Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
I think this tells you all you need to know.
Well, about "infotainment" that passes for news these days, anyway:
(Howard) Kurtz: “I don’t fully know. Katie Couric may make $15 million a year, but she grew up in a middle-class family in Arlington. Brian Williams was once a volunteer fireman. Dan Rather graduated from Sam Houston State College. And it’s not just the anchors—the opinion guys, O’Reilly, Rush, Olbermann, Matthews and the like, make millions each year. Does that mean their values change, that they’re automatically out of touch? In some cases, perhaps, but I don’t think that’s universally true.”
OK, seriously now - do you really think that someone who makes millions of dollars a year really has any connection with the life that you or I live?
The point of that article is that what top network news anchors are paid exceeds the entire budget for NPR's news shows 'All Things Considered' and 'Morning Edition'. Together. And it is a good point:
While doing some recent research on the news business, I came upon this remarkable fact: Katie Couric’s annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric’s salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one. NPR has seventeen foreign bureaus (which costs it another $9.4 million a year); CBS has twelve. Few figures, I think, better capture the absurd financial structure of the network news.
But that quote from Howard Kurtz is what really got my attention. While I think that the network anchors are probably paid according to the perceived value they bring their network (or, more accurately, the Corporation which owns the network), I just cannot buy the idea that their values and life have much of anything to do with anyone who works for a measly $25k or $50k or even $100k a year. Sorry, I just don't believe that. And I think the same is true for Hedge Fund Managers, Congresscritters, CEOs of large corporations, Megachurch Preachers, et cetera. Sorry, but they can no more understand my life than I can understand the life of a third-world beggar. That these people are 'in charge' tells you all that you need to know about why things are the way they are.
Jim Downey
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"Rich people are different from us"
The story goes that Scott Fitzgerald said, "The rich are different from us," to Ernest Hemingway, who countered, "Yeah, they got more money."
The discussion reminds me of a time a few decades ago when I dated a college student who came from wealth and often said, usually with a high level of indignation, "Rich people are no different from poor people." I always figured I would believe that statement more if it came from a poor person.
Frank Moorman, skeptic
"what is the point of giving persons Freedom of Speech... if you then say they must not utilize same? And is not the Power of Speech the greatest Power of all? Then surely it must be exercised to the full." --Salman Rushdie
Paid what they're worth!!
Now Mr Downey, you're clearly not a cynic so it would never cross your mind that the reason such mind boggling sums are paid to the 'entertainers' is so that the company executives can get on the gravy train since it's their business knowledge and acumen that earns the cash and they have to be paid commensurate with the employees of the network. Simple isn't it and they're worth every cent?
Ha!
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah! *sniff* Damn, man, careful with that sense of humor!
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
I still wonder...
I still wonder if someone like Ann Coulter really believes all the crazy she spews on TV and in print...or, at the end of the work day, when the camera's off and she's gone home, does she roll around on her bed in a big pile of money just laughing her *ss off for a couple of hours before regaining her composure and deciding which elegant restaurant to patronize that evening.
On the other hand, it still cracks me up that some conservatives really didn't catch on that Steven Colbert was doing SATIRE.
I think most of them know NOW, but...took some of them a ridiculously long time to figure it out.
Bush: "I know how hard it is to put food on your family".
Man of the people, by god. ;-)
Money Makes the World Go Round
It appears impossible that even if someone with these kinds of earnings has humble origins they can recall what life was like "back then." I see it all the time in academia. I teach part-time at Rutgers University where faculty hiring freezes are a way of life. Otherwise I'm unemployed (also grew up in bone fide poverty in western PA). While casting around the University website for any old hell-hole of a job I could find, I stumbled on an ad for some low-ranking dean. Not an "executive dean" (yes, they do use that title!), or even an associate dean, but someone down the chain of command. The starting salary was listed as 125K. It only goes up from there. The university president makes a humble 300-400K per year, with ample expense accounts. Yet when it comes to budgets they pull their hair out saying "we just can't cut any more, for god's sake -- we've got to stop hiring teachers!" I lost my intellectual virginity when I took my first university post and discovered the administration and industry in bed together (metaphorically). Even academia has become scaled down Wall Street where it is acceptable to wear tweed.
All About the Money
I laugh -- grimly -- every time I think of Rush Limbaugh and his admiring audience of yokels. Last I read, Rush was working under an 8-year $400 million contract -- yes, FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR.
To imaging that he has anything in common with the commoners who listen to him so avidly is like saying the overseer in the big white house understands the plight of slaves because they both live on a cotton plantation.
Bloody hell, *I* feel the winds of corporate manipulation blowing up my back when I find Monopoly game stickers on my Coke cup. To think that someone would listen to a political or corporate demagogue like Rush and hear his voice as that of a fellow Good Ol' Boy, someone to listen to and follow, just blows me away.
If you ever reread George Orwell's Animal House, when you get to the part where he introduces the character Squealer, tell me that's not Rush Limbaugh.
George Orwell's book is
George Orwell's book is titled "Animal Farm"
I may reread it myself; I don't remember Squealer but I haven't read it since high school.
Heh.
Oh, crap. That's what happens when you get old. Yes, Animal Farm.
And thanks for the fixit.
Squealer was the pig who whisked his tail and danced back and forth, and sold each new rule or idea to the farm's animals.