1 SHORTER PAT FIACCO Yeah, I’m Regina’s mayor. Who says I have to stay there? (Leader-Post)
2 BEHOLD, AMERICA’S REPUBLICAN PARTY Family-values politician? Check. Police stop? Check. Viagra in his system? Check. Stripper riding shotgun in his car? As if you had to ask. (PoliticusUSA)
3 AND IF YOU THINK TAYLOR FIELD’S IN BAD SHAPE A section of the roof of the home stadium for the Dutch Premier Division team FC Twente has collapsed and as of press time firefighters are trying to rescue people trapped in the stadium. (The Guardian)
4 NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT The former head of Canada Post drives Britain’s Royal Mail into insolvency and gets a hefty salary for her efforts. (Daily Mail)
5 TASS AND THE KGB BY ANY OTHER NAME Gawker has done some pretty outstanding journalism in discovering the reasons for the creation of the Fox News Network. Now, as William Randolph Hearst once said, the reason people get into journalism is that they have something to say. Well, in the case of Roger Ailes, what he wanted to say was “We worship our new Republican overlords, and screw the idea of a free press or a free society.” Meanwhile The Telegraph (here, here, and here), The Guardian, (here) The Globe and Mail, Associated Press (via Yahoo), Auntie Beeb, Slate, Hugh Grant (via HuffPo), Gawker, and almost everybody else in the journalism business weighs in on the Rupert Murdoch Gestapo. (What I like best is this Globe and Mail story saying that News International the News of the World’s owner, is asking people who were targeted for spying by NotW paparazzi for more information. THAT’S WHAT GOT YOU INTO FARKING TROUBLE IN THE FIRST PLACE!)
You have to read these stories because the elements of a free press are the elements of a free society – and the way Rupert Murdoch and his minions run their business, is antithetical to a free press or a free society (as this Telegraph columnist points out). A good place to put this in context is to read the post and the posters at Balloon Juice.
In this YouTube bit (yeah, I’ve posted it before, but it seems more pertinent today than ever) Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry imagine a world without Rupert Murdoch …
Hold it. Hugh Laurie works for Rupert Murdoch … isn’t House broadcast on Fox?
6 MORE INDICATIONS THAT IT’S NOT A VERY GOOD DAY FOR THE FOURTH ESTATE Dunno whether mixing up your headlines (Toronto Star) or reporting on a drunk man inside a funeral home seeking a threesome (Kingsport Times-News) is the strangest thing you’re going to read about today, but it’s a start.
YOUR MUSICAL MOMENT OF ZEN When Skid Roper and Mojo Nixon made their first appearance in Regina in 1987, I was totally blown away, Mojo can best be compared to Bruce Springsteen in a really, really bad mood. And aside from the laughs you can get out of one of his best songs, ‘Burn Down The Malls,’ his social commentary is pretty insightful and accurate. Mojo couldn’t have been more accurate about the America Ronald Regan bequeathed to the future had Mojo built a time machine out of the tractor cab of a Cockshutt 1850.
