I’m thinking of adding a new category of pop culture criticism … and this is going to take more caffeine. Pardon me for a second.
There. A hot tea on a cool day should do the trick. Don’t drink coffee. Never touched the stuff. My grandparents, who drank it like water, were convinced that if you gave a baby a tablespoon of coffee they’d never want it. Or so the story goes. Don’t know how old I was, or if this actually happened, but I don’t even care to go down the coffee aisle at the grocery store. I don’t even like the smell. So it is tea, for me, then.
Anyway. I’m thinking of adding a new category of pop culture criticism which is really just another opportunity for me to creep more steadily into the Get Off My Lawn subculture. In this, the neo-post-post modern age, I will call this category 21st Century Living, in that it is simultaneously obvious, conversant, ironic and has a whiff of both despair and angst, but not in a way that suggests I care that much, as I am already dismissive of the entire enterprise.
See? I’m not into the Get Off My Lawn subculture just yet. I understand things, I simply recognize the unworthiness of the general condition.
Take this commercial, for instance. Watch the first five seconds, over and over again, until you figure it out:
Or this CNN “package” where Anderson Cooper tries, really hard, to make some sort of wry observation by cunningly asking non-questions to a giggly reporter.
So I guess they don’t drug test at CNN? This is simply life imitating art. Consider Anchorman 2 (which, hysterically gives Ron Burgundy credit for the sad state of modern broadcast news):
About the commercial in the first video: Someone thought, “The stations that we are buying airtime, have stupid, stupid audiences. Someone will go try to build a time machine. We should stop that with some fine print, so as to ameliorate any potential culpability we have if some kid does invent the flux capacitor.”
And that’s 21st Century Living.
Things to read … because this stuff is worth your attention, no matter what century you’re in.
I collected a few of the reactions on an in-state “story” today. This is all about the headline.
Anytime you curate replies you are liable to get some colorful retort. And if you publish them you are just as likely to get someone accusing you of cherry picking. Doesn’t mean you use the most off-color one as a headline if you are aspiring to be the premiere news outlet in the state.
Todd Stacey is a staffer for U.S. Rep Martha Roby in Washington D.C. He previously worked in Montgomery, hence Chuck Dean’s “you guys” swat. But see what Dean did there? “Hey, it isn’t my fault. What’s more, if you don’t like what I wrote, go do something about it. But it is just a heads up, really.” This entire piece provides little to no public service, which is still the publicly stated goal for news outlets, but it could also do as much with a more appropriate headline.
AP’s Carvin: News Battle Near For Twitter, FB
Twitter and Facebook are setting themselves up for a battle for news supremacy among social media networks. Twitter, though, holds the upper hand, according to Eric Carvin, social media editor at the Associated Press. Twitter has “come to realize the value that the news industry has in terms of what people want to consume on social,” Carvin says. In an interview with NetNewsCheck, Carvin discusses potential news moves from those social platforms, along with the sleeper potential of Google Plus.
Half of U.S. Counties Haven’t Recovered From Recession
About half of the nation’s 3,069 county economies are still short of their prerecession economic output, reflecting the uneven economic recovery, according to a new report from the National Association of Counties.
The overall U.S. economy had reached its prerecession level of gross domestic product three years ago, Commerce Department figures show.
National statistics “mask the reality on the ground.”
There is an interactive map. How is your county faring?
If graduation rates is your metric of choice, this is good news: Alabama public schools set state record with 80 percent graduation rate in 2013. Or, even if you take the skeptical — “school was just made easier” — perspective, you at least have a new state record. This is using the on-time method.
Doesn’t 80 still seem low, though?
The individual school breakdowns aren’t out yet, apparently, but we can look at some recent numbers. Here are the superlatives for the state in the 2011-2012 year. Charles Henderson High listed a 58 percent graduation rate, the lowest in the state. Coffee County boasted a 94 percent.
Must be the caffeine they have down there.
