Oh my something important happened at Penn State

[nadinbrzezinski]

No, not the firing of the coach...something MORE important. A news van was turned over...newsies felt threatened.

It used to be that in riots cop cars were burned...hey they ARE the establishment. A media van? This should tell you how much the media is now seen as part of the problem.

Yup, we crossed another lovely line last night. And media types, so far two, are a tad confused on this.

[sharp_stick]

1. Either that or it was just a bunch

of drunken idiots tipping over a news van.

These little shitstains had nothing on their minds other than random drunken idiocy masked with the cloak of OH POOR US.

[Drale]

So when people protest and break banks windows, its political

but when people protest about sports, they have to be drunk?

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. Yup

Given the zeitgeist this is important.

[sharp_stick]

13. I never said that

the general consensus is that the students were "upset" about the firing of Joe Paterno there is no political issue here. The fact that every Tom Dick and Harry on this site seems to have some kind of innate need to post Paterno shit doesn't make it political.

I posit that that students were in fact looking for an excuse to act like little assholes and they accomplished their mission. This little protest is much more on par with the idiocy that took place in Vancouver following the loss of the Stanley Cup finals this year than it is with any kind of legitimate protest. They would have tipped over a phone booth too if any happened to still exist.

[nadinbrzezinski]

Yes, but there is something far deeper going on here

Just pointing that out.

[SlimJimmy]

28. Make sure to also point out that the news van was probaly worth from

500,000 up to about a million dollars. What a bunch of morons.

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. Yeah and... Cop car torched the other day in Cali

Was upwards of half a million too...and.

[SlimJimmy]

31. So, you see no distinction between destroying "private" property vs public property?

If they started torching private residences in the area, would you go "and" as well?

[nadinbrzezinski]

33. Actually what I see is a deeper dynamic

One that not surprisingly you do not aprove off. For the record, nominally Nile TV was also private property.

Suffice it to say you are having a problem with all of this. On a meta level what you are seeing is radicalization. What can I say...it is scary, it is, but you either try to get it, or you don't...it can't be stopped. That ball is already rolling.

[SlimJimmy]

34. You are correct. I absolutely do not approve of the wanton destruction of

private property. There's a dynamic at play here all right. It's just not the one you think it is. The dynamic in PA last night was of out of control college kids who destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment for no reason whatsoever.

[nadinbrzezinski]

35. I know

And I can't help you...on the surface that's what is happening.

:hi:

Law and order types were also horrified in the sixties. It is also part of the dynamic at play here.

[MineralMan]

37. But is it a meta dynamic?

I worry about them meta dynamics, you know. :rofl:

[SlimJimmy]

41. This must be it.

"Meta Dynamics Group consists of companies who are Registered Training Organisation's (RTO's) delivering Business Solutions with tailored nationally accredited training programs. We analyse where the need for improvement is within your business, then Meta Dynamics designs and delivers a customised program for your staff ensuring all of your requirements are met."

:hi:

[SlimJimmy]

38. What's at play here is very simple. A bunch of college kids threw

the equivalent of a juvenile hissy fit, and trashed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of private property because the coach of their football team was fired. This has nothing to do with OWS, nothing to do with revolutionaries, and nothing to do with any new dynamic.

[Name removed]

42. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[pennylane100]

23. Well if you are out on campus demonstrating in support of child abuse.,

the fact that you are drunk would in some small way redeem your actions.

[snappyturtle]

2. Good grief the unrec fairies are out ....again! I think you've made a very valid point! nt

[Obamanaut]

11. unrec for the unrec complaint

[dtexdem]

3. The Cornhuskers are looking better all the time.

(Especially because my Wildcats already beat them.) ;-)

[Scuba]

4. Interesting observation, but I'm having trouble reading it...

... it would be nice if it was a statement regarding our bought-and-paid-for "free" press.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. I think it is actually

We were having that discussion here last night and how many of us had both CNN covering this. And the stream covering Berkeley and Harvard. Hell there was news coming out of Berkeley last night, Student Strike...not that you should bother CNN with it.

[arcane1]

5. I'm not sure what line that was...

I assumed the idiots were just randomly causing a mess :shrug:

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. They were, but media vans generally speaking are seen as neutral

And newsies usually don't run for lives if attached to known media.

Just saying, part of a larger whole.

[RebelOne]

26. Neutral unless it is Fox News. n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

27. Well it started with fox lies oh about a year or so ago

That's when those signed cropped up like everywhere. (Chiefly among counter protesters at tea party rallies)

[Harmony Blue]

8. I don't think they understand

yet what awaits them.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. Yup.

[Nye Bevan]

9. So when mom and pop stores have their windows broken and are set on fire

is that because mom and pop stores are "seen as part of the problem"?

Or are they just a convenient target?

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. Whoosh.

Never said that...or justified it. I am just telling you we just crossed an important line. A Nile tv like line.

[RZM]

15. I'm curious why you chose 'lovely'

I can't tell whether that means you are glad that line was crossed or being sarcastic and unhappy about it. Or maybe you have no particular opinion on whether it was good or bad and are just noting what happened.

Your post did remind me of an interview I heard a few years ago on NPR's 'Fresh Air' with Terri Gross. The subject was a former reporter named Karl Fleming. He was from the south originally but covered the civil rights movement for northern news outlets. It's an interesting interview and focuses alot on his childhood, which was very sad.

Anyway, he was beaten nearly death while covering the Watts riots in 1965. While I don't think his attackers knew he was a journalist, he describes earlier that day attending a rally where one of the speakers (it might have been Stokely Carmichael, but I forget) singled out news reporters for condemnation, saying they only show up to report the bad news. So this line has certainly been crossed before.

Here's a link to the interview, btw:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4760600

That being said, I'm not convinced that Penn State mob was necessarily thinking that way. I think they tipped over the van because 1) it was in their path, and 2) it represented an 'outside entity' who was not part of the Penn State community and the riot seemed to be very much about defending the paramount symbol of that community.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. Adjust your sarcasmeter

And realize I am pointing a line that was crossed. I am not giddy, sad or anything. This is a fact jack.

Also you are talking of Watts where the media has always been seen as a problem. These are middle class kids mostly. I am sure we can agree there is a slight difference.

[RZM]

21. No harm. I just couldn't tell for sure what you meant by that

You're right of course that State College in 2011 is not Watts in 1965. But as the poster below me pointed out, it's maybe a more specific reaction to the Joe Paterno thing in particular rather than a deeper discontent with the media. Since the media stories about Paterno's behavior led to his ouster, they blame the media for their hero getting the boot - at least partly.

Just my take.

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. And partly you are very correct

But watching live streams from Berkeley and Oakland media is seen as a problem. I mean MSM is...

Mind you I saw that van this morning and heard the very confused folks at both msnbc and NPR. It was like funny.

[Godhumor]

16. I think, in this case, the student hero worship of Joe Pa meant he had to be a victim and the media

Was a convenient target for "making him" the bad guy.

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. That was part of it

And goes into the far larger national narrative we have had for years, even decades.

[KansDem]

17. The rise of "cupie-doll journalism"

The media has been part of the problem. Ever since Roger Ailes crafted FOX as a right-wing propaganda machine.

Report: Roger Ailes Started Planning Fox News While Working for Nixon

But FOXaganda aside, we now have "celebrities" as news readers. The other day I was driving through downtown KC and saw one of its local TV news vans: it had two large pictures of local celebrity "news readers" on the side under its call letters. I thought "Why do we need to see 'Hollywood'-like images of this f*cking news duo?"

It's all about cupie-doll journalism...

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. Yup, used to be weather

Now they are all over.

[KansDem]

24. Don't forget the "color commentator"

A colour commentator (colour analyst, analyst) is a sports commentator who assists the play-by-play announcer, often by filling in any time when play is not in progress. The colour analyst and main commentator will often exchange comments freely throughout the broadcast, when the play-by-play announcer is not describing the action. The colour commentator provides expert analysis and background information, such as statistics, strategy and injury reports on the teams and athletes, and occasionally anecdotes or light humor. Colour commentators are often former athletes or coaches of the sport being broadcast.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_commentator

These guys and gals are sooooo annoying! I don't want every second filled with speculation as to what the coach is thinking or why a player did what he/she did! But there they are! Yammering constantly to fill in "any time when play is not in progress."

I had my fill during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. I was attempting to watch the marathon when the "color commentator" was jabbering about what the runners were thinking, why some of them wore funny hats, how each of them was "psyching up," and on and on and on!

I finally turned off the TV, thinking the race itself would be shorter than the ramblings and rantings of the "color commentator."

[Lint Head]

25. Paterno didn't take 'real' action when he heard about the pedophilia in 1998 or 2010.

Is Paterno so dumb as to not know what pedophilia is? From the press conferences at Penn that I've seen, and the Grand Jury Indictment, it was political. He wanted to protect Penn's image and money. He made a billion or two for them. Drunk students is an excuse.

It is important that a 'news' van was overturned because the students were shouting about how the 'media' had trumped the whole thing up and Paterno was just a victim. Paterno was not a victim. He thinks football and Penn's money is more important than the real victims.

The children.

[nadinbrzezinski]

29. Oh trust me I know he covered up things

And political... And it is partly about "bad media" crucifying this guy (rightfully so). But there is more, just putting it in the larger national context of media is not to be trusted.

On a personal note, irony I haz a bad case of it.

[Lint Head]

32. I agree.

[fishwax]

36. well, college football fan bases tend to hate the media in general

Not all fans, of course, or probably even most, but the fan bases -- it's a phenomenon common to every college fan base I've observed or interacted with that they believe the national media hates their team. Accusations of "east-coast bias" are common, as are things like referring to ESPN as ESPiN. When talking heads on ESPN praise a given team, there will be fans of another team who believe that it's all a plan to make their team look bad by comparison. When a talking head says something bad about a given team, there will be those in the fan base who believe that it is because ESPN hates their school, or because they have a TV contract with another conference, or some such thing. (It's not just ESPN, of course, but they're the most visible targets.) Even Notre Dame (which most fan bases around the country feel gets preferential treatment from the national media) believes that they're unfairly targeted by a vast media conspiracy that hates the golden domers.

This has been going on for two decades, at least, and in the last 15 years has intensified with the rise of internet message boards and so on. The reaction to the Penn State story has developed along the same lines, with some fans believing ESPN was spending too much time on it because they have something against PSU or Paterno and that the media has been fueling the frenzy because they know that getting rid of Paterno would make for a good story. And the attack on the media van was a product of that. But it's been gestating, as I said, in this particular environment for years.

[sufrommich]

39. Yes, no doubt those drunken football fans burned that van for

political reasons and weren't really just a bunch of morons blaming the messenger for dissing the coach as it appeared to the rest of us.

[Brickbat]

40. So if this had happened at some other time and the media van were right there, the students would

have let it be? But somehow, things have changed, and this same student mob now holds no scruples about tipping over a news van? As far as two "media types" being "confused" about it, many journalists are familiar with being targets in situations they're reporting on.