GI Joe - no longer a US soldier? Might not be such a bad idea.

GI Joe may now stand for "Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity", with its star representing a vague multinational force.

Hasbro's character may no longer be cast as American. Hasbro has backed away from the "Great American Hero" tagline since, not surprisingly, a film showing the character as an American soldier would not play well pretty much anywhere abroad.

It's a big patriotic issue in the US where, also unsurprisingly, the average guy on the street has no idea what a horrible image our country has in the rest of the world.

If only the US-based supporters of GI Joe would come out in support of the withdrawal of real-life GI Joe's from the Iraq quagmire. So much ado about a doll that's made in China.

RCTV shutdown in Venezuela, so what, you ask?

The biggest problem with the shutdown of RCTV is its one less source of news for the populace. Yeah, newspapers are available - but when a newspaper costs a rather large percentage of your daily income, are you going to buy one or catch the TV news? If you can't afford a daily paper you're not likely to have cable either.

I liked Chavez' attitude originally but now that I hear that he's targeting another private television station over some probably-imagined assassination plot, not so much.

victory for traditional media, killer sends video to NBC and not YouTube

Looks like the mass-murderer Virginia went out with a videotape and a bang. He reminds me of an ex-boyfriend.

But look on the bright side, this is good news for the traditional media boffins. This is an example of someone under 25 who could well have used YouTube and chose not to. ;)

definitely a better shot than author...

It's doggerel purportedly written by the guy who killed 31 people yesterday.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2007/0417071vtech1.html

32 dead at Virginia Tech today

32 people were gunned down at Virginia Tech this morning. When I turned on CNN they were all agog about the details - you could tell it was going to be a Story With a Theme and a Logo for a coupla days.

Now lets compare and contrast this for a second. Today's the 16th. Virginia Tech will be in the news for at least the next week or two.

On the 14th, 32 people died in a bus-bomb attack in Iraq. The story got a couple paragraphs mention and maybe a picture, a few words on the news - but it was just that days deaths from Iraq, nothing more. The story will not have a musical theme, a logo, and not much mention.

I ask a rhetorical question: how are the 32 human beings in Iraq so different from the 32 at Virginia Tech? Is it not an equal tragedy? Is it just possible that we're so hardened to hearing about deaths in Iraq that it somehow minimizes their impact?

Think about it.