishers in the early 1990s were declines in classified advertising brought about by free classified papers. Then came Wal-Mart which was stingy with buying ads in general in the local paper. In more recent times advertising has no doubt been hurt by Craigslist and other online ad venues.

Then there was the cost of newsprint. Oh yes, that old evil newsprint cost which meant salary freezes, a cut in new hires, the continuation of that crappy old computer system, and so forth.

If you believe in gravity then it makes perfect sense why newspapers are going in the hole. Other businesses sink, businesses depending on those businesses sink and the papers depending on those aforementioned businesses for advertising revenue finally don’t get the money coming through the pipe.

Then finally there is the Internet itself. That is a much more complex problem than just in the business end of print media.

First of all, papers are finally getting the hang of how to make money off the Internet. With a combination of economic woes and new technology some newspapers such as the Christian Science Monitor are going mostly or completely online. But others are certainly struggling because of the technology.

The media, but print in particular, has never done a good job of, or completely evaded, explaining their business model to the public. A friend of mine who likes to rail against the “liberal media” repeats the common misconception that media only seeks to sell more papers. But the news itself is, relatively speaking, a small part of the news business when one looks at the big picture. Advertising is what makes the media world go around. So it might look like a paper is trying to dig up dirt or inflame passions so it will produce more revenue but that happens only if it generates more advertising.

Other problems exist in today’s newsrooms some of which are economic and others aren’t, or else those problems might have an economic component. For instance, a typical career path for a newspaper reporter when I thought about such a career realistically was working for a small newspaper, then a medium-sized one and then a larger one and perhaps on to a metro. And such a path existed 20 or less years ago. But the economics of the situation quickly changed to where editors started hiring new J-school grads to work on the metro papers because they could pay them less. That has had a definite negative influence on quality.

Editors themselves nowadays often hit a quick path upward as well. But even as that happens, some of the more experienced editors seem to lack the all-around knowledge that such a job takes.

Finally, there is a non-economic reason I am glad to no longer work for a newspaper. That is because the powers that be have allowed feedback through interactive online forums to become a depository for the vilest, most ignorant language imaginable. And those thoughts are mostly produced by people who react with their modicum of education to something they read yet the knowledge they possess to make an argument is many times a product of Fox News University or Rush Limbaugh College. The last paper I worked for placed e-mail addresses and phone numbers of reporters under their stories. I didn’t like it then but it did eventually prove mostly helpful not so much in receiving feedback as it was for learning about other news.

Today, it seems, newspapers just let people write whatever it is they please. They accuse people including the reporters or editors of all kinds of sins without any foundation. Even worse, they showcase for everyone to see just how stupid many of the people who read that paper can be.

Am I the pot calling the kettle black. Well, no I don’t think so. This is my own little self-contained world. If someone wants to argue, fine but it won’t change anything.

Personally, I think it is great if you like your interactive newspaper, but I think a cooling-off period needs to exist before someone interacts.

“Our” esteemed U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and when I say our I mean he represents my state (unfortunately) apparently has some kind of partisan bug up his butt.

Yesterday Cornyn would not allow a unanimous consent vote for several cabinet members including that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Clinton just now, as I write this, has been confirmed by the whole Senate by a vote of 94-2.

Today Cornyn is among fellow Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee who have delayed by one week a vote on Attorney General designee Eric Holder. Cornyn said he wanted the extra week to ask yet more questions of Holder. Senate rules give the minority party that right. But just because they have the right doesn’t mean it is right.

Cornyn has been a lapdog of the Bush administration. He seems more interested in appearing on Fox News than he does trying to solve some of the nation’s and his state’s problems. One day after a new president is sworn in with about 1.5 million people looking on in person and hundreds of millions more worldwide watching on television, you might think Cornyn would get a message. With Democrats controlling both the House and Senate, along with a Democratic president, you might think Cornyn would get a message.

But Cornyn just doesn’t get it. He is clueless. Is this the best that can be done for this country? What a jackass!

CNN reports that Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy collapsed with a seizure at a luncheon for new President Obama. Kennedy, who has brain cancer, has been taken to a hospital.