SHAME ON SLATE'S HANNA ROSIN & A SILLY CAT DRAMA

GET SOME CLASS HANNA 

     She is not the only one, only the most recent, but Hanna Rosin of Slate is another of those prince or princesses of "snark."  

       Her offense, and there are many of us who have felt

compelled to say so, was this line she penned on the death of Jan Berenstain.

“The world today brings news that Jan Berenstain, co-author with her husband Stan, of the 45 years and running Berenstain Bears series for children, has passed on to a better world. As any right thinking mother will agree, good riddance.”

          

    There are certainly more egregious offenses, but it is the insensitivity that bothers me.  Too many people today are  too busy trying to be cute, clever, bitchy or whatever, to measure the impact of their words.  People have written that Jan Berenstain was a kind and gentle woman, her family is hurt by the line and she deserves more respect.

      As a reporter and later as a news manager I tried to avoid the all too common gallows humors or cynicism that can abound in veteran news people.  I thought it was important to never mask or hinder our sensitivity with any form of callousness. To do so was to loose touch with the real emotion of a moment.  

       It is a prevalent attitude today. Rosin's, and others, form of snark is more about themselves, their own cleverness, than it is illuminating. 

      She offended people.  She appeared shallow and mean spirited. But more seriously she displayed an ignorance about the importance of words and how they are received. She 

appeared to be more concerned about her desire to be in the spotlight than with the audience who would receive her words.  Hanna, it is not all about you. Please share that

with a few other media practitioners.

DAY BOOK
THE CAT BROTHERS DRAMA

 "Hey little bro.  Let's go through the fence again"

 "See, that's cool."

"Easy for you. If I keep putting on weight it's going to be a hassle."

 "Oh, that sun feels great. Time for a nap maybe."

 "Yea, this is the life."

"Hmm?"

 "What was that?"

 "It's me. I said you were snoring"

 "You trying to start something?"

"No. Just smelling this plant"

 "You're trying to start something huh?"

"Bring it on big brother."

 rumble

 wrestle

 "Gotcha! Say dog!  SAY DOG!!"

"If that's the way you're going to play, I'm going in the garage."

"That's cool. Think I'm going through the fence again."

CYBER vs. REAL-BEWARE

WHEN DOES ONE CROSS A LINE

THE AGE OF INFO WARS

***A RECENT SLATE FRONT PAGE***

Second "Lesbian" Blogger Turns Out To Be a Man Editor of Lez Get Real outs himself as a retired military man from Ohio. READ FULL STORY

Cyber Vandals Breach Senate Website Same group that hacked PBS claiming Tupac is alive takes on the government. READ FULL STORY This front page from SLATE struck me as a reminder of the precarious nature of our communication and information systems. Even the CIA's web site has been hacked. Credibility and security are at risk.  They will continue to be so, it seems, for as long as we build our social structure around cyber communication. There are no safeguards.  As we do with blogs, I followed a link from the  SLATE piece to a well articulated set of thoughts from Brian Spears. THIS POST-A NOTE TO MY FELLOW WHITE MALES MAKES SOME OUTSTANDING POINTS. LINK HERE What Brian wrote prompted me to write a response.   "Fiction is just that.  Journalism is an approximation of truth  build on a foundation of facts. The blogsophere is  full of both and hybrids. Credibility remains the currency of journalism.  Notice or self expression may well be the fuel of bloggers.  These are mostly divergent cultures, but they aggregate n this cyber gumbo that we inhabit. Years ago I posed a question to a network executive for  whom I was developing a project:  at what point do the ethics of the cyber world begin to alter our sense of justice in the "real world?"  Random mayhem in gaming, serial  killing, explicit violence, explicit sexuality and false persona in the cyber world are permitted.  At what point does a social tolerance of such a recreational behavior begin to sew genuine social consequences?  It was an odd question to post to a network executive who went on to preside over what we call "reality" television. The post points the effect.  Anthony Wiener is living through another repercussion.  One may feel a cloak of protection or privacy while feeding the blogosphere with any manner of fantasy, lunacy or "creativity."  It is not illegal to do so, yet. Whether it is right or wrong is for someone else to reason.  It does however have consequence and indeed could be more serious or even lethal than a lone writer, wrapped in their own reality may have the intelligence or common sense to realize."  The old adage is true-Buyer beware, especially in this age of  information wars. We would add to that the modern admonition-   Read with care. "You should read only what is truly good or what is frankly bad." Gertrude Stein-quoted by Hemingway in A MOVEABLE FEAST There are efforts underway on the security front. LINK HERE TO READ OF A NOVEL APPROACH TO NET SECURITY BEING DEVELOPED BY A GROUP OF NEW YORK STUDENTS. DAY BOOK ARCHIVE SHOTS See you down the trail.