Tag Archives | Media Circus

Bath Salts Confessional

Photo: sburke2478 (CC)

Natasha Vargas-Cooper reaches deep into “the heart America’s new drug nightmare” (which is, ahem, bath salts), for SPIN:

COLUMBUS, OH— On an unseasonably hot and muggy May afternoon, a squad of armed agents from the Franklin County Drug Task Force — some wearing street clothes, some wearing menacing ski masks — swarms into a storefront aptly named the Joint. Sandwiched between a liquor store and a sex shop, and adjacent to the Ohio State University campus, the Joint is one of 18 different head shops, gas stations, carryout restaurants, and mini-marts being searched this day by seven task force teams consisting of several dozen officers from numerous local police departments and prosecutors’ offices, all spearheaded by the County Sheriff here in the state capital.

Make no mistake: This is no ordinary pot bust. The raids are part of the ongoing Operation Synthetic Drugs, a highly coordinated and choreographed sweep through central Ohio.

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New LSD: A Far Out Menace! (Video)

Despite the fact that it looks like the “miami zombie” may not have even been on bath salts, that still hasn’t stopped the rash of “zombie attack” news stories, nor has it even lessened the attacks of the zombies themselves. From the creators of Gonzomentary, this video is a Public Service Announcement developed to help prepare the youth for the New LSDs that are presently in circulation.

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Chris Hayes: Glamorizing and Justifying War with the Term ‘Hero’

Decoration DayVia Alternet:

It’s sure to be a little bit controversial but it’s an extremely salient point: Chris Hayes, when discussing the meaning of Memorial Day, admitted that he feels “uncomfortable” calling deceased soldiers heroes. Not because they’re not heroes, but because the term lionizes and glamorizes war. Hayes discussed how he feels “uncomfortable” with the term:

I feel … uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism, you know, hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers, and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.

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George Zimmerman Faces Second Degree Murder Charge

George Zimmerman

Breaking news via Fox News Latino:

Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey will announce Wednesday that she is charging George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, according to multiple reports.

Corey will hold a press conference on the case at 6:00pm ET in Jacksonville, Fla., to announce that Zimmerman is in custody and will face second-degree murder charges, an official told the Associated Press. (You can watch the presser live on Fox News Latino)

The Washington Post first reported that Corey would bring charges.

Corey announced earlier this week that she was not convening a grand jury in the case, meaning the decision on whether to charge Zimmerman was hers alone.

Without a grand jury indictment, Corey could not pursue a first-degree murder charge. She could have gone forward with second-degree murder or manslaughter charges…

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‘Pink Slime’ Manufacturer Files For Bankruptcy

Pink Slime In Ground BeefReports Phil Milford and Shruti Date Singh on Bloomberg:

AFA Foods, a ground-beef processor owned by Yucaipa Cos., sought bankruptcy court protection with a plan to sell some assets after media coverage of “pink slime” cut demand for its products. The company, based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, listed assets of $219 million and debt of $197 million in Chapter 11 papers filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware.

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is among food activists who have criticized the use of what they dubbed “pink slime,” a filler produced by treating finely ground beef scraps with ammonia hydroxide to kill pathogens. Beef Products Inc. last week temporarily suspended production at three plants because of consumer concerns. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said March 28 that the product, referred to in the industry as lean, finely textured beef, is safe to eat…

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The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs [Mike Daisey]: His Reaction To Critics

Mike DaiseyVia Mike Daisey’s blog for audio and transcript on The Atlantic :

Last night, at a long-scheduled appearance at Georgetown University, Mike Daisey gave his first public talk since the news broke last Friday that This American Life was retracting the now-infamous episode featuring his work. Daisey is a complicated and conflicted figure, and, it’s hard not to feel complicated and conflicted about him and about his work. His talk last night, which I’ve transcribed below as best I could, provides a new dimension to the story that is now at the center of a scandal.

This is my first scandal. (Laughter)

I haven’t had another one like it.

And, as they say, if you’re going to go, go big.

And so, I was on the train down here today, and I was keenly aware that I was coming down to talk about “Art and the Human Voice in the Global Labor Struggle,” and I was keenly aware of the situation that I have been embroiled in, that I embroiled myself in …

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Rush Limbaugh: Fascist or Mentally Ill?

Rush LimbaughOr both?  Paul Rosenberg writes at Al Jazeera English:

Rush Limbaugh’s recent meltdown – his three-day sex-crazed rant/attack against Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, whose congressional testimony made no mention of her own sex life — has a rich and strange collection of backstories to it, none of which include the sort of follow-on this story has had, complete with pseudo-apologies and the subsequent, ongoing loss of sponsors, which might even conceivably damage or imperil his career.

Of those backstories, his own shady past as a pill-popping sex tourist is only the most lurid, not the most instructive. That only goes to underscore what’s already self-evident: that Limbaugh’s diatribes are heavily implicated in what psychologists call “projection” and the rest of know as “the pot calling the kettle black”. Much more instructive, to get things headed in a more fruitful direction, is Limbaugh’s long history of similar sorts of vindictive, name-calling attacks.  Media Matters has provided several illustrative lists, such as  “Rush Limbaugh’s Decades Of Sexism And Misogyny“, “The 20 Worst Racial Attacks Limbaugh’s Advertisers Have Sponsored“,  “Ten Of Limbaugh’s Worst Advertiser-Sponsored Attacks On The Poor” , “Limbaugh’s Advertisers Sponsored These Ten Attacks On Unions” – and a more all-purpose list — ”15 Of The Worst Comments Limbaugh’s Advertisers Have Sponsored Since 2004“.  These collections served to illustrate how continually Limbaugh resorts to similarly themed name-calling, thus reinforcing the point Media Matters made early on, that Limbaugh hadn’t just used a couple of “poorly chosen words” to describe Fluke, he had engaged in three days of prolonged haranguing including 46 separate attacks

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Joe Arpaio, Prominent Sheriff, Unveils Results Of Investigation Into Obama Birth Certificate

Sheriff Joe ArpaioMore proof of the old adages that “no publicity is bad publicity” and “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence”.  Writes Jacques Billeaud at the Huffington Post.

America’s self-proclaimed toughest sheriff finds himself entangled these days in his own thorny legal troubles: a federal grand jury probe over alleged abuse of power, Justice Department accusations of racial profiling and revelations that his department didn’t adequately investigate hundreds of Arizona sex-crime cases.

Rather than seek cover, though, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is seeking to grab the spotlight in the same unorthodox fashion that has helped boost his career as a nationally known lawman.

Arpaio on Thursday unveiled preliminary results of an investigation, conducted by members of his volunteer cold-case posse, into the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, a controversy that has been widely debunked but which remains alive in the eyes of some conservatives. At a news conference, Arpaio said the probe revealed that there was probable cause to believe Obama’s long-form birth certificate released by the White House in April is a computer-generated forgery …

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No More Taco Bell Until Abortion Ends (Video)

Site editor’s note: if you have been following this political/internet/media explosion you may find this recent story posted to disinfo.com in December as an interesting footnote to the outcome.

These people will enjoy no more burritos until unborn babies are no longer terminated. Until Abortion Ends is a perplexing and to some extent inadvertently amusing trend in which people pledge to give up various things “until abortion ends”. (Although I assume they actually mean “until abortion becomes criminalized”.)

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Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin Mauled In New Tell-All Book

Sarah Palin / Glen RiceLarry McShane reports in the NY Daily News:

Sarah Palin bedding a budding NBA star, snorting coke and cheating on the First Dude? You betcha — or so claims a new deep-dish book on the former Alaska gov.

The scandalous details are revealed in the highly-anticipated tell-all The Rogue: Searching for The Real Sarah Palin,” written by best-selling author Joe McGinniss.

Palin bedded future pro hoops player Glen Rice while he was playing at the University of Michigan, the National Enquirer reports about the McGinniss book.

The sharp-shooting Rice — who spent one season with the Knicks — was playing in the annual “Great Alaska Shootout” while Palin was a sports reporter with Anchorage television station KTUU, the Enquirer said.

Their one-night stand over Thanksgiving weekend 1987 reportedly occurred in the dorm room of Palin’s kid sister at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Palin was described by a friend as the aggressor, with the pal reporting “she hauled his ass down,” the Enquirer said.

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