My Top Ten 2010 news stories, and a flibbertigibbet media

2010 brought us lots of notable events… some legitimate news, with proper and balanced coverage on the events… i.e. the drama and joy of the Chilean miner rescues, the eruption of the Iceland volcano that brought many a Euro airport to a standstill, Kagen’s nomination to SCOTUS, N. Korea torpedoes a S. Korean warship, McChrystal’s resignation following his Rolling Stone interview, and Juan Williams getting canned from NPR.

But when you have 24/7 cable news channels… most just replaying the same storylines but with different talking heads… there are other stories, hyped up to a dull roar to fill the slow times, then dropped off the face of the earth as a flibbertigibbet media turns it’s flakey attention elsewhere the moment some politico pulls their strings. So, at risk of riling a ton of you up on this fine New Year’s Eve… LOL… here are my Top Ten Hyped Up, Then Abandoned, 2010 news stories…. in no particular order.

1: The Deepwater Horizon explosion, the Gulf oil spill. This one had something for everyone. Conspiracists had a field day with the who’s and how’s of deliberate sabatoge. Anti-Obama types were delighted that his administration proved themselves to be woefully inadequate and behind the eight ball at every step. And the environmentalists gleefully whispered of Armaggedon. The EPA did more to hinder the clean up than help, while the O’Dept of Energy and Obama further exacerbated the economic woes by issuing a moratorium on not only deep water drilling, but slamming the doors shut for shallow water drilling permits as well. Actor Kevin Costner got press on his better than the average bear centrifuges, BP bought them and put them to work… but nary a blip on the media screen was to be seen as a follow up on the clean up successes.

Needless to say, Armaggedon will have to wait for a new year, the Gulf oil rigs are gone but who cares because no one can afford to drive around without good reason because of high unemployment. Naturally, with demand down, gas prices are rising, which delights an administration, bent on shoving the nation into electric cars made by Government Motors. And the flibbertigibbet media doesn’t bother following up on the economic repercussions of Obama’s moratorium, or the return of the fishing business in the Gulf. That would be oh so inconvenient after all the public handwringing of gloom ‘n’ doom.

2: The earthquake in Haiti: Truly a sad story of those who have yet to recover from Mother Nature’s fury. But while the press tired of the poverty and tragedy, and performers no longer wanted to push a popular cause, the Haitians and their plight simply fell off the face of the earth for the western press… until, of course, for a few days while they screamed “plague”. What happened to all the charitable donations? How about those poisoned wells? zip…. not newsworthy, I guess.

3: Scott Brown wins Kennedy’s seat in MA: ah yes, the tea party darling was all the rage for awhile. Despite warnings from some of us that he was, after all, just another MA RINO cut from the Mitt Romney cloth, he was hoisted on GOP and tea partiers shoulders. Mind you… is it worthy of an atta boy just because a GOP actually won a Kennedy seat? Certainly. I’d celebrate if Miss Piggy won the seat. But Brown was never going to be able to live up to the tea party criteria, so the not-so-much-a-rumor-mill spin has it that they’re looking to challenge him in the 2012 primaries. But it seems both GOP and conservatives alike are laying low on post election criticisms, and not saying much about their misplaced support for yet another RINO.

4: Arizona’s illegal immigration law: Despite the fact the law basically codified federal statute in state form, the O’admin vowed challenges, the lib/progs screamed about racism, and GOPers outside the state wrung their hands in despair, hoping they wouldn’t be tainted. Promises that law enforcement would abuse it from the start were coupled with outraged liberal state honchos, declaring an AZ boycott… which has been costing the state’s economy an estimated $140 million in lost convention and meeting business. Whether AZ’s growth slow down is attributed to an exodus of illegal immigrants, or the deplorable economy hitting every US state is debatable… but one thing is for sure. The hot story of AZ’s supposed racism has also fallen off the charts as unworthy media spin.

5: Washington DC crime rate: Gosh darn… wish this was about the “get away with murder or theft” crimes of our corrupt elected ones, but nope. It’s about the beltway commoners. For the 2nd year in a row since the SCOTUS Heller decision on gun rights, the beltway crime statistics have fallen by 25% (2009) and 29% (2010). This must leave the Brady gun control enthusiasts, who attempted to turn their loss into an open door for increased regulation, truly aghast. But then, if the media doesn’t report that the crime rate is dropping in the beltway, they certainly have the spin opportunity on their side, eh?

Oh yes.. one caveat about DC crime… seems that sexual crimes against women skyrocked to almost a 50% rise this year over last. Interesting scenario for a small uber urban community where 38% of the denizens work for the federal government…. What was it that Michael Douglas said in the Hollywood blockbuster, Disclosure? oh yes… “sexual harrassmen… it is not about sex. It’s about power.”

My suggestion to the women in DC? Get yourself some training, a hand gun, and go for a concealed carry.

6: Obama announces end to combat mission in Iraq: ah ahem… could this be yet another “mission accomplished” banner, but unpublicized? Or could it be that the media didn’t want to notice that the “combat troops” that were removed simply took a short hop to Afghanistan, where the Obama “surge” has been less than effective? Of course it might have been more effective if Obama had done it the way his Generals suggested, and not his own way… but let’s not go there, eh? But think of the Bush banner days… not much press by comparison, don’t you think?

7: The “ground zero mosque”: Emotions ran hot and heavy. For months it was nothing but accusations against the Imam, the location, the controversy, all kinds of helpful suggestions on how the government could expand on eminent domain and seize only that building, while leaving the rest of the buildings – also damaged in the 911 attack – alone. Attacks and protests against mosques all over the country stepped up. Pam Geller got more face and boob time than when her ex-hubby was indicted for a car dealership scam they owned together, and linked to the murder of two police officers back in 2007.

To ride the coattails of the anti-mosque/Islam sentiment, Terry Jones then extended his 15 minutes of fame to a week or so with his claim he and his merry band of followers were going to burn Qur’ans on Sept 11th in protest. Naturally he didn’t, nor did he get his face to face with the Imam Rauf. But maybe he got enough press and stepped up contributions to purchase a recalled Toyota.

Yet, for all the bruhaha, it was another 24/7 story that dropped off the face of the earth. Personal smearing of the Imam, who also traveled for the Bush administration, proved unsuccessful and uneventful… altho entertaining… firebrand hype. The mosque has yet to get funding and may never be built… but, as even Salon’s Justin Elliott notes, America’s attention has gone elsewhere…. leaving any future news likely to only appear on Geller’s blog, Fox News, or die hard conservative blogs attempting to breathe life into it once more.

8: From Beer Summits to Health Care Summits: And what’s a year without an Obama summit of some sort? What should have been a televised example of the exchange of ideas turned out to be nothing more than a publicity stunt by Obama, playing the “prickly professor” and lecturing John McCain about perpetual campaigning. Oh the irony….

Did the flibbertigibbet media do a stellar job of noting GOP ideas that, heretofore, had gotten little or no press? But of course not. Instead the nation’s population only got the play by plays and color reports of the political showdowns, and zip on the idea specifics. America could get more entertainment *and* education watching their favorite soap opera.. or even better, British Parliament. At least they let loose with a good show.

9: The economy is improving! Yup… all indicators are up. The stock market is up. Hoorah. On the flip side, also up are foreclosures on the market and the shadow inventory waiting to hit, unemployment, national debt, mortgage rates moving up in the past few weeks, the amount of new people defaulting on their mortgages, and the amount of people defaulting who refinanced on the taxpayers’ dime with Obama’s disasterous and ineffective “save the homeowner” plan. Also up are the insurance premiums that were supposed to get cheaper, the cost of getting medical, and the gap between CBO projections for O’healthcare and reality.

Yup… everything is looking “up”. Just wish most of it were good….

10: TSA screening hype: Amidst the unnecessary ARRA/simulus spending on two versions of x-ray screening machines arose such a clatter of hype and misinformation – focused mostly on the supposed pornographic nature of the photos, and a blanket painting of TSA staffers as sexual perverts, just pining to pat down travelers. To hype up citizen discontent, media and bloggers alike dug up every isolated incident of abuse they could to highlight… even those that took place before the machines were even deployed. The nation became confused about the imagery with such catchy phrases as “naked scanning” when neither version of the x-ray could penetrate below skin levels. The media also played upon privacy concerns, citing some released images of scans so impersonal that even a mother couldn’t recognize as her own child. And are they sexual? Perhaps, in a Total Recall/Tron sort of way… if you like that stuff. Frankly, you see more on prime time TV shows these days.

Some ambitious activists tried to organize a Thanksgiving boycott of the scanners, encouraging all travelers to endure a personal pat down that few end up having on a normal day. It didn’t work. Why? Because most travelers simply don’t care that much. Whether we walk thru metal detectors, or another framed piece of machinery, we just want to get to the gates, suffer thru flights to our destination in seats that are too small with no leg room, crammed in like sardines, and pray like hell we don’t get stuck on a tarmac somewhere for 10 hours.

Somewhere in the middle lies the truth and the ignored genuine beef…. like why did we spend so much taxpayer cash on machines that are unlikely to do whit to reign in the threat? But no matter… it’s another story that simply disappeared. Oddly enough during one of the heaviest travel times of the year.

That’s the top ten hyped-then-ignored stories, IMHO. But hey… it’s a new year coming. Stay tuned! Lots more hype is guaranteed to come our way. In the meantime, a MUST READ is WaPo’s Dave Barry’s 2010 recap, Why 2010 Made Us Sick. It’s six pages of non stop belly laughs proving that not only is laughter better health care reform than O’healthcare, but satire is the only sane politics.