The Big Takeaway: A new open world game from publisher Rockstar, with a moody 1940’s film noir bent.
The Little Takeaway: Linear to a fault, facial technology is great, but the bodies attached seem disassociated and polygonal in appearance. Disappointing final act.
Review:
Like the damaged dame that walks in to your private dick office, L.A. Noire has a lot of issues. The dame’s also got a pretty face, the more to lure you in to the shadows to see what she’s all twisted about. The MotionScan technology used in L.A. Noire is unprecedented in it’s fidelity and its really hard to go back to the games you’ve played before and not be a little crest fallen at the mannequin-esque quality of your typical videogame characters. But there’s little else to prop the game up. The street crimes are literal filler during cases, and break down to “chase down perp, shoot or tackle, cut scene, move on”. Which, when coupled with some the actions you do during the cases can lead to severe de ja vu.
The biggest knock against the game is it’s pacing. Which would’ve been better served with a shorter completion time. The game clocks in at about 20 hours, and in that time you’ve done and seen everything the game has to offer. More than once. If you attempt all the street crimes, you’ll do everything the game has to offer four or five times.
The big sale of L.A. Noire is the detective work and interrogations that make up the meat of the game. Like an old timey point-n-click adventure, you’ll wander around crime scenes and pick up odds and ends to gather clues that you’ll then use during the interrogation aspect of the various cases you take on. You’ll ask a victim or suspect a series of questions, they will answer and you’ll have to pick if they are telling the truth, doubt the information they say, or accuse them of lying where then you’ll have to produce the aforementioned evidence proving they’re lying. It takes a little time to discern the doubt/lie mechanic and sometimes you can miss key evidence that would lead you to accuse them of lying. The one downside of the interview mechanic is that most everyone can be doubted or accused of lying. It’s like telling the truth is a massive aversion. So much so that I was dumbfounded at finding a couple of characters were in fact telling me the truth, they were so few and far between.
The game is broken up by cases desks: Patrol, Traffic, Homicide and Arson. You’ll move through each desk in a linear fashion getting “promoted” to the next desk. Some of the desks have tiny story arcs in them that couple with the main arc of the story, if and when it decides to show up.
In between some cases and desks flashbacks of protagonist Cole Phelps’ time with the Marines in Okinawa. The flashbacks don’t really start making sense until around act three, but they do fill in gaps with some of the characters you run in during the game.
Cole Phelps, like many of his fellow Rockstar Games brethren, has a troubled past he’s trying to overcome, and you get to join in some of that during your time with him in L.A. Noire. Unlike his other brethren, the trouble in his past hardly ever interferes with the game, and since the game’s pacing takes so long to get to the payoff for all these flashbacks it doesn’t really help or hurt the game.
The game attempts to ape the “noir” film rules for most of narrative structure. Which is fine for first half of the game, but as the cases begin to leave the circle of lady killings and foul play it starts losing steam. There’s some loose connective tissue in the terms of throwaway cut scenes trying futility to tie the “noir” elements together for the “great fall” in the middle acts.
The game goes from episodic to full on narrative tilt pretty much halfway through the game. It goes from quaint to why even bother with the whole “noir” element. Then swoops in with the final “noir” flourish, delivering the emotion of futility in the narrative which is great for a movie but not so much for a game. Especially one that you’ve spent a couple of dozen hours with.
Now, Red Dead Redemption similarly pulled this kind of maneuver not so long ago, so it can be done properly and not cheat the player.
Reviewing this game is difficult, in terms of a tech demo, it’s terrific! Never before has facial fidelity been so great, and it taps in to that subconscious ability people have to recognize facial ticks and subtly of facial movement. However, as a game it falls so short of anything on the market. The proclamation that it’s a 90% accurate depiction of 1940’s Los Angeles is wasted on the linear styling’s of the game. It’s a great backdrop, but it’s lifeless and devoid of that spark that inhabits much of Rockstar’s open world games.
I never went in to L.A. Noire expecting a GTA type of open world with a myriad of things to do, but I did expect the world to pulse and move like a real city. The linearity of the story is one thing, but then to fill it with only street crime side quests and little else is truly a shame.
Final Verdict: A very good rental. Look forward to the use of the MotionScan technology in the future.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Real Honesty with your friend Tommy Felts
I was going to avoid writing anything on the death of Osama bin Laden. Mostly because no right wing yahoos would write an editorial giving me the fire to do so. Most of them were anti-climatic, downward gazing, slow clapping for Obama, just trying not to convey any emotion of gratitude for him. Denying him the ticker tape parades and instant need for a national holiday had W. done the same thing. For weeks, I’ve been left wanting a right leaning buffoon to decry Obama as not excited enough, lacking a “glint” in his eye, or riding in on a giant mutated bald eagle draped only in the American Flag, fireworks shooting out of his nipples, the founding fathers rising from their graves to join him in a rousing musical number celebrating the end of American‘s most wanted. Whatever fever dream that could be imagined just wouldn’t be sufficient to the needs, nay, demands of the right wing. Finally, my old friend Tommy Felts came to my rescue.
To say that I’m (still) not a fan of his award winning writing (yup, the Kansas Press Assoc. awarded him 1st place for column writing) is an understatement. So I’m not completely surprised that A) He’s not a fan of Obama. B) He thinks W. “began and doggedly pursued the fight against the terrorist leader”, showing he has that knack for revisionist current events. C) His practical reason for wanting Bush to capture bin Laden: the need to somehow not be labeled racist for the Obama/Osama name switch. Tommy, you live in the middle of Kansas, I’m highly doubtful anyone would call you a racist for the Osama/Obama slip. You’re also typing this out presumably on a computer, and you’re the managing editor of the paper, god help you if you don’t catch that before printing the paper!
First off the bat is the tired old trope of “Obama doesn’t care” argument. “…Obama was somber as he delivered the news. He didn’t smile. He didn’t seem happy. He delivered his lines and left.” Tommy, that’s called giving a speech. And when has Obama ever came off as a firebrand? Isn’t the main beef the right wing has with Obama is that he’s too stiff, professorial? He “talks down to people”, “lectures”….on and on (here I must try and stifle a yawn. It’s like, “Really? This again?). Tommy even tethers the Muslim connection “…particularly with the terribly volatile Muslim population whose friendship Obama has been courting” You mean the “friendship” with the Muslims that’s taken up about 5 or 6 past administrations Tommy? You’re afraid of being labeled a racist? Oh how about lumping all of Islam in to the terrorist wagon. Also, hyperbole much?
How Tommy Felts feels that announcing bin Laden is dead becomes political maneuvering reveals that the blinders are on for anyone representing the Democrat party, or moderate independents in general. Do families of murder victims publicly whoop and holler when the killer is executed? No, they don’t. It would be in poor taste. Sure, we would understand and sympathize with their relief, but it would seem callow. The death of bin Laden was going to be political capital for any president and their party. Period.
Tommy then goes on to confuse liberals for peace loving, tree hugging anti-war hippies. I think most people were fine with global war on terror, to a point. A lot of scared post 9/11 people weren’t reading the fine print, however. We wanted bin Laden and the Taliban done away with, but we didn’t sign up to pervert American citizens constitutional given rights. No one certainly wanted us to go in to Iraq, especially under curious speculation, and eventual bald faced lies, used as evidence to invade a country that had zero to do with 9/11. Also curious that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi’s, but again, Tommy doesn’t relate any of this. On top of unfunded, illegal invasion, we strip away human dignity from supposed “terrorists” by humiliating and torturing them in gray area (Gitmo, black site) prisons. Sentencing people in kangaroo courts without due process. Finally, illegal and warrant less wiretapping of our nation’s citizens. Liberals aren’t pushovers. We do believe in a pragmatic foreign policy, which was never on W.‘s table. He was too busy trying to be a cowboy on the world’s stage, and fight a ceaseless war. But let’s forget all that and focus on how much work W. put in to catching bin Laden.
Oh yea. Tommy I’m sure you’re old enough to remember in about 2006 when W. said he wasn’t really concerned with bin Laden and wasn’t actively looking for him. This about the time he closed the CIA operations force tasked with finding bin Laden, and stopped special forces from actively searching the mountainous area around the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. I’m pretty sure W. was never interested in catching bin Laden, and it’s pretty evident that was the case. The point was to start a bunch of warrant less conflicts and make a lot of money for the war profiteers. Of which most of the Bush administration were stockholders of.
Osama bin Laden’s death was a good ego boost for our nation, but it was too little too late. On top of this, any credit that could be given to W. is undercut by his hand in the torpedoing of our economy, the staggeringly idiotic legacy of his tax cuts, the cost, both financially and physically of two unneeded wars, and the souring of nation’s international relations. Just to name a few. I refuse to allow W. to become the next incarnation of Reagan. I will shout down all apologists, like Tommy Felts, who will try and canonize this man and his legacy. We as a nation cannot allow this, regardless of parties. Especially now, when most of the right wing admonishes most of W.’s presidency and the damage he caused. I am proud that Obama isn’t a clown, and that even though he’s been a huge letdown in terms of what he campaigned on, he’s at least trying to lead this country somewhere.
Finally, Tommy Felts wishes that Obama would show the picture of a dead ass bin Laden because “We saw the horror of Sept. 11... We can handle a photo of a terrorist’s corpse”. This is the mentality that I hope we can leave behind, but it’s highly doubtful. It’s that same “poke them towel heads in the eye” mentality that has lead to so much bloodshed from Americans in the sands of the middle eastern region. We weren’t shown the complete horror of 9/11 and it remained illegal for much of the 00’s to publish photos of flag draped caskets returning from the wars, so to say we can stomach it is a joke and insulting to our better judgment. We need to not make a martyr out of bin Laden, that should be our principal goal. What we don’t need is more logs for the undying fire that represents our place in the globe. Now that’s being honest Tommy Felts.
To say that I’m (still) not a fan of his award winning writing (yup, the Kansas Press Assoc. awarded him 1st place for column writing) is an understatement. So I’m not completely surprised that A) He’s not a fan of Obama. B) He thinks W. “began and doggedly pursued the fight against the terrorist leader”, showing he has that knack for revisionist current events. C) His practical reason for wanting Bush to capture bin Laden: the need to somehow not be labeled racist for the Obama/Osama name switch. Tommy, you live in the middle of Kansas, I’m highly doubtful anyone would call you a racist for the Osama/Obama slip. You’re also typing this out presumably on a computer, and you’re the managing editor of the paper, god help you if you don’t catch that before printing the paper!
First off the bat is the tired old trope of “Obama doesn’t care” argument. “…Obama was somber as he delivered the news. He didn’t smile. He didn’t seem happy. He delivered his lines and left.” Tommy, that’s called giving a speech. And when has Obama ever came off as a firebrand? Isn’t the main beef the right wing has with Obama is that he’s too stiff, professorial? He “talks down to people”, “lectures”….on and on (here I must try and stifle a yawn. It’s like, “Really? This again?). Tommy even tethers the Muslim connection “…particularly with the terribly volatile Muslim population whose friendship Obama has been courting” You mean the “friendship” with the Muslims that’s taken up about 5 or 6 past administrations Tommy? You’re afraid of being labeled a racist? Oh how about lumping all of Islam in to the terrorist wagon. Also, hyperbole much?
How Tommy Felts feels that announcing bin Laden is dead becomes political maneuvering reveals that the blinders are on for anyone representing the Democrat party, or moderate independents in general. Do families of murder victims publicly whoop and holler when the killer is executed? No, they don’t. It would be in poor taste. Sure, we would understand and sympathize with their relief, but it would seem callow. The death of bin Laden was going to be political capital for any president and their party. Period.
Tommy then goes on to confuse liberals for peace loving, tree hugging anti-war hippies. I think most people were fine with global war on terror, to a point. A lot of scared post 9/11 people weren’t reading the fine print, however. We wanted bin Laden and the Taliban done away with, but we didn’t sign up to pervert American citizens constitutional given rights. No one certainly wanted us to go in to Iraq, especially under curious speculation, and eventual bald faced lies, used as evidence to invade a country that had zero to do with 9/11. Also curious that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi’s, but again, Tommy doesn’t relate any of this. On top of unfunded, illegal invasion, we strip away human dignity from supposed “terrorists” by humiliating and torturing them in gray area (Gitmo, black site) prisons. Sentencing people in kangaroo courts without due process. Finally, illegal and warrant less wiretapping of our nation’s citizens. Liberals aren’t pushovers. We do believe in a pragmatic foreign policy, which was never on W.‘s table. He was too busy trying to be a cowboy on the world’s stage, and fight a ceaseless war. But let’s forget all that and focus on how much work W. put in to catching bin Laden.
Oh yea. Tommy I’m sure you’re old enough to remember in about 2006 when W. said he wasn’t really concerned with bin Laden and wasn’t actively looking for him. This about the time he closed the CIA operations force tasked with finding bin Laden, and stopped special forces from actively searching the mountainous area around the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. I’m pretty sure W. was never interested in catching bin Laden, and it’s pretty evident that was the case. The point was to start a bunch of warrant less conflicts and make a lot of money for the war profiteers. Of which most of the Bush administration were stockholders of.
Osama bin Laden’s death was a good ego boost for our nation, but it was too little too late. On top of this, any credit that could be given to W. is undercut by his hand in the torpedoing of our economy, the staggeringly idiotic legacy of his tax cuts, the cost, both financially and physically of two unneeded wars, and the souring of nation’s international relations. Just to name a few. I refuse to allow W. to become the next incarnation of Reagan. I will shout down all apologists, like Tommy Felts, who will try and canonize this man and his legacy. We as a nation cannot allow this, regardless of parties. Especially now, when most of the right wing admonishes most of W.’s presidency and the damage he caused. I am proud that Obama isn’t a clown, and that even though he’s been a huge letdown in terms of what he campaigned on, he’s at least trying to lead this country somewhere.
Finally, Tommy Felts wishes that Obama would show the picture of a dead ass bin Laden because “We saw the horror of Sept. 11... We can handle a photo of a terrorist’s corpse”. This is the mentality that I hope we can leave behind, but it’s highly doubtful. It’s that same “poke them towel heads in the eye” mentality that has lead to so much bloodshed from Americans in the sands of the middle eastern region. We weren’t shown the complete horror of 9/11 and it remained illegal for much of the 00’s to publish photos of flag draped caskets returning from the wars, so to say we can stomach it is a joke and insulting to our better judgment. We need to not make a martyr out of bin Laden, that should be our principal goal. What we don’t need is more logs for the undying fire that represents our place in the globe. Now that’s being honest Tommy Felts.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Political Cartoons!
***Mayor's Note: I know that The Donald announced earlier this week that he wasn't running. I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, and just couldn't bear to part with it. While The Donald isn't running and that greatly saddens me, I still think this is a pretty good piece about political candidates for office.***
Donald Trump is NOT running for President. He’s merely taken a page from the great “runner-in-chief” Newt Gingrich, and is fully reaping the rewards of a similar campaign. Honestly, that right-wing money is just laying there for anyone anti-Obama to take, it’s not hard. I’m not talking about those Tea Party kooks either, I’m talking those moneyed interests that have billions just laying around. If they’re not diving in to them from lofty heights, they’re pushing them out in to “Grass-roots” buffoonery and the like. So, yea, Donald Trump isn’t running, this is just one long exasperating commercial for The Donald.
I thought we were all in on the joke there for a bit. Just like the days when The Donald was hocking stuffed crust pizza from Pizza Hut or whatever other products having to do with absolutely nothing with real estate that he managed to find time to do commercials for. To say he is a character is doing a disservice to the multitudes of half-serious people that run our country as “politicians” and star in our motion pictures as “actors“. Who’s to say that America isn’t in love with cartoons? We’ve elected more than our fair share of cowboy’s, farmers, generals and the like. Hell, we endured 8 years under a pretend cowboy, so honestly, The Donald as a legitimate GOP candidate isn’t as far fetched at first blush.
But it is sad that this is our lot as a society. There’s constant talk of having “adult conversation”, but then some right-wing doofus whips out an over-sized pink mallet and swings it around, then slips on a banana peel crashing to the floor.
It seems like after Watergate, that we just couldn’t handle legitimate evil being unmasked. It was too real, or too devastating to the nation psyche that people are liars and crooks, even sitting president Nixon wasn’t immune from the clutches of evil. Then cartoon Jimmy Carter gets elected, and so begins our love affair with the characters.
Which is not to say it’s such a bad thing when the country’s doing great. As it’s done surprisingly from time to time. Yet, there always seems to be a massive hangover. The late 80’s, early 90’s, just recently with good ole’ W, those morning-afters are hellacious! Then we bounce back through the magic of the American Spirit!
I’ve gotten off track. The Donald is a cartoon, and it’s dangerous that he’s even being taken seriously. It is also no surprise that he is a GOP favorite as they seem to be the majority shareholder in the cartoon candidate manufacturing factory. You can just close your eyes and imagine them rolling off the line now: Palin, Gingrich, Huckabee, Regan, W., Bachmann, on and on. This is just recent memory. If it’s not a self-serious old white guy beating the drum of the same ole same ole’, it’s a cartoon (not to say the old white guy isn’t a cartoon in and of itself, it’s the devil you know kind of vibe).
The great thing about the GOP, is that once you crack their bullshit shell game, it’s all easy. They’re sound bite machine generating, closeted, cynical, nonstarters. They’re not serious about fixing anything, or they’d hop in to the ring by now. Exploratory committees? Come on, stop pussy-footin’ and get in there! It says something that the first republican nominee debate was pushed back due to a lack of legitimate candidacy, then when the debate actually happens you get two characters up there mocking each other.
Maybe this has less to do with the cartoon characters and more the inflexibility of the right wing ideology. Cartoon characters, on the other hand, are the most flexible of all characters, so watching The Donald squeeze his clown shoes in to a right wing tasseled loafer has been comical enough. Now he’s pro-choice. His foreign policy mirrors his vacuous real estate development business. The only real political capitol he’s gotten is proclaiming he got Obama to show his birth certificate. I guess this is how you bridge the gap to encompass the fringe of the GOP, but that’s not nearly enough to propel anyone through an entire presidential campaign.
To see the right-wing punditry help The Donald shoe-horn his way in to legitimacy is where I started drawing the line. I’ve read that The Donald knows a thing or two about emerging from Bankruptcy, which of course would make him the perfect person to end this deficit baloney! So I guess that The Donald can also just out and out say that America is solvent, and if you start to argue, he’ll just cut you off and leave the room? Or if you bring up facts, he’ll outright ignore them and challenge the legitimacy of your fact finding when he just doesn’t plain believe you. Compelling attributes for the person who will be the face of this nation for four years. OR if he does say something, only to back down from it later by saying he didn’t say it or mean it in the context it was given!
See this is great for a cartoon character, who is not bound by the rules of reality! Why is the only important question being asked of The Donald is “What’s up with his hair?” That’s not important right now, nor will it ever be relevant to any situation that arises on the world stage, or on the campaign trail. What doesn’t he literally put his money where his mouth his and release his financial records? Are we as a country not going to be truly ready for the mammoth sized stacks of money he has? I think we all know his value is inflated so what’s the deal Donald?
Perhaps The Donald IS the perfect person to run our country, I mean, why not? What better represents the tired sagging ego of our greatness than this cartoon character? Hulk Hogan isn’t going to seriously run for president any time soon, so again, why not? About half the country is still trying to shoe-horn this country back into a fantasy land of 1950’s cold war nostalgia. We need these larger than life buffoons taking up valuable air time, delegitimizing the current true threat to us: the fledgling economy and this never ending recession.
Donald Trump is NOT running for President. He’s merely taken a page from the great “runner-in-chief” Newt Gingrich, and is fully reaping the rewards of a similar campaign. Honestly, that right-wing money is just laying there for anyone anti-Obama to take, it’s not hard. I’m not talking about those Tea Party kooks either, I’m talking those moneyed interests that have billions just laying around. If they’re not diving in to them from lofty heights, they’re pushing them out in to “Grass-roots” buffoonery and the like. So, yea, Donald Trump isn’t running, this is just one long exasperating commercial for The Donald.
I thought we were all in on the joke there for a bit. Just like the days when The Donald was hocking stuffed crust pizza from Pizza Hut or whatever other products having to do with absolutely nothing with real estate that he managed to find time to do commercials for. To say he is a character is doing a disservice to the multitudes of half-serious people that run our country as “politicians” and star in our motion pictures as “actors“. Who’s to say that America isn’t in love with cartoons? We’ve elected more than our fair share of cowboy’s, farmers, generals and the like. Hell, we endured 8 years under a pretend cowboy, so honestly, The Donald as a legitimate GOP candidate isn’t as far fetched at first blush.
But it is sad that this is our lot as a society. There’s constant talk of having “adult conversation”, but then some right-wing doofus whips out an over-sized pink mallet and swings it around, then slips on a banana peel crashing to the floor.
It seems like after Watergate, that we just couldn’t handle legitimate evil being unmasked. It was too real, or too devastating to the nation psyche that people are liars and crooks, even sitting president Nixon wasn’t immune from the clutches of evil. Then cartoon Jimmy Carter gets elected, and so begins our love affair with the characters.
Which is not to say it’s such a bad thing when the country’s doing great. As it’s done surprisingly from time to time. Yet, there always seems to be a massive hangover. The late 80’s, early 90’s, just recently with good ole’ W, those morning-afters are hellacious! Then we bounce back through the magic of the American Spirit!
I’ve gotten off track. The Donald is a cartoon, and it’s dangerous that he’s even being taken seriously. It is also no surprise that he is a GOP favorite as they seem to be the majority shareholder in the cartoon candidate manufacturing factory. You can just close your eyes and imagine them rolling off the line now: Palin, Gingrich, Huckabee, Regan, W., Bachmann, on and on. This is just recent memory. If it’s not a self-serious old white guy beating the drum of the same ole same ole’, it’s a cartoon (not to say the old white guy isn’t a cartoon in and of itself, it’s the devil you know kind of vibe).
The great thing about the GOP, is that once you crack their bullshit shell game, it’s all easy. They’re sound bite machine generating, closeted, cynical, nonstarters. They’re not serious about fixing anything, or they’d hop in to the ring by now. Exploratory committees? Come on, stop pussy-footin’ and get in there! It says something that the first republican nominee debate was pushed back due to a lack of legitimate candidacy, then when the debate actually happens you get two characters up there mocking each other.
Maybe this has less to do with the cartoon characters and more the inflexibility of the right wing ideology. Cartoon characters, on the other hand, are the most flexible of all characters, so watching The Donald squeeze his clown shoes in to a right wing tasseled loafer has been comical enough. Now he’s pro-choice. His foreign policy mirrors his vacuous real estate development business. The only real political capitol he’s gotten is proclaiming he got Obama to show his birth certificate. I guess this is how you bridge the gap to encompass the fringe of the GOP, but that’s not nearly enough to propel anyone through an entire presidential campaign.
To see the right-wing punditry help The Donald shoe-horn his way in to legitimacy is where I started drawing the line. I’ve read that The Donald knows a thing or two about emerging from Bankruptcy, which of course would make him the perfect person to end this deficit baloney! So I guess that The Donald can also just out and out say that America is solvent, and if you start to argue, he’ll just cut you off and leave the room? Or if you bring up facts, he’ll outright ignore them and challenge the legitimacy of your fact finding when he just doesn’t plain believe you. Compelling attributes for the person who will be the face of this nation for four years. OR if he does say something, only to back down from it later by saying he didn’t say it or mean it in the context it was given!
See this is great for a cartoon character, who is not bound by the rules of reality! Why is the only important question being asked of The Donald is “What’s up with his hair?” That’s not important right now, nor will it ever be relevant to any situation that arises on the world stage, or on the campaign trail. What doesn’t he literally put his money where his mouth his and release his financial records? Are we as a country not going to be truly ready for the mammoth sized stacks of money he has? I think we all know his value is inflated so what’s the deal Donald?
Perhaps The Donald IS the perfect person to run our country, I mean, why not? What better represents the tired sagging ego of our greatness than this cartoon character? Hulk Hogan isn’t going to seriously run for president any time soon, so again, why not? About half the country is still trying to shoe-horn this country back into a fantasy land of 1950’s cold war nostalgia. We need these larger than life buffoons taking up valuable air time, delegitimizing the current true threat to us: the fledgling economy and this never ending recession.
Monday, May 16, 2011
MSNBC V. Fox News
Well, I guess I’ll rag on the left-wing “liberals” today, seeing as I’ve done enough emotional damage to my psyche flinging myself on to the pile of also-ran’s who perpetuate the “right wing’s crazy” motif in type/blog/news/editorial/whathaveyou. If only to be put simply: The right wing will NEVER admit or cop to anything they say or do. They will either double down in their idiocy, speak loudly over you, or basically just never give you what you want. Which is to admit they’re wrong. They do not respect any one who’s on the “other side”, and apologizing to you for their ignorance just isn’t on the table. So, I bring beef to the left in the form of an observation I made recently.
I’m not a big fan of Rachel Maddow and her ilk on MSNBC. I find no pride in watching someone who got her start trying to climb on top of the clown car known as Pat Buchanan. Watching those two debate things was akin to washing your eyes with a brillo pad and pouring peroxide in to your ear holes. Since the departure of Keith Olbermann, MSNBC’s prime time news block has just turned in to Diet Maddow, then Maddow Zero, then New Maddow…and finally Rachel Maddow herself! An inane block of similar news style that will NEVER allow MSNBC to overtake Fox News’ nightly programming.
The algorithm goes a little likes this “News Story. Banter, Banter (can substitute one Banter with Zany bewilderment), Chart/Graph, Then finish with an exasperate flourish”. Unlike Fox News, these ditto-head programs at least have NEWS and FACTS, but they’re all delivered in the 4/4 time signature style, that eventually reveals itself to casual observation.
It’s a double-edged sword to be sure. No one really wants, or respects the aping of Fox News but with Liberals motif that MSNBC has bought wholesale. But no one wants 3-4 hours of samey show programming either. Well, besides the right-wing Fox News crowd. But that’s a fundamental difference between the right and left wing buffoonery! Uninformed versus informed viewer ship. Fox News “informs” its viewership with the daily talking points memo, and supplements itself nicely with the talk radio that brings the message down from on high to enlighten the unwashed masses with regional flair. MSNBC’s crowd is typically more informed. They crack a paper open more often than not, they visit website’s that typically tell the truth, listen to (gasp)NPR. They may be a more boring people, but at least the liberal left-wing is informed enough, and can in fact be more open-minded about policy and politics in general, but they are not dumb…nor are they misinformed.
The idea that MSNBC is trying to function as a polar opposite to Fox News is a disservice to the programming and stewardship to those who are trying to actually function the channel as News. They also just can’t compete with the sheer cliff of ignorance that feeds the Fox News monster. The right-wing is a fear based monster. It constantly needs an enemy, and affront to their ideals and a challenger to their integrity. If the right-wing is not being oppressed by something, then it isn’t functioning properly. Is it any surprise that most of the right-wing is evangelical based? MSNBC has no skin in the game when it comes to patronizing the evangelicals. The only real messianic figure they had was Olbermann, and he left after he was denied sainthood by the guy’s upstairs. And even then he only mostly dealt with the old school right-wing aping of name calling and pooh-poohing also known as the Limbaugh.
And if we’re really being honest about this aspect of the political theatre, then this MSNBC/Fox News is just “wrasslin’”. It’s about advertising revenue and ego. Neither of which have a political leaning.
But the point of this rant is the rinse wash repeat of the Maddow clones that flood the MSNBC prime time slots. Even after the ridiculous “lean forward” ads of earlier this year, this block is no where near a competitive threat to the Fox News block. The only real threat to Fox News during that time is Monday Night football. Some of the problem with the MSNBC block is exactly how many takes a news story has and how many cycles of the Maddow-o-tron does a viewer need to “get” the story.
The modern journalist media is a sham and has only the barest of lip service paid to the real television journalism of the past. “Good Night, and Good Luck” indeed, sir! I get why every other “news” show on MSNBC is essentially a rip off of Maddow: it works. She doesn’t patronize viewers like Anderson Cooper, getting all real with you. She mostly stays behind her desk and prattles on while tugging at her hair. But this is the state of journalism today. It’s merely filler until the next block of commercials. It’s not news, it’s editorial. More importantly, it’s cable and the meat of the viewership just isn’t there. It’s still somewhat on the major networks, who have long ago abandoned any idea of a news department that actually delivers news. Thus, the standard is set for all “news” related endeavors. If you want eyes on it, you have to do it like this, or no one cares.
I’m not a big fan of Rachel Maddow and her ilk on MSNBC. I find no pride in watching someone who got her start trying to climb on top of the clown car known as Pat Buchanan. Watching those two debate things was akin to washing your eyes with a brillo pad and pouring peroxide in to your ear holes. Since the departure of Keith Olbermann, MSNBC’s prime time news block has just turned in to Diet Maddow, then Maddow Zero, then New Maddow…and finally Rachel Maddow herself! An inane block of similar news style that will NEVER allow MSNBC to overtake Fox News’ nightly programming.
The algorithm goes a little likes this “News Story. Banter, Banter (can substitute one Banter with Zany bewilderment), Chart/Graph, Then finish with an exasperate flourish”. Unlike Fox News, these ditto-head programs at least have NEWS and FACTS, but they’re all delivered in the 4/4 time signature style, that eventually reveals itself to casual observation.
It’s a double-edged sword to be sure. No one really wants, or respects the aping of Fox News but with Liberals motif that MSNBC has bought wholesale. But no one wants 3-4 hours of samey show programming either. Well, besides the right-wing Fox News crowd. But that’s a fundamental difference between the right and left wing buffoonery! Uninformed versus informed viewer ship. Fox News “informs” its viewership with the daily talking points memo, and supplements itself nicely with the talk radio that brings the message down from on high to enlighten the unwashed masses with regional flair. MSNBC’s crowd is typically more informed. They crack a paper open more often than not, they visit website’s that typically tell the truth, listen to (gasp)NPR. They may be a more boring people, but at least the liberal left-wing is informed enough, and can in fact be more open-minded about policy and politics in general, but they are not dumb…nor are they misinformed.
The idea that MSNBC is trying to function as a polar opposite to Fox News is a disservice to the programming and stewardship to those who are trying to actually function the channel as News. They also just can’t compete with the sheer cliff of ignorance that feeds the Fox News monster. The right-wing is a fear based monster. It constantly needs an enemy, and affront to their ideals and a challenger to their integrity. If the right-wing is not being oppressed by something, then it isn’t functioning properly. Is it any surprise that most of the right-wing is evangelical based? MSNBC has no skin in the game when it comes to patronizing the evangelicals. The only real messianic figure they had was Olbermann, and he left after he was denied sainthood by the guy’s upstairs. And even then he only mostly dealt with the old school right-wing aping of name calling and pooh-poohing also known as the Limbaugh.
And if we’re really being honest about this aspect of the political theatre, then this MSNBC/Fox News is just “wrasslin’”. It’s about advertising revenue and ego. Neither of which have a political leaning.
But the point of this rant is the rinse wash repeat of the Maddow clones that flood the MSNBC prime time slots. Even after the ridiculous “lean forward” ads of earlier this year, this block is no where near a competitive threat to the Fox News block. The only real threat to Fox News during that time is Monday Night football. Some of the problem with the MSNBC block is exactly how many takes a news story has and how many cycles of the Maddow-o-tron does a viewer need to “get” the story.
The modern journalist media is a sham and has only the barest of lip service paid to the real television journalism of the past. “Good Night, and Good Luck” indeed, sir! I get why every other “news” show on MSNBC is essentially a rip off of Maddow: it works. She doesn’t patronize viewers like Anderson Cooper, getting all real with you. She mostly stays behind her desk and prattles on while tugging at her hair. But this is the state of journalism today. It’s merely filler until the next block of commercials. It’s not news, it’s editorial. More importantly, it’s cable and the meat of the viewership just isn’t there. It’s still somewhat on the major networks, who have long ago abandoned any idea of a news department that actually delivers news. Thus, the standard is set for all “news” related endeavors. If you want eyes on it, you have to do it like this, or no one cares.
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