What Are You Missing: November 7-14, 2009
Ten things worth checking out online from this past week:
1. In honor of Veterans Days (or Remembrance Day as the rest of the world knows it), a wonderful set of videos of dogs welcoming their owners back from military service. Get those tissues ready and enjoy.
2. The Daily Show skewered Sean Hannity for using footage from Glenn Beck’s “9/12” rally in DC to depict Michelle Bachmann’s much smaller rally. As departing White House Communications Director Anita Dunn pointed out, “Well that is where you are getting fact-checking and investigative journalism these days folks. It is a different media environment.” Nice to see the rest of the press prove their utter fecklessness once more. For his part, Hannity mustered the most pathetic of apologies, saying it was “inadvertent,” which led to this wonderful response from Stewart and his staffperson forced to watch Hannity daily:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Sean Hannity Apologizes to Jon | ||||
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3. Our own Liz Ellcessor offers two excellent posts on television’s encounters with people with disabilities, one a follow-up to her Antenna post on the Glee episode “Wheels,” and another on Brothers. Let’s hope it’s not another 300 years till American television offers us two shows with people with disabilities. Adding to Liz’s own links to other commentators on the episode, I’ll also note Myles McNutt’s piece at Cultural Learnings.
4. MediaCommons unveiled its new profile system, which is exciting and well worth reading about.
5. Jason Mittell continues his admirable process of discussing the job search at his department at Middlebury in as open terms as he’s probably allowed to. The job market scares people more than anything other than the tenure process, so it’s great to see someone opening up about it in something other than woefully vague terms.
6. In honor of Seth McFarlane’s bad week (Family Guy had its worst week in the ratings this year by 0.5 points, Cleveland Show by 0.6 points, and American Dad by a full point, while his Family Guy Presents Seth and Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show received poor reviews), here comes this explanation of how his shows get put together:
7. In the world of odd adaptations, it seems that Justin Halpern’s Twitter account, ShitMyDadSays, is being made into a sitcom by the Will and Grace creators and Warner Bros. TV. See here for more commentary, though I suspect I’ll discuss this soon over at The Extratextuals, cause it’s so wonderfully paratextual. Update: I’ve now done so here.
8. Annie Peterson talks about web traffic and star talk. I’m going to be very obtuse with details, since Antenna’s supposed to be under the radar right now, so we’re not ready to play with the fire she offers the kindling to build. But to see the evidence of her assertions, see her earlier post here too.
9. Timothy Burke discusses using Power Point in the classroom (though all PP haters should, as we learned at MCS colloquium on Thursday at Wisconsin, consult Kurt Squire for tips. Kurt, to be fair, credits Henry Jenkins with leading the way, a shout out that I’d echo).
10. Finally, in the blast from the past category, it’s old, but if you’ve never treated yourself to Real Ultimate Power and the wonders of all things ninja, do go here and enjoy.
Also, note that the new issue of Flow is out, and that it was Human Rights week on In Media Res
I like the attempt, however minor, in Timothy Burke’s work to redeem power point. I still maintain it can be fantastic for teaching in media especially. I have seen many people it effectively to embed clips for viewing. I think power point could be particularly useful when discussing any aesthetic topic, comparing changes in animation, the visual look of a character over the length of a franchise, or even a detailed discussion of how the set of a program like All In the Family affected the way the show functioned. When dealing with visual media a dislike of powerpoint seems odd. Even teaching a topic that is not as related to aesthetics, which I am now, I find myself frequently making old-fashioned transparencies, because I do not have access to a projector for a computer, to make group project questions or in class worksheets, visible for students to refer to during our discussion. When discussing writing style or outline forms, it saves tons of time that would be wasted writing sentences on the board. Whenever I want to reinforce lecture/discussion with activities I wish I had power point. No technology’s reputation should be based on its worst use, as appears to be the case in much of the rhetoric surrounding power point and teaching.
Nice round up, Jonathan! Glad to see you included Jason’s post about the Middlebury job. Definitely interesting to see him write about the process. One thing I might add is Chris Becker’s new blog for undergrad TV majors: http://newsfortvmajors.blogspot.com/ Great to share with students.
In conversations of late, I have found myself referring more to this segment where he takes on the fear-mongering of Hannity and predetermined narrative of Fox than I have the fact checking one. As what amounts to a media watchdog “group,” TDS is well-known for its fact checking. What I have become increasingly impressed by is the ways in which it goes about trying to tackle the cable news nets’ “affectivity” (something I’m beginning to write about). Colbert, of course, has captured that from his particular parodic undertaking, but I like how Stewart goes about it as well. I can try to put it into words, but ain’t nothing like hanging a teddy bear to make the point perfectly (and humorously).