Hey, Let's Get Pregnant!

I really thought we were past this kind of stupidity, however adults never seem to understand teenagers. Officials in Gloucester, Massachusetts, say that a group of teenage girls made a pact to get pregnant. The mayor, an anti-teen sex activist and a certain local talk radio show host (who came from Canada) is blaming Hollywood. Here is the AP story from Yahoo. First, Britney Spear’s little sister got pregnant, then there is that movie Juno (Right here I want to mention that I am madly in love with Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody, who is on the cover of this month’s Writer’s Digest) about a pregnant teenager. IT IS ALL PART OF A PLOT!

Let me tell you what I know from my thirty-some years on this planet. Gloucester is a small town. This happens in small towns every year. It happened my senior year at Lebanon High School and about ten year ago People magazine had a cover story about a small town in Texas where about half the girls in school were pregnant. It happens all the time. Someone claims the girls were "giving Hi-Fives." I went to school in a small town and you always hear an eyewitness account from "Some kid." They are always unreliable.

Second, doesn’t the mayor have better things to do than worry about who is pregnant. That must really be a SMALL AND BORING TOWN. As for the activist mentioned at the end of the AP story, I want to ask one of these abstinence activist why they all look like the snooty girls in high school who only dated the jocks. It is like they say, "I’m not going to sleep with you and I’m going to make the other girls sign a pledge not to sleep with you. Naner, naner, nya nya!"

Kids, take some advice from Uncle Desdinova. If this is what you girls want to for fun, well then knock yourselves out up.

Embarrassing Banner Ad

Some ads on news websites and blogs are to advertise things related to the content. Adland has this rather amusing screen capture from CNN.com. Ooooppps!

Nashville Brass Leader Danny Davis Dies at 83

He cashed in on radio stations having news at the top of the hour and the success of Herb Alpert. Trumpeter Danny Davis died Friday in Nashville according to the Tennessean. He and Chet Adkins came up with the idea of instrumental country hits after hearing former big bands and orchestras mangle rock and roll songs of the day (101 Stings version of "Somebody To Love" is kind-of-cool though). I remember when Davis was in Branson, he told KY 3's Steve Grant that he modeled the upbeat sound and style after Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass. He recorded several short instrumentals for radio stations to use to time up to the network news at the top of the hour. Sadly, it is hard to find Danny Davis and the Nashville Brass on CD.

FCC's Adelstein May Believe In the Existence of Talkola

I have mentioned here before that I believe that talk radio host accept payments by right-wing PACs to push certain issues to prominence. I have dubbed this practice "Talkola" after "payola," which I believe was not a real problem but the reaction of a bunch of cranky old men in the 50's to rock and roll. I've convinced one of my co-workers of this. He told me he has given up listening to talk radio because all of the host talked about the same topic for more than a month.

Now All Access reports that FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, in a speech to the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis over the weekend, suggested the same thing. Only he isn't talking about PACs, he is suggesting that the Bush administration was behind the positive spin given to the Iraq War by talk radio as well as the news media.

"According to news reports, analysts who disagreed with the information given to them lost access," ADELSTEIN asserted. "This comes in the wake of new revelations that network executives pressured news reporters to develop Administration-friendly angles when we were heading to war. Today, I commit to you that I plan to demand a real and thorough investigation. We need to determine, without delay, whether the DoD violated the laws we enforce against payola.

"These rules prohibit anyone involved with preparing broadcast or cable programs from accepting anything of value without disclosing it to the public," ADELSTEIN continued. "This is not just a question of journalist ethics and integrity. It is the law. The war in IRAQ is clearly a controversial issue of public importance. The American people have a legal right to know when the government is sponsoring the source that is purporting to provide objective analysis."

Adelstein also mentioned that it is illegal to use federal funds for propaganda purposes. "The federal anti-propaganda and payola laws are grounded on the principle that the public is entitled to know who seeks to persuade them so they can make up their own minds about the credibility of the information presented," he said. "The public has a legal right to know that people who present themselves to be independent, unbiased experts and reporters are not shills hired to promote a corporate -- or governmental -- agenda."

Adelstein continued, "It is time for us to curb the excesses of commercialism, as CONGRESS intended," he declared. " We need to ... develop new rules to clarify that sponsorship identification has to be clear and understandable. It should not be buried in a compressed crawl at the end of a show that would take a magnifying glass to read. "We need to fight thinly disguised payola fueling homogenized corporate music that leaves no room for local and independent artists. We need to fight video news releases masquerading as news, with public relations agents pushing agendas that squeeze out real news coverage and local community concerns. We need to fight product placements turning news and entertainment shows alike into undisclosed commercials. And we need to fight rapacious advertisers preying on the unsuspecting minds of our young children."

Here is a transcript of the speech. It is great reading.

ABC "Wide World Of Sports" Host Jim McKay Dies

Jim McKay has died. He was 86. He was the host of ABC's Wide World of Sports and voiced the famous intro (As a side note I wanted to be that "Agony of Defeat" skier). He is also known for his coverage of the kidnapping of 11 Israeli athletes. When McKay learned they had been killed by their kidnappers, he said solemnly "Their all gone." Here is AP's obit.

Great Hera! Wonder Woman Finds a Floating Corpse!

The AP is reporting that actress Lynda Cater, who played Wonder Woman on TV in the 70s, was boating earlier this week when she saw a body floating in the Potomac River.

Here is the rest: "Lynda Carter tells The Washington Post she was alone in a boat when she saw the body Wednesday. She says she didn't have a cell phone with her, so she yelled to some fishermen and asked them to call police. Carter waited until rescuers arrived and directed them to the body.

District of Columbia police say the body of 47-year-old Helen Johnstone of Washington was found floating on the river Wednesday. The medical examiner's office has not declared an official cause of death.

Carter says she "did what anybody would have done." (snip)

At least it wasn't Steve Trevor. I remember a discussion with some classmates in college in which my friend Jennifer said she wanted to be Wonder Woman because she had "a man she had to take care of."

Bo Diddley 1928 - 2008

I know I'm a day late, but I have to mention Bo Diddley. His influence on modern rock music is so great that his style is called "the Bo Diddley beat." It was imitated from the beginning by contemporaries like Buddy Holly ("Not Fade Away"), Don Gibson ("Oh Lonesome Me") and Johnny Otis ("Willie and the Hand Jive" and "Casting My Spell"). Other clones sprang up such as "Roslyn" by the Pretty Things, "Hey Little Girl" by Dee Clark, "Hey Gyp" by the Animals (written by Donovan), "I Want Candy" by the Strangeloves/Bow Wow Wow and "Faith" by George Michael. George Thorogood even remade Diddley's "Who Do You Love" using tune of "Bo Diddley."

Here is the CNN story.