Pet Peeves |
|||||||||||
|
|
Tuesday, January 09, 2018
Copyright © 2003-2018 Shirtydame.blogspot.com. All rights reserved.
Calling all Reformers These are a few of our favorite pet peeves. Sure, we’d like to see resolutions. But some situations call for a change in people’s mindset. A letter-writing campaign could bring about results in other cases. And maybe the guilty parties would see this Web page and do the right thing…we can dream. Recall the Recall The whole California recall election of 2003 was a waste of time and money. Unfortunately, it looks like Sacramento doesn’t have the will to overhaul the recall provision—if not remove it from the state constitution altogether. In the near future, the recalled governor’s party would probably like the option to recall the new governor. The only good thing to come out of this recall circus is that some voters are taking a closer look at the initiative process, of which the recall is an extreme example. Like most Californians, we never questioned it before—until now. Most people would agree that representative democracy is working fine in the U.S., so why do we need initiatives and referendums (almost half the states have one of these procedures or a combination of the two)? They have become a de facto branch of state government. If this is such a great idea, why don’t we have the same option in the U.S. Constitution? If direct government is meant to boost civic duty, it hasn’t helped California’s voter turnout. If anything, it has given a lot of power to activist and lobbyist groups. Unlike social issues, the more cut-and-dried ballot measures are the ones affecting the state budget. California is still living with—and some say suffering—the legacy of Proposition 13, the 1978 measure that limits property taxes. While they may represent the will of the people, these initiatives also mean less flexibility for the state government. No business executive would like it if the shareholders get to dictate how to spend a portion of the revenue—nobody likes micromanagement. There was another budget-related proposition on the recall ballot, and this time it was defeated soundly. We suspect most people voted it down because California has a huge deficit. We hope a growing number voted against it on principle: no more meddling in state spending. We don’t want politicians to use such measures as excuses for budget problems. And if we don’t like their performance, we can always vote them out of office. Now back to our original pet peeve…will it take an initiative to remove the recall provision from California’s constitution? For more information on this issue, refer to John Haskell’s “Direct Democracy or Representative Government?: Dispelling the Populist Myth (Transforming American Politics)” (Westview Press, 2000). American Media’s Obsession Simply put, American television has a strange obsession with foreign accents. Whenever you watch a news program or documentary in which they dub someone in English, they invariably find a speaker with a heavy accent. Before March 2003, they might have explained that they simply use the voice of the translator, who just happens to have an accent. But since we’re not usually dealing with live shows, you have to wonder why they don’t find someone without a foreign accent to do the dubbing. We got our answer in 2003 when Dan Rather interviewed Saddam Hussein before the war in Iraq. Word got out that CBS News insisted that the actor they hired to read Hussein’s answers feign an accent. So they go out of their way to give the viewers what they think a person would sound like speaking in English. Why bother? We’d rather have clarity than this kind of twisted “authenticity.” Not only is this practice a distraction to viewers, it is also a distortion of the truth. A person may be the most eloquent speaker in a foreign tongue, but he’ll come off sounding like a yahoo if all we hear is a heavy accent (which might have been CBS’ intention in this case). This practice is so pervasive that it affects syndicated shows and cable (see table for a list of problematic shows on broadcast TV).
We’re glad other countries don’t share the same obsession. Watch “BBC World News” or “Journal News” (Germany’s DW-TV) and you’ll notice that they use their fellow reporters to do the dubbing. We can’t imagine French TV asking someone to read French in a phony accent. It’s time for U.S. media to get with the program. Please Pop the Question Doesn’t it drive you crazy when professional reporters fail to ask the most logical question, the one that seems so painfully obvious? Here are just two examples from 2003. In May, a Colorado hiker cut off half his right arm with a pocketknife to free himself from a boulder under which he was pinned for five days. He tied a tourniquet above his elbow and then went for help. That’s what we call a real survivor—not the bug-eating kind on game shows. Oddly enough, no one reported if he’s right-handed. And if so, was he concerned about that? This unusual story also presents a teachable moment in journalism. It’s easy to hemorrhage to death, so how about the proper way to apply a tourniquet? We’re sure you’re familiar with the other big story out of Modesto, Calif., the district represented by former U.S. Congressman Gary Condit. For a while, the man suspected of murdering his pregnant wife became one of the most coveted interview “gets” of the year. When he finally sat down for a series of interviews in January, one reporter inquired about the rumor of the police finding blood in his car, to which he gave what appeared to be a well-rehearsed answer. Then, to our dismay, she didn’t ask a follow-up question. She should’ve asked what if they found his wife’s blood in his car. Duh! Copyright © 2003-2018 Shirtydame.blogspot.com. All rights reserved. Labels: current events, essays, opinion |
||||||||||
