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June 03, 2004

Aaron's Rules of Media Evidence

The best part of blogging is just taking something someone else wrote and posting it. You get traffic and praise, and yet you did absolutely no work whatsoever in creating the post.

Aaron affords me an opportunity to cut and paste my way to a book deal:

Media Rules of Evidence

Rule 401: Relevance Defined

All evidence that President Bush is an idiot, incompetent, corrupt, a religious zealot, favoring the rich, or leading the worst economy in the history of the world is relevant, no matter the news story you're ostensibly reporting on. Evidence contradicting such a worldview is irrelevant for all purposes.

Rule 402: Relevant evidence admissible and to be beaten to death

(1) Unless otherwise provided for in these Rules or in the personal agenda of your editor-in-chief, all relevant evidence is admissible, no matter what the news story.

(2) Irrelevant evidence is to be ignored, and if mentioned by lunatic right-wing conspiracy theorists who think that sarin in Iraq is evidence of sarin in Iraq, that irrelevant evidence shall be admissible as evidence of the lunacy of those same right-wing conspiracy theorists.

Rule 403: Relevant evidence admissible in spite of unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, or later contradiction

The possibility of unfair prejudice or confusion of issues shall have no impact on the relevance of the evidence, or on the admissibility of same. Later contradiction of relevant evidence, even if well-documented and incontrovetible, is to be rigorously ignored as irrelevant.

Rule 404: Evidence of prior crimes relevant when they refer to Republicans, irrelevant when the refer to Democrats

(a)(1) All evidence of prior crimes, bad acts, mistakes, changes of opinion, bad haircuts, humiliating moments, gaffes, or stuff that people just made up is both relevant and admissible against Republicans, under all circumstances, no matter how dubious the reliability or probative value of that evidence.

(2) All evidence of prior crimes, bad acts, mistakes, changes of opinion, bad haircuts, falling off of snowboards or bicycles, war crimes, letting girls drown while contemplating future political career, membership in the Ku Klux Klan, accusing Latinos of being racist white men, lying to Congress under oath, or general douchebaggery is neither relevant nor admissible as against Democrats, although the same shall be admissible in all cases against the right-wing fanatics to demonstrate their fanaticism and fascism.

Rule 405: Reputation and Character evidence

Evidence of reputation in the community shall be inadmissible as against Democrats, because the ghastly poor can't reasonably be expected to come into contact with John Kerry enough to really understand his depth and nuance anyway. All evidence of reputation or character, when it tends to demonstrate ordinary human weaknesses or mistakes, shall be admissible against Republicans, and shall be conclusive proof that they are, in fact, worse than Hitler.

....

I'd just add Rule 408, the so-called "Rape Shield Rule," stating that Evidence of a Prior Rape Shall Not Admissible Against Bill Clinton, and Rule 408 (b), which states, when it comes to Democratic scandal, it's always high time to "move on."

posted by Ace at 05:47 PM

Comments

WOO HOO! This is as cool as having my own blog!

Posted by: Aaron on June 3, 2004 05:50 PM

Don't be disheartened by the traitorous,liberally-biased reporting. All the BS from the pompous troika of Rather, Jennings, and Brokaw cannot stop the truth from getting out, thanks to you and your fellow soldier-bloggers, Drudge, the eloquent Fadhil brothers at Iraq The Model, and all the other voices that (GASP!) disagree with all those liberal elitist dinosaurs. If I hear one more "expert" declare Iraq to be a quagmire just like Vietnam, I may throw something at the TV. All the hand-wringing over Fallujah ignores the 8000 or so Iraqi towns of similar size that are NOT, repeat NOT warzones. All the public agonizing over body counts ignores the fact that Marines have more stomach for the fight than some grandstanding beltway blowhards I could mention. Al-Sadr's thousands-strong militia is now hundreds-strong, thanks to the leatherneck meat grinder (SEMPER FI!) Can you verify a rumor I've heard that some of the Fallujah Shi'ites are sniping at the al-sadrite thugs.? Hmm, what's Arabic for posse.....?
Liberal media outlets seem to be oblivious to their potential extinction. You can take heart from the way a lot of people are no longer buying what the leftist wing-nuts are selling. I remember one story in the LA Times that was so blatantly biased that outraged subscribers filed so many online cancellations, the Times' website crashed. And yet they insist they are not biased. CNN has lost about half its audience, network news audiences steadily shrink, and yet they insist they are not biased. Just yesterday I heard a speech from Mike Wallace that was breathtakingly slanted. If I was in the room with this asshole, 80-year-old or not, I'd punch his lights out or start screaming at him. His head is still so far up his ass about Vietnam, the speech ignored the mass graves, the Iraqis' gratitude at Saddam's overthrow, the WMD production labs waiting to be cranked up, AND the Al-Qeada connections turning up in Saddam's OWN DOCUMENTS!
For every treasonous jerk like Rangel, who seems to think you and every other soldier is a Mai Lai waiting to happen, I can find a dozen stories of stateside support groups popping up like mushrooms; Adopt A Soldier, Freedom Alliance, the list grows daily. For every flag-burning useful idiot, there are dozens of stories of charity from soldiers and civilians alike; drives for school supplies, medical care, the list grows daily. The tale of ten or so Iraqis who got prosthetic hands donated to them is but the tip of the iceberg, but this one story is more than a match for a dozen Michael Moore rants.
Whatever you hear, never forget you helped put down a regime that may have killed more Muslims than all the Crusades combined. Whatever you see on TV, never forget that you helped bring down a tyrant who may be personally worse than Hitler (at least that butcher didn't turn Dachau into home movie material). Democracy may not succeed in Iraq, but it has a chance now that it did not have before
you and all the others went into harm's way. The new Iraqi president gave an opening speech that started with a thank you to the coalition troops who liberated his country (But what does he know, he's not Dan Rather). I don't know how this will all turn out, but so long as Iraqis can speak their mind without fearing for their tongues or their families, it will have been worth the effort. Thanks to you, al-qaeda has lost a business partner, and millions can now look forward to being more than just another blindfolded skull in a mass grave.
Thank You
Come back in one piece
Chris Smith

Posted by: Chris on June 3, 2004 06:19 PM

Note: I think these Rules are a lot more funny if you've read the Federal Rules of Evidence. Maybe I should do a parody of something more well-known.

Posted by: Aaron on June 3, 2004 07:12 PM

First Ditto Chris and that may be the best comment ever posted.

Second: The VRWC can lose this propaganda war by assuming that everyone can see through the spin and not countering it actively in the wider media.

Posted by: Jane on June 4, 2004 08:55 AM

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What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]

TJM acts like he knows anything about John Wick and screenwriting. It's embarrassing, really.

Podcast: Sefton and CBD talk about how would a peace treaty with Iran work, Democrats defending murderers and rapists, The GOP vs. Dem bench for 2028, composting bodies? And more!

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Batman fires The Batman
Batman is disgusted by the Joachim Phoenix version of Joker
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Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Red Leather Suit and Sweatband Edition
And I was here to please
I'm even on knees
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Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

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[Hat Tip: Diogenes] [CBD]

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Forgotten 80s Mystery Click
One day I'm gonna write a poem in a letter
One day I'm gonna get that faculty together
Remember that everybody has to wait in line
Oh, [Song Title], look out world, oh, you know I've got mine

US decimation of Iran's ICBM forces is due to Space Force's instant detection of launches -- and the launchers' hiding places -- and rapid counter-attack via missiles
AI is doing a lot of the work in analyzing images to find the exact hiding place of the launchers. Counter-strikes are now coming in four hours after a launch, whereas previously it might have taken days for humans to go over the imagery and data.

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“robert mueller just died,” trump wrote in a truth social post on march 21. “good, i’m glad he’s dead. he can no longer hurt innocent people! president donald j. trump.”

TJM has thoughts on Superheros and Iconography

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