Language Log Noun Pile Headline Collection Post

The folks at the Language Log blog like a good "noun pile," and so do I. (They seem to have coined this useful term themselves; I've seen it nowhere else, and an internet search yields no results.) I suppose a "pure" noun pile headline would contain only nouns, like the one pictured above, and like this one . . .

               Fish foot spa virus bombshell

               --The Sun, 10/18/2011.

. . . which I love for the surreal imagery it conjures up.

These three are all from the BBC (!); each consists of a seven-word noun pile supported by a single verb:

               Ministers mull volcano ash cloud flight chaos measures

               --BBC News, 4/18/2010

               Citizen science charts horse chestnut tree pest spread

               --BBC News 1/24/2014

               Pilot Fish Project English Channel crossing bid begins

               --BBC News 8/5/2016

The champion seems to be this one, which even the Language Log people had trouble decoding:

               Napa wildfire LNU Lightning Complex Gamble Hennessey Fire –

               August 2020

               --SFGate 8/18/2020

How things work

Indeed.

Gawker.com is shutting down today, Monday 22nd August, 2016, some 13 years after it began and two days before the end of my forties. It is the end of an era. Blah bibitty blah blah, The Gawker domain is also being left behind in bankruptcy. This is the last post.

Good.

You never were anything more than crap. In its freshest purest smelliest form. Except more sanctimonious and a lot more smug. And your commenters even worse. Impossible to read. Far more impossible to enjoy. Far far more impossible to learn anything from.

Begone. Be flushed.

Goodness, the man does go on. I read paragraph after paragraph after paragraph after paragraph and gained nothing new at all.

Maybe you can get something out of Mike Denton's pathetic swan song. But then, nowadays my speed reading on sites like Gawker goes like this:

Skip, skip, skippity do dah, skippity skippity skip skip slide, glaze, skip, skip, skip, skippity skip skip skip, la la la, skip, skip skip, at places the like Gawker that offer nothing other than shining a dim witted light on their own arrogance and contempt for everything not superficially liberal. Fresh out of Yale.

We don't care what happens to their staff. We don't care who bought their bedpan site. We don't care how much the buyer wasted. We don't care about profitability. We don't care about anything the man has to say. We just don't.

What is a swan song anyway? Swans don't sing. And if swans did sing they'd sound out better quacks and squawks than Nick Denton and his justifications or any of his craptastic writers, every one! And a lot better than any of his obnoxious arrogant know nothing commenters. Goodbye, you pricks. Cannot say it's been nice knowing you.

What was the second, third thing I thought of?

El Chapo speaks: Sean Penn recounts his journey to meet the world's most notorious drug lord https://t.co/Qbrcv09Ssg pic.twitter.com/sxG5A4xijV

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) January 10, 2016

Of course El Chapo spoke to none other than Sean Penn, every Latin American dictator best friend. So I thought...

Wouldn't it be a hoot if it turned out Sean Penn unwittingly led authorities to El Chapos whereabouts? https://t.co/ncL7iGgVZx

— Lem (@Lemang01) January 10, 2016

And then, as if on cue, all of a sudden.

BREAKING: Mexican official says drug lord Guzman's interview with actor Sean Penn led Mexican forces to his whereabouts.

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 10, 2016

Don't you love it?

Bill again

Him again. Some people don't die, it seems. It seems to someone who's seen others much younger and, frankly, better than himself die. I sense Bill Clinton would just as soon not be dragged out but doesn't mind that much that he is. He can handle it. There's a lot to like, actually, if you can compartmentalize.

Kurt Schlichter asked somebody to Photoshop Bill Clinton in Bill Cosby's "Friend" sweater, the primary color children's thing he wore everywhere that looks very creepy in retrospect, and just like that somebody did. Not me. Turns out funny as you can imagine. Hasn't caught on though as a meme yet. [bill clinton, friend] Nothing. Except a lot of really good Bill Clinton photos. It's a fine photoset, but no Cosby sweater. Maybe I should make another and start a proper meme.

I woke up at a ridiculous hour, the television on, I un-muted and heard political analysts discussing the fairness, mostly unfairness, of Trump attacking Bill Clinton (by mentioning there's a good deal of room to work with there) and their concerns, their considerations, the questions they asked were so ridiculous they cannot even be recalled exactly any more than fog can be recalled.

I am struck by their insistence on having confusion, making confusion on purpose. When one bothers to listen and process, as I do when waking up and vulnerable, they're saying, "Let's you and I get lost in the weeds together."

But no. I'm waking up and have more sense than that. Let's not. There is a set of undeniable universally recognized salient facts bearing hard on the subject at hand, and no need at all for allowing distracting entries. They come pre-culled to essentials with non-essentials rejected.

The facts sit there collected as if fenced in. A set. They can be observed and considered and spoken about directly and with no intervening agency. There is no reason to mount a rocket and observe the corral from space. No reason to dig under the corral and describe the view of it from center of the earth. No reason to wear comic book x-ray glasses.  No reason to set up funhouse mirrors around the corral and analyze and then discuss the warped images that come off them as these men do. No need for kaleidoscope, so knock it off.

* Bill Clinton is a serial sexual abuser
* Hillary Clinton enabled this brutal activity viciously over decades
* Attitudes about all this have changed dramatically in the intervening years
* Presently the general attitude is pretty close to zero tolerance
* Hillary is presently campaigning for  president of United States and adds women's protection to her platform.
* Hillary attacked Trump for a tendency to attack women.

If there's more, there isn't much more that is salient, you can if you want to confuse it, but then be confused. There's a lot more details, a ton of ammunition. I must say, it's been delightful seeing this arise and seeing Trump squash it in an instant and then see that squashing analyzed agonizingly for days from every angle imaginable except straightforwardly.

That's the job of journalism regarding political matters, I guess, to get and keep people confused.

Could Trump be doing this? Could Trump be doing that? Does Trump have a leg to stand on when ... Could it be that Hillary thinks...? Should  Bill just .... ? The reporters, journalists, analysts, pundits, whatever, mouths flapping, turned themselves inside out tunneling around to avoid facing the obvious corralled plain facts.

They're too ugly. The facts are wholly uncomfortable, cannot be stared down, so, fog. Such a flopping losing thing. There is not enough fog in the world to obfuscate what these two creeps have already done and recorded for history, and it's not just me thinking this, not my opinion, as proof for yourself just google (images) "bill clinton, friend."

"Two mass shootings, two completely different standards of coverage"

"Planned Parenthood was ‘right wing terror,’ but with Islam suddenly ‘motives don’t matter’"

Last month, when a Colorado Christian entered a Planned Parenthood clinic and fatally shot three people, the mainstream media rushed to make the connection to “right-wing domestic terrorism,” even though police hadn’t made any connection and the evidence was thin.

When two California Muslims shot up a government office several days later, massacring 14, national journalists refused to call it Islamic terrorism even though evidence of the shooters’ motive was overwhelming. (read the whole thing)

Journalism

ABC News Videos | ABC Entertainment News

In the comments... Tom • 21 hours ago

"Roman candle battle on Western Ave. in Chicago. between 2 rival gangs." - FALSE Does anyone think 'rival gangs' would shoot (harmless) fireworks at each other?!?! "...But also ( as a local resident described ) between friends who all knew each other and grew up together." - TRUE We used to do this as kids. We were all friends. Dumb, I know, but, if we did it now, we would be two "gangs". Where has good journalism gone?

“Ultimately, we were too deferential to our rape victim”

"Rolling Stone Retracts Article on Rape at University of Virginia"

In an interview discussing Columbia’s findings, Jann S. Wenner, the publisher of Rolling Stone, acknowledged the story’s flaws but said it represented an isolated and unusual episode. The problems with the article started with its source, Mr. Wenner said. He described her as “a really expert fabulist storyteller” who managed to manipulate the magazine’s editorial process. When asked to clarify, he said that he was not trying to blame Jackie, “but obviously there is something here that is untruthful, and something sits at her doorstep.”

The reporting errors by Ms. Erdely were compounded by insufficient scrutiny and skepticism from editors, the report said. And the fact-checking process relied heavily on four hours of conversations with Jackie.

Ms. Erdely, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone who has also written for GQ and The New Yorker, declined to be interviewed for this article. She said in her apology that reading the report was “a brutal and humbling experience.” She also acknowledged that she did not do enough to verify Jackie’s account.

Rolling Stone’s fundamental mistake, Mr. Dana said, was in suspending any skepticism about Jackie’s account because of the sensitivity of the issue. “We didn’t think through all the implications of the decisions that we made while reporting the story, and we never sort of allowed for the fact that maybe the story we were being told was not true,”

James O’Keefe: We have a Big Story

O'Keefe is a new media journalist who caught video of a National Public Radio executive bashing the tea parties and GOP conservatives. NPR is subsidized by tax payers. The NPR executive thought he was meeting with representatives of a Muslim Brotherhood front group, looking for more favorable news coverage towards Palestinians, in a possible exchange for a sizeable donation.

My gut tells me if this story, O'Keefe says he has, was really big, somebody else would have it.

What do you think? Any ideas on what would constitute a "big story" these days? Remember, we are talking about an openly court defying, I have a pen and a phone, I don't have that much time left presidency.

New Republic owners address resignations

"Last week, about a dozen members of the editorial staff of the New Republic walked out in protest over new leadership. By their account, this was a clash of cultures : Silicon Valley versus tradition, and everyone must choose a side. I believe this dangerously oversimplifies a debate many journalistic institutions are having today. They were colleagues whom I personally liked and respected, so I was sad to see them go and regret much of how it happened. But the New Republic is too important an institution to accept their departures as its end...."

"If you really care about an institution and want to make it strong for the ages, you don’t walk out. You roll up your sleeves, you redouble your commitment to those ideals in a changing world, and you fight. This 100-year-old story is worth fighting for."

First and last paragraphs of a Washington Post OpEd Link 

'All in the Cause of Science' or 'Those MythBuster guys have nothing on me'

Link to the original source of the question at hand...

In which a dumb question I tweeted on no sleep, results in gun innovation http://t.co/lNcZmz2PDv http://t.co/env3IkM4dy
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 28, 2014

Jorge Ramos: Reporters ‘Cozy with Power,’ Act Like They’re in a Club

“You turn on the TV, and you see very bland interviews. Journalists in the United States are very cozy with power, very close to those in power. They laugh with them. They go to the [White House] correspondents’ dinner with them. They have lunch together. They marry each other. They’re way too close to each other. I think as journalists we have to keep our distance from power.”

“I’m not seeing tough questions asked on American television,” he added later. “I’m not seeing those correspondents that would question those in power. It’s like a club. We are not asking the tough questions.”

Mediaite.com

 

Jorge Ramos Ávalos is a Mexican American journalist and author based in Miami, Florida.

The Corner: Who gets a Walter Cronkite Award, for excellence in journalism, after 3 days of work?

"His first television show has only been on the air for three days, but Ronan Farrow is already winning awards for his journalistic work. Reach the World, a global education group, will honor the 26-year-old Farrow with its annual Cronkite Award for Excellence in Exploration and Journalism."

"Prior to the debut of his show, Ronan Farrow Daily, on Monday, Farrow worked as an adviser to the State Department and with UNICEF, among other humanitarian efforts; he’s contributed to various publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and The Atlantic."

NRO.

"Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962–81). During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll."

Wikipedia