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April 01, 2009

WTF?

Man, this pisses me off!

How did Patrick Goldstein - aside from the fact that he lives in a delusional state of fear and loathing about the evil internet despite the fact that he now is exclusively a blogger (with his blog entries printed now and again) in his job at the LA Times - manage to take an inflammatory story from the Times of London, cite pick-ups by The San Jose Mercury News and The New York Posts, and spin it into yet another f-ing "that evil, irresponsible web" story?

I feel bad for the people who were innocently using Patrick as a mouthpiece to spin their version of what happened... since he couldn't help himself but to make something that had almost nothing to do with the internet into a "evil bloggers" slam-a-thon.

Quotes directly from the Times of London piece (bolds added by me):

Headline - "James Gray's anger over Joaquin Phoenix's rap career"

"A good performance, meanwhile, from Gwyneth Paltrow, complete with a coolly erotic breast-baring scene, ensured that popular interest was appropriately piqued."

"'It’s like, Letterman was trying to get the movie out there, but the only thing that’s out there now is a crazy person with a beard making a fool of himself!' says Gray, still seething today at the 'circus' surrounding Phoenix."

"when it came to shooting the now infamous 'breast scene'”

“If it is shown to be a hoax, then that’s great, because Joaquin will come back to acting. And he is something special. But if it isn’t, ye know, I think he needs, well, help.”

Where, exactly, was there room for Those Darn Bloggers to make this story more hyperbolic?

What is Patrick's big issue? That they misunderstood a quote that includes the word "clown," mostly because the phrasing is so poorly delivered by the author of the piece, Kevin Maher.

And he's commenting on media laziness... but again, it's The Times of London that he is actually criticizing, not the web.

Patrick closes, quoting Gray:

"It feels crazy to me that you can say 'X' and after the Internet is through with it, it comes out 'Q.' They either only include the first half of your quote or the headline is sensationalized and by the time you read the third story, it ends up having nothing to do with what you actually said."

But that's the Web in all its glory: never letting the truth get in the way of a good sensationalized story."

Yes, Patrick... that does seem to be the case. You don't have the integrity to place 100% of the blame where it should be - if blame is due... as you don't seem to feel it appropriate to consider whether the director was covering his tracks with this tale of woe - on the Traditional Media newspaper, The Times of London.

If you weren't automatically sliding into your Abbott & Costello Niagara Falls bit - "The BLOGGERS fall! - every time the web came up as a possible whipping medium, you would have dealt with that entire final quote laid the anger at the feet of the wrong medium.

I guess they found the right blogging sensationalizer who wouldn't sweat the truth to sell this story.

Posted by dpoland at April 1, 2009 10:08 PM

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Posted by: Kristopher Tapley at April 1, 2009 11:15 PM

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