Shrill?

I hear tell that Chris Matthews of MSNBC thinks women leaders, like Nancy Pelosi, have a problem because when we women raise our voices we sound “shrill” and it’s most unpleasant.

I just thought I’d point out that we’ve been listening to fatuous egotistical male morons for the past six years — I’m sure I don’t have to mention names — and it has been nearly unbearable.

I’m eager for Nancy Pelosi to raise her voice. Counting on it, in fact.

Thirty Second Attacks

I was watching the news yesterday, catching up on the Jack Abramoff scandal, and I heard something that nearly made me swear off news for a year. The political commentator — a Washington D.C. “insider” — noted that while we’re can’t be sure what the legal consequences will be for the various congress-critters being fingered by Abramoff, we can be sure there will be heaps of political consequences. “The thirty-second attack ads will multiply,” she said.

Isn’t this the reason we go running to blogs for content? Traditional news outlets may not help us figure out what happened, who’s guilty, and what to do about it, but by heaven, the creators of political advertising will have a heyday on TV. Why then would I even want to turn the tube on? Can’t these advertising types get a clue?

So I am swearing here and now, that for the next eleven months, whenever one of those thirty second attack ads comes on the television, radio, or other willing vehicle for such fertilizer, I will hit the Mute button. And if I can’t get at the remote because it’s under the cat, I’ll hit my internal Mute button. And if my internal Mute button isn’t working because advertising and PR specialists have figured out how to get around it — perhaps by suddenly playing snippets of Led Zeppelin in the middle of the ads — I’ll stick my fingers in my ears and sing LA LA LA. I swear it. And I urge everyone to do the same.

P.S. Just in case we need a little extra inspiration, here’s Terence McKenna’s take on TV:

I’ve been coming and going from Los Angeles a lot recently and when the plane swings out over the eastern part of the city looking down is like looking at a printed circuit. All these curved driveways and cul-de-sacs with the same little modules installed on each end of them and you realize that as long as … the TV stays on these are all interchangable parts. This is this nighmarish thing which McLuhan and others foresaw, the creation of the public. The public has no history, has no future, lives in a golden moment created by credit which binds them ineluctably to a fascist system that is never criticized.

The Non-Ordinary Conhibition Rhetoric of Terence McKenna

Terence, you would have loved blogging.

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