SHALLOW BE THY NAME
We assume the Boston Globe is launching its long-anticipated Pope-tastic web altar next month to serve the remaining Catholic octogenarians in Eastern Mass who are online and respond to landline surveys but are far too intelligent to read the Boston Herald. Globe CEO Mike Sheehan said in a statement that the destination “will have a global audience,” but considering that he’s a brilliant marketing guy and this is one of the strangest plans imaginable to bolster a great regional newspaper, we’re still waiting for the punchline. Until then they’re claiming to have hired:
John L. Allen Jr., who the Globe is calling “the premier Vatican reporter in the country, if not the world.” First of all, what country? Second of all, like anyone would ever contest such a ridiculous title.
National reporter Michael O’Loughlin, who “has local roots and a background in religion writing.” So, like, fiction? O’Loughlin is also allegedly “writing a book on the Catholic Church and millennials.” We’re sure all nine of them will enjoy reading it.
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK*
Mark your calendars. Write it on the bathroom stall. This is the first time in the history of Media Farm (that we can recall anyway) that DigBoston is taking the side of a celebrity over a news outlet. We know. Crazy stuff. Let us explain … For the most part, George Clooney is a Tinsel Town-specific taste. His skin just simply wouldn’t last around here. With that said, last week we learned the leading man may very well have more in common with most Massholes than we realized, as it turns out he also loathes the spit out of Boston.com. In attacking the Daily Mail for running allegedly fabricated stories about his soon-to-be mother-in-law, the media-savvy Clooney went so far as to also attack the outlets that shamelessly parroted the gossip. Preach on brother. Preach on …
First of all, none of the story is factually true. Amal’s mother is not Druze. She has not been to Beirut since Amal and I have been dating, and she is in no way against the marriage—but none of that is the issue.
I’m, of course, used to the Daily Mail making up stories—they do it several times a week—and I don’t care. If they fabricate stories of Amal being pregnant, or that the marriage will take place on the set of “Downton Abbey,” or that I’m running for office, or any number of idiotic stories that they sit at their computers and invent, I don’t care.
But this lie involves larger issues. The irresponsibility, in this day and age, to exploit religious differences where none exist, is at the very least negligent and more appropriately dangerous. We have family members all over the world, and the idea that someone would inflame any part of that world for the sole reason of selling papers should be criminal.
I’m the son of a newsman; I accept the idea that freedom of speech can be an inconvenience to my private life from time to time, but this story, like so many others, is picked up by hundreds of other outlets citing the Daily Mail as their source, including Boston.com, New York Daily News, Gulf News, Emirates 24/7 and so on.
*-Alternative headers for this section included: THE MEN WHO IMPAIR QUOTES, LETTERHEARDS, INCORRECT FACTS OF LIFE, BURN AFTER READING, OUT OF INSIGHT, and OH BROTHER, ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?
RACIST CONTRACTOR FINDS RUG
The following headline actually appeared on Breitbart.com: “MUSLIM PRAYER RUG FOUND ON ARIZONA BORDER BY INDEPENDENT AMERICAN SECURITY CONTRACTORS.” Furthermore, the post actually contained the following quote from an alleged American security contractor (Ed.: Best if read in redneck accent): “I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’ We walked over there and I didn’t really want to pull at it not knowing what was on it. I poked a bit at it with a stick and noticed some of the Arabic writing and was just like, ‘Oh boy.’”
Yeah. Oh boy. Sadly, this xenophobic narrative has surfaced before. As any hardcore conservative knows, Muslims are hard at work upholstering our nation’s geographic basement all the way from Monterrey to Mexicali. Their not-so-subtle carpeting-based fearmongering has been going on for years, and appears to have legs with folks who get their news from outlets that refer to undocumented immigrants as “illegals.” At the time of this writing, more than 5,000 scumbags saw fit to share this slime on Facebook.
QUAYLE LOSING GROUND IN ‘POTATO,’ ‘POTATOE’ SEARCH RANKING
Dig Reader: Every shitty news outlet on the planet is already slobbering the guy who raised tens of thousands of dollars on Kickstarter to make a potato salad. Why would Media Farm waste its fucking time with such tripe? It was on “Good Morning America” for farting out loud!
Media Farm: We know. Sorry. But it really is an incredible story. If you don’t believe us, read the New Yorker‘s version. Sarcasm aside, this shit is pure poetry:
Why are people giving money to a stranger who has barely even promised to make a dish of potato salad? Depending on one’s sense of humor, the deadpan, unassuming nature of the plan—its odd simplicity—is simply funny. “Best laugh I had in a while,” wrote one funder, who gave two bucks. Another wrote, “I pledge to him, not to receive a photo of the potato salad, but because I love the idea of pledging to a potato salad. It makes me happy when people are not dead serious about everything.” The money isn’t a donation to some future accomplishment but a gift for the existing one of having spread low-key joy across the Internet.
WE’RE ALREADY OUT OF OLYMPIC HEADLINES
You almost have to admire how every line in this recent Boston Business Journal piece about the 2024 Olympics packs the assumption that developers will simply bulldoze over everything they want if their fairy tale comes true:
Big projects that still need to be built include a new stadium, an Olympic village to host 16,000-plus athletes, a new swimming facility and a cycling velodrome … The key projects would likely be built near public transit and close to downtown Boston. The old railyards in Allston, now largely controlled by Harvard, are being considered, with the hope that diesel multiple unit trains could connect the area with the Back Bay and Seaport. The partnership is also looking at property near Widett Circle, sandwiched between the Southeast Expressway and South Boston. And UMass Boston has been discussed, partly because of its need for dorm space and ownership of the Bayside Expo building.
You must be pulling our leg. What else? You going to tell us the legislature wrote a budget for next fiscal year assuming the state will enjoy new resort licensing revenue—even though there’s a strong chance voters will reject casinos on the November ballot? As if anyone would be presumptuous enough to do that.
HARRY PEEPER
After “sorting Boston’s Finest into Hogwarts Houses from Harry Potter,” did you take five seconds to read Steve Annear’s Boston Magazine post about the “86-year-old professional photographer [who] landed in a terrorism investigation database for trying to snap photos of Dorchester’s historic multicolored gas storage tank?” If not, and you feel guilty that you care more about whether members of the Funky Bunch are smooth Slytherins or hardworking Hufflepuffs than you do about J.K. Rowling’s constitutional right to keep manufacturing uninspired Harry Potter sequels, then here’s your chance to repent …
The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging federal officials in court after an 86-year-old professional photographer landed in a terrorism investigation database for trying to snap photos of Dorchester’s historic multi-colored gas storage tank.
In a lawsuit against the government’s “Suspicious Activity Report Program,” a joint collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and state and local authorities, the ACLU claims that in 2004, James Prigoff, who was 76 at the time, was scrutinized by investigators after visiting Boston and attempting to take pictures of the “Rainbow Swash” artwork that marks the large tank that can be seen from the highways.
[Media Farm is wrangled weekly by DigBoston News+Features Editor Chris Faraone]
FURTHER READING
WE DON’T WANT NO STINKING OLYMPICS
