Did you know that 50 million Catholics have left the Church in France, most of whom now belong to the Church of the Great Frog, whose name for God is Le Salteur [the Jumper]?
They call it The Great Leaping.
I read it on a bag of fries from McDonald's.
That is, fried frogs' legs.
Interestingly, having attended a small Division 1-A school, I have read AP game writeups that are blatantly derived from the box score. It was clear to me that the person ONLY looked at the box score and was likely not even near a radio, TV or within 100 miles of the game that they were "covering".
What makes folks think that other, more important press, is any better?
Part of the "Al Gore is a pretty good guy" thing is that it is exactly what those of us who write PR and marketing materials want. We know that we are not really scoring points through persuasion, but rather by inserting the "impression" into your little heads so that you think "pretty good guy" when you think of Al Gore.
When we pitch this service we talk about branding. We want you to think, "oh, that brand has a good reputation" when the only thing that you have ever known about said brand is what came out of our machines.
PR is where journalists go when they wake up to the fact that there is not much money for most practicing journalists. This ought to give you an idea of what goes into your papers.
It might also be called "The Lewinsky Effect." I recall how so many of my co-workers had the identical opinion on the matter as all the Dan Blather clones.
The scary part of all this is that reporters pretty much all majored in journalism so many of them know very little about what they're writing. There are few stories *about* journalism after all.
I've been on the "inside" of some stories where I work (nothing important, mind you) and the reports very often bear little or no resemblance to reality. I try to keep that in mind when the media feeding frenzies start.
Harry Potter fans recognize the Al Gore effect both from the Potter books (in which Rowling satirizes the remarkable gullibility of people reading newspapers and watching teevee in her writing about the 'Daily Prophet,' whose reports are believed by everyone regardless of the facts) and from the horde of Harry haters who know that Rowling is a Satanist, that Harry drinks blood with his lunch at Hogwarts, and that Scholastic is grooming our children for a life in wicca covens. All without reading one of the books....
I encountered some amazing pseudo-facts yesterday whilst killing time in the pub (due to the strike on the Underground, I decided to avoid rush hour going home).
A man and woman sitting just down from me were just...well, trying to impress each other by lying. Some interesting facts I learnt ranged from the predictable Catholic-bashing - "women would tell a priest they had been raped and he would say, 'well, in order for you to be absolved you'll have to recreate the circumstances' (there isn't enough space in a comment box to point out all the problems with that statement, but I'll start with "Where and when did this happen, then?"); Islam - "those fundamentalists have no idea what Mohammed's teaching is' (yes, whereas you've read the Koran cover to cover); and vrious interesting non-facts about the EU, the IRA and so forth.
Each was determined to agree with the wonderful things the other was saying, regardless of whether or not it flatly contradicted something one or the other had claimed only moments earlier.
By the end, the man (I lost track of what the woman had been saying) had claimed, among other things, that he was a half-Arab Anglican who'd grown up in France, but with strong IRA ties on one side of his family, and had spent the last few years 'hanging around' in Portadown. Yet he didn't seem to mind when his companion praised the Orange orders to the skies. He also name-dropped politicians like they were going out of fashion.
I'm not sure what this illustrates. But it's something.
Is Eric Johnson an active Marine or is he retired and just there as a journalist?
Eric was in the Marine reserve last year, when he served in Iraq. I'm not sure if he still is in the reserves now.
Just the other night the guys in my prayer group were talking about The Bleeding ...
So stupid you can't make it up.
I've heard it referred to as a "pruining", I guess it's a bleeding when you accidentally cut yourself 
That's cool. I hope you wish me luck, Eric. I'm off to Parris Island in a few days time.
I do wish you luck, Jonathan. I will be happy to call you a brother Marine when you return.
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