82 posts tagged “media”

Finally, a celeb decides to extend a hand of friendship to beleaguered celeb Britney Spears:

http://www.rte.ie/arts/2008/0516/spearsb.html

   Mel Gibson may slag off Judaism and Jews when drunk but it is high time someone showed some kindness to Britney and her family.
   It’s a good move for two celebs who need a bit of a positive boost in the media.

I could have spent half an hour doing something more productive but them’s the breaks as a ratepayer.

Attn.: Transport Group, Wellington City Council
via email

Ladies and Gentlemen:

We’re very happy that WCC has contracted Fulton Hogan to reseal Mamari Street, Rongotai. The road was in need of repair and it was done with very little fuss or annoyance to the residents. The road workers were extremely courteous and made sure that we could carry on with our business without delay.
   But—and there’s always a but—the entry to the street is more compromised than before, certainly more so than it was after the last repair.
   The design of the entrance from Coutts Street is akin to that of a driveway now, rather than a street, which normally I would not have a problem about. In fact, for security, it makes the street look more private and out-of-bounds than it really is.
   I know that the Council and Fulton Hogan would have seen this as an improvement and I thank you for that consideration.
   There are some road safety issues as a result of the improvement, which you would not have been aware of without being a resident of Mamari Street.
   That corner (outside Leo’s and 163 Coutts Street) has traditionally collected a lot of water. Now, because of the way the entrance is designed, more water collects in the new gutter, making it hard for motorists, especially those unfamiliar with the street, to see that it’s not a regular turn from Coutts Street, but more like a driveway. I see potential for accidents as a result of this; at the least damage to suspensions at the carriageway edge and gutter. This has become apparent with the extra rain we've been getting since the road works.
   Secondly, the corner on Coutts Street between Salek and Mamari Streets is notorious for tailgating. Again, this would be something you wouldn’t have known. Some motorists will tailgate more on that corner, unaware of the pedestrian crossing there, or that the car in front has slowed to turn into Mamari Street, despite indicating. In the past one could make a hasty but safe retreat into Mamari Street if tailgated. Today, I am not so sure as the driver of the first car would have to slow down considerably more and tailgaters might not be able to react in time.
   Thirdly, exiting Mamari Street is now more difficult, especially with front-wheel-drive cars which, as you know, form the majority of modern cars unless you go to neighbourhoods with BMWs and Mercedes. The gutter and carriageway crossfall from Mamari to Coutts now make it hard for these cars to get traction and on a wet day, wheelspins aren't uncommon.
   With the increased traffic to and from the Warehouse in Lyall Bay, this intersection has become far busier and wheelspins, while a motorist is trying to join the main road, are potentially dangerous.
   It’s another thing you would not have known without living here: with the greater number of SUVs and minivans, it is not always easy to see out of Mamari Street. We often have to come out into Coutts more than we safely should to see what is approaching from the southern end. A motorist coming out of Mamari Street risks getting T-boned as some drivers from Coutts coming from the northwestern side are not always prepared to slow down for the pedestrian crossing or for motorists exiting from the smaller street—sadly, we New Zealanders can be mean-spirited drivers. But to avoid wheelspins motorists may have to come out into the crossfall or risk the front wheels going back into the gutter.
   Fourthly—and this is one that maybe affects me and one other neighbour more than other residents—the verge from Mamari Street to Coutts Street is at a more severe angle than I would like even though it is probably within your guidelines as being acceptable. My car is not a low car, but one neighbour has a Corolla with a spoiler. Even on mine I hear the tiny front spoiler (it is not a large boy-racer one, but a simple plastic air dam) scrape as I exit Mamari Street and enter the Coutts Street carriageway. I hate to think what it would do to her car which does have a larger, after-market front spoiler.
   If it was just one issue I’d have been happy to put up and shut up, but faced with several potential hazards, especially the ones that are now becoming apparent with the rain, I hope you can look into this.
   I am not sure what the best solution is, but the faux brick paving of Salek Street may be a solution for Mamari Street if the aim is to slow entering motorists. Whatever the case, I believe the entrance to the street should resemble that of a street, rather than a driveway, for safety reasons, even if I personally like the idea of living on a secluded, private-looking street.

Very truly yours,

Jack Yan
13 Mamari Street
(04) ***-****

cc for Councillor Leonie Gill, Eastern Ward

   As I pasted this in, I thought: in the old days you might back this up with a letter to the editor of a local newspaper, or send it to someone higher up than the person you were addressing it to, to get extra attention. Now we just turn them into open letters and stick them on our blogs. Power to the people?

[Cross-posted] Sometimes I surprise myself on what comes up in blog comments. In a thread about the Iraq war and the short memories of nations over on Vox, I wrote the following. And as I wrote, I believed this to be a possible truth.

To go forth in the future we need to discover our past, a hard thing in an age of short memories as you say. … Leadership might not come from size but from those nations that have steadfastly refused to give in to the prevailing decline in so many places. Switzerland, for all its refusal to join the EU, has managed to maintain one of the greatest gun ownership rates in the world yet not have a single gun-related murder attributable to its own in most years; Singapore, retaining its Confucian philosophies, manages a city-state with limited natural resources.
   Their example needs to be communicated to the world, as well as the positive aspects of certain parts of the US or China—they exist, but they are hidden.
   This is one reason to like blogs because they can cut through the shield of the MSM and government propaganda. I do not think that we have reached any critical mass among netizens, networking citizens together in a form of moral leadership. … [T]here are pockets of good people everywhere as you and I have witnessed, just that we are not necessarily visible.
   But that critical mass can come—and if warfare now is at a terrorist, guerrilla level in so many places, I suspect moral leadership itself will come from a grass-roots base.
   The system needs idealists like us, reminding people of their short memories, and maybe change will be effected not through top–down governmental, propagandist methods or the MSM, but through one-on-few communications from each of us.
   I would rather hope that the next superpower, therefore, is not a nation or even an ideology, but a collective of humankind cutting through the BS and revealing the truth. Who says the ’net cannot be a force for good once more? If it can propagate hate and porn, it can just as easily propagate hope and truth.

   I get reminded of this every now and then by others who feel the same way: Chris, at the Edutainment & Convergence blog, wrote to me privately and inspired me. And when I think back to books like Beyond Branding and Typography & Branding, I think there was a great deal of post-9-11 optimism and the desire to build a better, more understanding world. I find passages of my Typography & Branding inspiring, if an author is allowed to be inspired by his own work, and I can’t have been this cynical back then.
   It’s a good zone to be in and I haven’t felt this hopeful about the potential of the ’net in about a year.
   Last year, I was bemoaning the decline of the blogosphere as it began looking more and more like the darker parts of society, with gossipmongers and rude, anonymous commenters finding their way on to it. Where were, I asked, the globally minded idealists of the 1990s?
   On the other hand, their entry into this world surely puts them closer to the hands of the idealists who can now shape agenda, creating more hopeful sites and messages.
   And maybe channelling or finding the above message from my subconscious helped me put things into perspective more. If indeed the state nation is less relevant and change is better effected by people helping people directly, because technology has now made that possible, then the moral vacuum caused by various changes in society can be filled.
   All it needs are willing participants prepared to get together to make the world a better place, regardless of their political, cultural or religious stripes.
   That’s really why I got into media.
   If we agree on this target, then the rest must follow.

I say that my work at JY&A Consulting is developing plain-English strategies for our clients. So, I thought I’d give the Iraq war a shot and write my recollections in summary form. The Saddam Hussein voice should be read in a South Park style. Steve Bridges plays George W. Bush, with Rory Bremner as Tony Blair. Special guest appearance by Rupert Murdoch.

Saddam Hussein: I gotta gas those Kurds. Let’s let off some WMDs. Where did I put that invitation to those terrorists?
Saddam’s sons-in-law: Saddam has WMDs. A lot of them.
UN: Under the ceasefire, you can’t have them. We’re sending inspectors in.
Inspectors: We found some but there’s more based on what he had before, and we can’t figure out where they are.
UN: Say, Saddam, you need to tell us where some of this stuff has gone to.
Saddam Hussein: Here’s a big-ass report. Chew on that.
UN: Dude, this isn’t complete. In fact, it looks like you have pulled it out of your ass.

Security Council president: Let’s have a vote on a resolution. Who says that we should punish Saddam Hussein if he doesn’t front up on info about his potential for WMDs, where he’s disposed of some of the ones the inspectors can’t find any more, and sort out the money he owes Kuwait?
Security Council members: Yes, we should!
Security Council president: Cool, 15 to 0. Wow, that’s better than that time Saddam invaded Kuwait.

UN: Well, Saddam, here’s resolution 1441. You’ll be in serious trouble if you don’t comply.
Saddam Hussein: Hey, don’t worry about it.

Iraqi ambassador to UN: Here’s the new report.
UN: This is just as stupid as the earlier stuff you handed in. Didn’t you read the questions?
Iraqi ambassador to UN: Yeah, but what are you going to do? Dumbasses.

USA: Right, that means we have to punish this guy under resolution 1441.
France: You need to get one more resolution for military action before you do that.
USA: And if we do, what will do you?
France: We’d veto it.
USA: Basically you are saying that no matter what resolution the international community has voted on, you don’t think we should enforce it?
France: In a word, no. But it’s because of the UN Charter that we have to all agree on military action before we do anything.
USA: Screw you, peacenik.
France: Screw you, warmonger.

George W. Bush: Tony, the French are being assholes. If we don’t enforce this, we’ll look dumb, the UN will look impotent, and Saddam Hussein could continue building up an arsenal. Whatever the case, we don’t know what that smug sonofabitch is doing.
Tony Blair: I agree, George. We either enforce the law, or we say that laws don’t matter. I couldn’t run a country like that.
Gordon Brown: I don’t know if he can run a country. I would do a better job and I have the same initials as the American guy.
John Howard: Count me in.
Jacques Chirac: I hate Americans. But I did meet that Saddam in 1975. Nice guy. We had dinner together.
Jiang Zemin: I like Americans. When they are at war, their economy will be in trouble and they will have to buy more stuff from us!

George W. Bush: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Congress, we have to go to war to enforce international law. Who’s with me?
Majority of Congress: We are.
Minority of Congress: We like French food.

Saddam Hussein: Looks like I’m f***ed. Get me Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Information Minister!
France: Told you so, the Americans are warmongers.
Liberal media: Don’t worry, we’ll do what we can with slanted reporting to make the troops feel bad. And we’ll give that Information Minister dude a lot of air time.
Rupert Murdoch: Not on my watch. I can set Bill O’Reilly on you.

   Now, I know I have missed out some facts to get it into summary format, and the Commander-in-Chief has been edited for fluency, but consider how long the last post was!

[Cross-posted] This has been official for a while (or so I think—not that I ever heard what the Electoral Commission thought, but I did see it on its website). However, I wanted the party to approve the news first before sharing it with you all. The following is the overseas release which was rewritten from the one sent to domestic newsmedia. One that includes a mention of the Bush–Cheney campaign of 2004 was sent to US media.

JY&A Consulting revamps logo for New Zealand’s Alliance Party

Wellington, May 9 (JY&A Media) New Zealand political party, the Alliance, is looking more modern and relevant, thanks to its new logo by JY&A Consulting (http://jya.net/consulting).
   Devised by JY&A Consulting’s Jack Yan, the new logo signifies a new beginning for the democratic socialist political party.
   Mr Yan says that he has been a keen observer of general elections in the UK, US and New Zealand since the 1980s and that played a part in his team’s design.
   He says the Conservatives in 1983, Labour in the UK in 1997 and 2002 and Labour in New Zealand in 1999 and 2003 had certain commonalties in their campaigns, centring around typography.
   He also said that in those years, the party’s name was important, not the symbol—hence the traditional Labour rose was not present on that party’s election materials in 1997 and 2002.
   By abandoning the old A symbol of the Alliance and concentrating on the word, Mr Yan says that the party looks more professional and ready.
   The Alliance has contested every General Election in New Zealand since 1993. However, due to party changes it is trying to rebuild itself for the country’s General Election later this year.
   ‘We have two major parties in New Zealand that vote pretty much the same on all issues,’ says Mr Yan, ‘and minor parties that get ignored because of a lack of visibility. I wanted to change that. Why should minor parties be laboured with second-rate brands?’
   The logo is based around the Frutiger typeface and its lettering is predominantly in red, with a red dot over the i in Alliance to signify its environmental awareness.
   He says the letter i also shows the humanizing aspect of the party.
   ‘As a piece of design I think it looks more cohesive than the committee-led logos of National and Labour,’ he says, criticizing the major two parties in New Zealand.
   ‘I was given a lot of freedom, which is a good sign of how the party leadership handles matters. It clearly believes in trusting the right people.’
   As well as heading JY&A Consulting’s parent, Jack Yan & Associates, Mr Yan co-wrote Beyond Branding in 2003 and is a director of the Medinge Group, a branding think-tank based in Sweden.
   In October 2007 he was a keynote speaker for the Alliance Party at its annual conference.

Samantha Powell (Miss Universe New Zealand 2008), Rebecca Connor (Miss Wellington), Rhonda Grant (second runner-up, Miss Universe New Zealand 2008), Kylie Anderson (second runner-up, Miss Universe New Zealand 2006).

Why is it that they stem from Christchurch? Are there more anti-pageant types down there?
   Last year, The Press ran a piece on how Laural Barrett, the winner of Miss New Zealand 2007, had allegedly stolen shoes along with her sister, when anyone reading between the lines of journalistic double-talk could tell the writer had used enough ‘seems’ and ‘allegedly’ in an ill-researched story based on a leaked rumour. It would have been fitting on a gossip blog, not a metropolitan newspaper.
   But hey, it sells newspapers in a land where tabloids can successfully masquerade as broadsheets. I had to go on the warpath that time and accuse Fairfax of tall-poppy syndrome with unpatriotic journalists appeasing foreign owners. However you looked at it, that Press story was poor, poor journalism, which only fed blogs, rumours and envious teenage girls.
   Now we had that liberal professor down at the University of Canterbury attacking 2008 second runner-up Rhonda Grant for being good-looking and effectively sending a message that her degree is valueless and that she should not be fêted for her success. Shame.
   I’m just glad that Samantha Powell has managed to steer clear of controversy this year, but then, she didn’t go to university—which obviously means that she escaped the liberal pen of an American Studies professor.
   But given that beauty pageant winners’ academic successes should not be celebrated according to the Association of University Staff—since the release was sent under its banner then I take it to be policy—it’s just as well Sam received on-the-job vocational training rather than have a worthless degree from a New Zealand tertiary institution.
   I sure hope I never joined the Association unwittingly when I was a lecturer, since I cannot agree with its position.
   I believe in individual excellence, working hard and being treated fairly.
   Unless Assoc Prof Maureen Montgomery’s aim was to send out a nothing story—when I first read it I had no idea anyone cared and nearly advised Val Lott, pageant director, to ignore it, and a contact at a TV network actually agreed with me—and see how trivialities can propagate in the New Zealand media.
   Because that made a fascinating study. I held off sending out a release till the morning because I had no idea anyone—from Paul Holmes on the wireless to TV1’s Close-up—would be interested.
   All Dr Montgomery needed was a willing conspirator in the form of the New Zealand Press Association, with the weight of the Association of University Staff behind her, and the publication of the wire story by The New Zealand Herald.
   From there, the story suddenly had legitimacy, even if I think the Irish-owned Herald should have sought comment from the pageant or Massey University side before publication of a clearly biased article.
   Perhaps Dr Montgomery’s Irish roots and the Herald’s part-Irish ownership just went hand in hand and there’s some unwritten rule to help your own inside the newspaper.
   I shall send my future releases to the Herald under the name O’Malley.
   If this was a study of the lowering of media standards and their (and the public’s) obsession with trivia, then I actually applaud Dr Montgomery, with a standing ovation.
   Being London-born, Dr Montgomery will have seen the lowering of standards in her lifetime before she left Thatcher’s Britain (she said ‘escaped’, which shows her thoughts on Thatcherism) with the Australian takeovers of two tabloids and The Times. And, perhaps out of interest, this was an experiment to see how far these tendencies went in New Zealand, a protest against the technocratic injustice that has been emerging over the last quarter-century—again something she has witnessed after her arrival here.
   I don’t know. If that were her aim then I thought it rather cruel to target a young woman who has never done anything against her.
   But as I said, there was a part of me that enjoyed it because it was darned good profile for the pageant and for Rhonda.
   Rhonda spoke well on TV for someone with no media training, and I think she did better on the live interview with Mark Sainsbury on Close-up than the recorded piece with John Campbell on Campbell Live.
   The other good thing was that Rhonda was one of two contestants who identifies with the Christian faith, which allowed her to put this into perspective of a greater plan.
   I shall be interested to see what happens next—or possibly next year. Will Christchurch go for the hat-trick?

My memory says that Life on Mars is about a chap called Sam Tyler, who wonders if he’s in a coma, mad, or back in time. Not Annie Cartwright. But from the National Post in Canada, I read:

Rachelle Lefevre is having a very good year. The red-haired actress gets to be featured on David E. Kelley’s Boston Legal for a three-episode arc in the next few weeks. She’s preparing for good news soon regarding Kelley’s Life On Mars pilot, written by Kelley especially for Lefevre who plays a time-travelling detective.

   Wow, written ‘especially’ for her—so is the American Life on Mars a bit more like Ashes to Ashes with a female time traveller?
   Doesn’t sound right if it is an adaptation of the British original. However, I think Ms Lefevre looks great, and I ain’t complainin’.

080422 Dominion Post p 1 on Hillary Clinton

A lot of people call George W. Bush a dumbass, because they say he is ignorant about foreign policy and the names of leaders.
   Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton says she is smart and experienced, even if she has memory and “misspeaking” problems caused by sleep deprivation.
   Here’s the latest one that made the front page here in Wellington, New Zealand, in the Australian-owned Dominion Post newspaper. Sen. Clinton called Helen Clark the ‘former prime minister of New Zealand’ even though she’s still in office.
   If she gets in, Americans are still going to get comments about a dumbass, ignorant president from us. So much for restoring America’s international prestige—when she makes mistakes like this.
   No doubt it was caused by sleep deprivation again.
   If you can read the article, the latest Clinton “misstatement” managed to remind the New Zealand press about her gaffe that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, something later revealed to be complete fiction. The Bosnian sniper-fire incident is also in there.
   She’ll say anything, it seems—and in my book, that’s not presidential. The anti-Bush types say that if the world could have voted a US president, he would not have got in. It seems that if New Zealanders could vote in anyone into the White House from here, Hillary Clinton doesn’t look like our pick.

Harry Mount’s column in The Daily Telegraph was a great laugh:

I once saw [Heather Mills] walking down Fifth Avenue in New York and was staggered by the height of her cheekbones and the depth of the groove beneath them.
   But when she opens her mouth—and keeps it open for 11 minutes, as she did outside the High Court—the spell is broken. You forget the cheekbones and drown in the ocean of self-pity pouring out of that pretty mouth.
   During the French state visit, clever Carla Bruni rarely broke the spell by talking. She realised, like the old pro supermodel she is, that all she has to do is look good and say nothing. …
   The real difference between them, though, is in what they say—or don’t say. The answer for Heather Mills in future is to do what John Galliano did with Carla Bruni's cinched Dior outfit—belt up.

   Thinking that was all that Mr Mount had to offer, I was pleasantly surprised by the final segment in his column:

A new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry claims that mobile phone addiction is a mental illness.
   I’m afraid the illness is incurable; it’s related to an addiction that's been around for ever—the addiction to self.
   People aren’t addicted to the phones themselves. They’re addicted to the attention they get from other people via their phones. Obsessive phoners send texts purely in the hope that they’ll get one back. They don’t ring people from the train to find anything out; only to get other people to listen to them saying nothing of any importance. Why is it that the person on the train is always doing the talking, and never the listening?

   I knew there was a reason I didn’t use cellphones.

From France 2, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy got a much better reception in the UK than in France. A nice summary of the very packed two days for the Sarkozys, with an emphasis on the First Lady. The kiss in the segment is a nice, romantic finalé to the piece.