Strategic media placement at its finest

In media-buying lingo it's called "roadblocking", and it doesn't get much better than this:

" Barack Obama will focus on the economy and how his tax plans would help the middle class in a half-hour political infomercial Wednesday night."

"The program will air at 8 p.m. EDT on NBC, CBS, Fox, Univision, BET, MSNBC and TV One, and at various times in other time zones. Obama is scheduled to be speaking during that time at a rally in Florida."

The scheduling on several stations simultaneously effectively "blocks" the time period in the eastern time zone. Then there's the positioning -- the infomercial is scheduled to run just before the last 3 innings of rained-out Game 5 of the World Series (pushed back to accomodate the infomercial scheduling). Which is even better when you consider who's playing -- the Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays. Meaning fans in Florida and Pennsylvania, two extremely important swing states, will catch Obama's closing comments when they tune in.

In advertising that's called "hitting one out of the park".

Residential school gravesites: Why the MSM silence?

A couple of weeks ago the horrific news that 3 children were murdered in Merritt BC was the object of frenzied media attention. While the suspect ran, the MSM clung onto the story with pitbullish tenacity, exhausting every detail from the background of the family, to the manhunt, to the private citizen who finally brought the suspect in. The story captured widespread attention and why not? It was unthinkable, that innocents would be viciously cut down in childhood. And yet...

Just a short hop up the road from Merritt, Kamloops is the site of another story of innocent children murdered, not in the heat of some psychotic passion, but systematically and in far greater numbers. Children that just disappeared from residential schools into the anonymous earth. From the list of residential school mass graves published by stageleft last week:

And Kamloops is just one of many such gravesites announced last week by First Nations representatives determined to investigate the list of mass graves of murdered aboriginal children that spans several towns and cities across the country.

Where is the media frenzy? Why is this story not on the front page of every newspaper in Canada, with our Fourth Estate doing their job and demanding answers?

Consider the repercussions of this story had the "disappeared" been WASPy little kids from Branksome Hall. Even if there was only the faintest shadow of suspicion that their gravesites might have been discovered, it would be headline news with the media howling for investigations. But for the graves of residential school victims? Silence.

Is there a conspiracy of media silence about the victims of residential schools? Why?

CBC, shine a light

on me..."Heh".

Sheeeeeee's back!

After being escorted by building security from her Brief Stint at Fox News (fired for "bizarre behaviour"), right wing columnist and batshit insane whackjob Rachel Marsden is back, now writing for Toronto litterbox liner the Sun. It's almost inspiring how Marsden proves time and again that even an unhinged lunatic can get fired from job after job for doing all manner of crazy-ass shit and still someone somewhere will give her another kick at the career can. It seems like the right just can't get enough o' that funky batshit crazy stuff. At first. Then they slowly back away horrified when they see just what they've wrought.

For an idea of how chock full o'nuts Marsden is, here's what the Western Standard's Snotgun, I mean Shitgun, I mean Shotgun Blog had to say about her Brief Stint (all her jobs are Brief Stints) at the NatPo 2 years ago:

"After eight weeks, the, um, controversial and, er, well, let's say ambitious, Rachel Marsden has "severed her relationship with the National Post." And I'm sure that's exactly how it went down. She spurned the Post the same way she spurned Liam Donnelly's advances. And Michael Morgan's. And Neil Boyd's.

Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that Marsden actually mysteriously stopped appearing in the national pages a few weeks ago (she remained in the Toronto section, which has different editors than the comment section). Then, on Friday came news of the resignation of publisher Les Pyette, who had long been rumoured to be the only guy at Don Mills headquarters who didn't think hiring Marsden was a really bad idea. Not to worry. If Marsden's track record is any indication, she'll be hosting her own national news show in no time."

Even the Western Standard, the nadir of conservative wingnuttery in Canada, thinks Marsden's bugfuck nuts. Res ipsa loquitor... that speaks for itself.

So now she's at the Sun, and oh, lookee here: she's written a column in defense of waterboarding, which she insists is just like competitive swim training. Huh?! This is typical grist for the Marsden mill -- with no real writing talent, she relies completely on controversy. Stupid controversy. Stupid, lowest-common-denominator controversy.

There was a time when I could just roll my eyes and laugh at such turditude, but you know what? This shit isn't funny anymore. Not when we have a government that clearly doesn't give a damn what 80% of Canadians think, that's made a unilateral decision to allow the outsourcing of capital punishment and put us on a slippery relativistic slope that ends in the Green Room. Because mouthpieces like Marsden tell us in soothing tones that torture is nothing more than a swim workout and capital punishment sends a good law and order message, Canadians are sleepwalking into authoritarianism. This abuse of media has to stop, and Marsden would be a good place to start. Write the Sun, write your MP, write the Sun's advertisers... make the bullshit stop.

A Creative Revolution has lots of linkies. So does Bastard.Logic. Go, write, scream, yell. This is where the bullshit stops.

(h/t canuck attitude)