Rational Crank

There is this episode of “All in the Family” where both Archie and Michael each tell their version of an event that had just occurred. It is quickly proven that Archie’s version of the story is a complete fabrication but then it is pointed out that Michael’s version is also wrong. Gloria says to Michael, “You’re as bad as my father.” At which point Archie bursts into laughter “Ha, hear that Meathead, you’re as bad as I am!” For those of you who are too young to know what “All in the Family” is (I hate you) the joke is this: Without knowing it, Archie just made fun of himself. The conservative news outlets are saying this oil spill is Barack Obama’s Katrina. What does this mean? Are conservatives saying Obama is handling this disaster as badly as President Bush handled Katrina? If that is the case, isn’t the conservative media admitting that it’s been lying by saying that the response to Katrina wasn’t George Bush’s fault; that contrary to what they have been saying, Bush actually DI...

The Michael Jackson media circus reminded me of something I thought of a while back. Remember the Anna Nicole Smith nonsense over here estate and custody of her children? Well in the wake of her death I created a formula called the Anna Nicole Smith Inverse News Quality Index (© Nick Farrantello 2009). I think it also fits for Jackson. It works like this – The amount of air time that a particular news program gives to such stories (like Anna Nicole or Jackson) is inversely equal to the quality of that particular news show's overall performance. Not just its performance in covering Anna or Jackson, its performance covering all news. If you are listening to a station that is devoting all it's time to Jackson then (when it comes to news) that station probably blows. If the station you’re listening to doesn’t give the Jackson story much air time then that station is a quality new outlet. I believe that this relationship between air time and how reliabile and accuracy a particular ...