Wednesday, January 13, 2010

In Which I Rescue Journalism, But Journalism Rebuffs Me

From Jane Taber's afternoon blog post:

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has not been idling away his time. Like Mr. Ignatieff, he was in Quebec today meeting with Premier Jean Charest. And yesterday he was in Ottawa, where the PMO released a picture and a short video of him meeting with several of his most senior cabinet ministers.

The most interesting part of the picture, however, was the Prime Minister’s choice of mugone featuring John, Paul, George and Ringo. According to Mr. Harper’s spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, the mug is a favourite of his. It was a gift and the Prime Minister “uses it all the time to drink water.”

The "Prime Minister's" choice of mug was uncovered by me, here, on this blog, yesterday morning, through a pain-staking exercise in photo-analysis. But does Ms. Taber give credit where credit is due? No, Ms. TABER DOES NOT GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE.

Furthermore, Ms. Taber does not even consider (as I did, same post) how inappropriate it is for a Prime Minister to go into a security meeting, to talk about bombs and violence and so forth, with a mug representing the Fab 4s early, soft-rock, folky period. "With The Beatles". Blech! They hadn't even invented the distorted guitar in 1963! If Al Qaeda saw that film clip and IDd the picture on that mug, they'd crap themselves laughing.

But No! Ms. Taber simply swallows the government line!

(Although, the fact that Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas made a point of confirming the nature of this photo speaks volumes. Clearly this mug was a prop in a staged-exercise.)

Anyway...Bad Jane Taber! Bad!!

2 comments:

Dr.Dawg said...

At some point we're going to have to call these folks on their grazing. This has happened to me more than once, and I think other bloggers might be able to report this sort of thing as well. It's as though there is an unwritten rule among journos that they can simply rip us off.

I was amused, at first, even (long ago) flattered, but I'm getting irritated at this point.

Steve Bloom said...

I think it can be said that the distorted guitar dates back to 1961, the credit going to Fender and Dick Dale.