Month: October 2008

It’s not often Sparrow Chat gets it wrong. Research is the key to factuality and before writing any article it behooves the writer to ascertain facts, as opposed to rumor. Nevertheless, to err is human and no-one is above making the occasional mistake.

In the case of a recent article entitled, “Why I Won’t Support Our Local PBS” just such an error occurred, and for that I unreservedly apologize to PBS and our local provider of that service, WILL-TV.

Sparrow Chat accused WILL-TV of removing the 5.00am broadcast of BBC World News from its listings and substituting with a kid’s cartoon.

In an email, set out below, the program director, David Thiel, tells how the fault lay not with WILL-TV, but with the BBC itself, for reducing the number of satellite feeds available for PBS, thus making it impossible for them to transmit the program in the morning:

Thanks for writing. I’m sorry to learn that you have such a low opinion of our operation, even though it seems that you place a good deal of value on our programming.

I want to correct a couple of misconceptions in your essay, the first being the presumption that WILL-TV is connected with Millikin University. That’s incorrect, we are part of the College of Media at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. It’s a minor point, but worth clearing up.

Second, the reason that we are no longer able to offer BBC World News at 5:00 am is thanks to the BBC itself. Their new agreement with public television stations, effective October 1, reduces the number of satellite feeds available for our use. Unfortunately, one of those was the 5:00 am feed, and there is no other suitable early morning alternative. This change in our schedule was noted in our member program guide as well as our online listings. We will continue to offer the 5:00 pm weekday feed, as we have for many years.

It’s your choice, of course, as to whether you help us bring to you BBC World News and all of the other national and international public affairs series offered by WILL-TV. We will do our best with the resources and programs that are available to us. Again, thank you for your interest in WILL-TV.

David Thiel

Program Director

WILL-TV

I have no hesitation in apologizing for the hasty assumption that caused me to write the article, but I would still point out that nothing was available on-screen, either before, after, or during the time-slot, to inform the casual viewer of the change. Surely, a marquee-type banner giving the relevant information could have been displayed for a few mornings, so we early risers could understand what was going on?

The lesson to be learned from Mister Thiel’s email, is that it’s always a mistake to attack one’s friends. After all, there are enough enemies out there, and in the media world PBS is a true friend of the American people. Unlike the cable news outlets it manages to maintain a high degree of credibility and fairness in its programming, despite serious political and corporate pressure to the contrary.

And now, a strongly worded letter to the BBC.

Filed under: Atonement

There a vile, pungent odor drifting across the globe. It begins somewhere up in the far reaches of Alaska. It’s nauseating stench permeates around the Golan Heights, across the West Bank, and finds its way into every Palestinian home that borders onto territory Israel claims to be its own.

Israel has a new secret weapon. They call it “Skunk”. Tired of shooting Palestinians who dare to oppose the mighty Israeli army and its ubiquitous invasion of their lands, Israeli scientists have now come up with the most vile, disgusting liquid imaginable. Claimed to be “organic”, and therefore “harmless”, when sprayed on individuals, the pungent odor adheres to its victim for days, defies washing off, and creates misery for the victims and their families.

So powerful is this concoction, Israel is considering selling it to law enforcement agencies overseas as an effective method of crowd control.^[1]

The stench of “Skunk” is spreading across the globe. How long before we see this nauseating weapon used on protesters in New York, or Washington, or London?

The equally ubiquitous Sarah Palin was once again proving how unsuited she is for the job of Vice President this week, when after her débâcle in the VP debate, she set out on a campaigning tour of Colorado and California. Her first message to the good people of those states was to accuse her Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, of domestic terrorism back in the late 1960’s.

Linking him to an organization known as the “Weathermen”, she said:

““Our opponent … is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country…..” ^[2]

Being the cold, calculating, slimeball that she is, Sarah Palin failed to point out that the organization to which she was referring, the “Weathermen”, only existed between 1969 and 1974. Obama was eight years old at the time of its inception, and only thirteen when it was disbanded.

The information she has obtained, results from newspaper articles claiming an association between Obama and Bill Ayers, one of the original founders of the “Weathermen”, but now a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

It’s doubtful that Sarah Palin hobnobs with any Distinguished Professors of anything. Judging by her record to date, she has little intellectual ability beyond a capacity for memorizing sound-bites and waffling around issues she knows nothing about.

The use of lies, to formulate political slime designed to score points against an adversary, is despicable. In many ways, it’s comparable to the Israeli’s new “Skunk” weapon. Both aim to saturate their opponents with an obnoxious odor designed to turn others against them, with no recourse to the basic questions of right and wrong.

There’s a vile, pungent odor drifting across the globe. It emanates from a place where the slime-balls of US Republican politics meet the “Skunk” of their Israeli counterparts.

^{[1] “New Israeli weapon kicks up stink” BBC, October 2nd 2008}

^{[2] “Palin: Obama ‘palling around with terrorists'” CSM, October 5th 2008}

Filed under: Bad smells

Okay, so I finally watched “The Debate”. It was a trial, but I forced myself to sit through a full re-run. Actually, in places it wasn’t too bad. Well, the Joe Biden places, that is. What a cure for insomnia that guy is. He should be bottled and marketed by Pfizer. Sadly, my somnolence was disturbed every ninety seconds or so by a shriek reminiscent of an Alaskan albatross as it’s ripped apart by a hungry Grizzly Bear up on the Etivluk River.

(If you don’t know where the Etivluk River is, ask Sarah Palin. In true Romulus and Remus style, she was probably raised up on the Etivluk River, by the same Grizzly Bear as just dissected the albatross).

Obviously, Sarah Palin first learned to talk from hearing the screams of ravaged seabirds. Nothing else would account for that high-pitched, tremulous quaver, with the capacity to shatter glass at twenty moose paces. It truly wasn’t that Joe Biden was boring, it just took ninety seconds or so to recover from the ear-drum numbing squeals Ms Palin extruded, reducing Joe to an almost indiscernible whisper, until another ninety seconds of recovery time left one unprepared for a further onslaught of albatross throttling.

It’s rumored there are men who find this woman attractive? Only in the Northern Anchorage Christian Fundamentalist Welfare Home for the Congenitally Deaf. And then, only those without ear-trumpets.

Having spent ninety minutes of consecutive slumber, interspersed by intermittent nerve-shattering wakefulness, I reached the conclusion that Sarah Palin had one vital qualification that made her the only possible candidate for the post of Vice President. While there were obvious drawbacks: the inexperience; her insistence on calling certain Middle Eastern nations Eye-ran, and Eye-rak, and pronouncing “nucular” in true George W Bush tradition, nevertheless she did posses one quality essential to the future security of the United States and its allies.

For years, the Pentagon has struggled, spent billions of dollars, to perfect an anti-missile missile capability. It has failed. The answer to their problem lies with Sarah Palin. Never mind that she’s rubbish at foreign policy. Forget the simplistic Christian fundamentalist ideals. Sarah Palin is, without doubt, the finest missile defense system this nation could ever procure.

Ms Palin’s voice, amplified a thousand times, concentrated into a narrow beam of sound, and projected into the path of incoming missiles, would reduce them to harmless atomic particles within microseconds.

The nation must decide. But, frankly, there seems no way we can do without her.

Filed under: Nucular deterrent