🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Media Bias 📰
Rudy’s Sandals 🩴
Lack of Faith ⚖️
I’ve watched with interest the blowback against newspaper tyrant Gannett following its reminder to its journalists in the wake of the Supreme Court’s undoing of Roe v. Wade that they are not to take sides on social media.
“You cannot use social media to take a political position, criticize or attack a candidate, or express personal feelings about an outcome or ruling. (If you notice a newsroom colleague posting inappropriate comments, immediately alert your supervisor.)”
Gannett companywide email
The email went on to remind journalists to “refrain” from liking or retweeting posts “that could appear to indicate support for any side or group.”
- This is all about maintaining some fairy tale notion that journalists are somehow born with an extra organ called “objectivity” that the commoners lack. I thought that was hilarious when I was a part of the newspaper industry, and I think it’s equally ridiculous today, though I appreciate its intentions.
I recently wrote about how I drove through a rural Arkansas town with a billboard promoting “White Pride Radio.” It was and is disgusting. But at least it’s honest. It’s good to know that the spirit of the KKK is alive and well in Zinc, Arkansas. Were I a person of color, I’d much prefer that than to accidently stumble upon a gathering of robed and hooded cowards who want to lynch me.
The same thing applies here.
One of the most influential people who taught me journalism was named Bob Woodward (no, not that Bob Woodward). He constantly drilled into us that being a part of the media was a privilege and cautioned us from living a public life in which we stated our opinions openly and freely (and this was before social media). He himself had never voted in an election because he never wanted anyone to see him or hear about him checking a box for a candidate of any particular party. It would diminish his credibility and his ability to do his job well, he reasoned.
I respected that.
I also was well aware that he leaned pretty far left. Anyone who knew Woodward knew that. It’s not that he was obnoxious about it. It’s that, if you spend time with anyone (and I spent a lot of time in Woodward’s classes) and you’re at all perceptive, you can begin to ferret out their biases.
And everyone has biases. Everyone. Even journalists.
- The history of newspapers globally and domestically is based in a total lack of objectivity. Papers openly and brazenly supported politicians and causes important to their owners and operators. Journalists had agendas, and their coverage was slanted toward them. And everyone knew where everyone and every paper stood.
That was a good thing.
These days, we have Fox News, which held onto the motto of “Fair and Balanced” long after every single person in the United States and the world had every reason to know and believe that that was a bunch of bullshit. They only dropped it in 2017! CNN and MSNBC both blow into the objectivity trumpet with equal measures of incredulity.
If you pay attention to the modern media landscape, you know that The New York Times leans left and The Wall Street Journal leans right, yet both would claim that their journalists are grounded in objectivity.
Really? Then their newsrooms are a helluva lot different than every single other newsroom I’ve ever been in, because all of those were filled with human beings who have histories that helped mold their beliefs, which means they have beliefs, which means they have opinions, which means they have biases.
The pushback against Gannett came, not surprisingly for how people express their outrage these days, anonymously and on social media. Threads blossomed with anonymous Gannett employees saying things such as: “We’re not going to tweet out ‘Fuck SCOTUS’ – it’s more like ‘this happened to me and this is important to me and it’s harmful to my healthcare.”
Which, of course, is just a different take on what bias is and proves my point: However you want to frame it, journalists are molded into who they are by their own histories.
- Whether you say “Fuck SCOTUS” or you phrase it as “I had an abortion and this court decision really affected me” doesn’t matter. Both, under Woodward’s theory (and the dominant theory that remains in media today), would diminish your ability to do your job as effectively as if you kept your thoughts to yourself. And we as a nation suck at keeping our thoughts to ourselves.
Those pushing back against Gannett called it tone-deaf and seemed to try to draw a line between opinions about stupid things and opinions about issues of social importance.
But what’s an issue of social importance to you is such only because of your personal biases. Otherwise, there’d be universal agreement on what constitutes an important social issue, and, my dude, we can’t even agree on what the important social issue is after dozens of elementary school students are gunned down in their classroom. Is it guns? Is it mental health care being so god-awful? Is it the breakdown of the family? Is it violent video games? Is it the lack of God in our lives? “Thinking is hard! We’ll talk about this again after the next shooting that sparks our shock, outrage and prayers.”
I get what Gannett is trying to do, but it’s based on something that never existed and, even if I grant you that it once was a thing, it certainly is much less of a thing than when Gannett started swallowing up newspapers, cutting their staff and developing its social media policies.
Objectivity is a lie. So Gannetteers, identify yourself and post away! I’d have more respect for you if you did that than if you kept quite and let your opinion leak into your coverage under the guise of being unbiased.
No one in the 21st century has had a further fall from the good graces of sane Americans than Rudy Giuliani. The dude was perhaps the second-most important voice of the nation in the aftermath of 9/11, and he already was something of a local hero for how he helped clean up New York City.
Now, after humiliating himself as a Trumpeeter lapdog and having hair goop ooze down his face, he’s pushing sandals on Twitter. What the …
One of the main things that makes a society a society is shared faith in its institutions. If you want to mark Amuricah’s decline, one way to do so (and there are oh-so-many) is to chart the plummeting faith its citizens have in its foundational institutions.
According to a recent poll, 25% of Americans — a historic low — reported having confidence in the Supreme Court. That’s important because it’s the final check and balance in our theoretical three-branch democracy (though I’d put forward we have a two-branch democracy — money and military power). If three-fourths of the country doesn’t believe the Supreme Court serves as that final safeguard — and I’d argue that skepticism is more than warranted — it’s possible to make the case that societal collapse isn’t too far away.
Four Steps to Market Your Way Through a Recession (Plus a Bonus Tip!)
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🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Boss Kudos 🙌Chill Time 😌One In 8 Billion🧍 It always feels good when the Big Bossman comes up to you and shakes your hand for a job well done. That happened last night when El Presidente of our company congratulated me on the video I wrote, shot and produced for our…
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🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩BTE and Div 💍Brother Greetings 👨👩👦👦Travel Day ✈️ The morning after Boy The Elder was born, I awoke in the hospital to his sweet cooing and his momma’s deep-sleep breathing. Scooping him up carefully and holding him nervously, I sat in a rocking chair in the pre-dawn darkness and talked to…
Keep readingDying Democracy — Nov. 11, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Election Message 🗳️School Priorities 🏫Tickets Aplenty 🎫 It would seem to me that if a common sentiment from wise people following an election is that it’s a good thing the results were so muddled because it means not much will get done in the next two years, you’ve got yourself a…
Keep readingFairy Tale — Nov. 9, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Stephen King 🕮Legal Weed🌿Public Schools🏫 I read my first Stephen King book when I was in high school. It was summer, if I remember correctly, and everywhere I went, I carried a worn library copy of Pet Sematary. Since that time, King’s words have been a regular companion through every stage…
Keep readingYear In Music — Nov. 5, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Concert Craze 🎵Back Crackin’👩⚕️To-Dos Done🚗 My year of music is over. And, my God, has it been good. It started on a sweltering mid-July afternoon at Hollywood Casino Amphitheater in which Wifey Poo and I watched my Backup Wife Jewel do her thing. It ended last night on an evening that…
Keep readingUpdate: My Favorite African — Nov. 3, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Little D’s Return 🏥Irony 🔨Planet Killer 🌎 Being a host parent to a little boy from Africa (Burkina Faso, to be precise) was one of the hardest and most rewarding things I’ve ever done in my life. And now, that little boy is returning to the United States. For those not…
Keep readingMega Billions — Nov. 2, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Stupid IT Rules 🖥️The Bend 🚑Is The War Over? ✌️ Tonight, there will be a lottery drawing in which someone could win $1.2 billion. That someone won’t be me, as I didn’t buy a ticket, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about what I would and wouldn’t do with that…
Keep readingFun Family — Nov. 1, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Family Dynamics 👪New Mattress 🛏️To Share Or Not To Share? ❓ Let’s say the only cracker you’ve ever eaten is a Saltine. You have no experience with any other crackers. In fact, you don’t even know that there is such a thing as other crackers. You might not love the Saltine,…
Keep readingHalloween Haters— Oct. 31, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Ghosts of Halloween 👻Wrinkles 👴Words Spawn Action ✍️ Wifey Poo made a bold declaration about her opinion of Halloween on our drive back from Springfield, Missourah, Saturday afternoon: “Halloween is a great time for kids to dress up …” If you think there’s more to that statement, nope. She added: “Period.”…
Keep readingHow I Do Me — Oct. 27, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Empath Life 🤗Earthquake 🌎Revolutionary Failure 😶 About six months after I started my career as a professional journalist, I started walking past this job opening in our company every time I walked in and out of the building. It was for editor of a weekly paper routinely ridiculed by those who…
Keep readingSchool Shooter Match Game — Oct. 24, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Game Time 🎮Family Picture📸Marriage Tips 🪢 I remember when it was simple. Horrible, yes … but simple. There was Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and they matched up with Columbine — which, side note, would have been my high school had my parents not moved to NY when I was 2.…
Keep readingHelping the Homeless — Oct. 23, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Helper Bags 🆘What’s In The Bag?🎒Mini Golf ⛳ I was raised to avoid the homeless. Avoid eye contact. Avoid conversation. And most definitely avoid giving them anything they asked for. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this, which doesn’t make me feel any better. What was instilled in me as…
Keep readingMarcus F’n King — Oct. 21, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Books & Covers 🕮Seeking Balance ⚖️Weirdo🤪 We’re taught at an early age to not judge a book by its cover. If I remember correctly, that was impressed upon me sometime around the first grade. Yet to be honest, I don’t think it’s a lesson that ever really sunk in. I imagine…
Keep readingPolitical Ads — Oct. 20, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Illegals or Guns? 🤦Scrolling Through Stupidity 🖱️Worst Nurse Ever 👩⚕️ If there’s anything I hate more than politics and politicians, it’s political advertising. Cutting the cable cord has lessened its intrusiveness in my life, yet it still manages to seep in. Case in point: I was watching the Padres-Phillies game last…
Keep readingChocolateman— Oct. 19, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Passion 🍫Sarcasm 😜Poop 💩 I appreciate people who are passionate about something. Well, except politics. Then I’d prefer it if you’d just keep your mouth shut. But if you’re super-interested in photography, goats, cooking, geocaching, quilting, etching … whatever … your enthusiasm feeds my soul. Which is part of the reason…
Keep readingTop 5 Things From The Past Week: Oct. 10-16 edition
Welcome to Issue No. 9 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. No. 5: I pledged to finish something I am a writer. If I’m going to be a…
Keep readingEvolution — Oct. 17, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Monkey Crap 🐒BTY Day 👨👦Incomplete Stories 🖊️ If you’re of the belief that human beings evolved from apes, I’m not here to try to dissuade you. What I am here to say is that, if evolution is true, we sure have come a long way. I say this after a trip…
Keep readingBasement Water — Oct. 15, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Personal Growth 🌱Mad Mom 😠Oh, Jeffrey 🧠 About a year ago, Arti The Wonder Therapist waited patiently for me to finish yet another of my amazing monologues detailing just how I felt about the various situations I was attempting to address in my life at the time and then calmly asked…
Keep readingDeath! Death! Death! — Oct. 14, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Cue the Outrage 🔫Animal Extinction 🐆Eye Update 👀 Even back in the day when I considered myself a Republican (before the dark times … before the Trumpire), I never quite understood the death penalty. Perhaps it was because I looked around at the other nations that still killed people as punishment…
Keep readingCorneal Complications — Oct. 13, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Hello Darkness, My Old Friend 👀COVID Costs 🦠Jackass Jones Verdict👩⚖️ I’ve spent much of this week so far in forced darkness. After I wrote on Monday morning, my right eye started to get blurry. Then it got real blurry. Then it became utterly useless. In this, I have reprised my role…
Keep readingMattress Shopping — Oct. 10, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Awkward Shopping 🛏️Disingenuous Holiday 🗓️Help the Homeless 😔 If there’s a more awkward retail excursion than mattress shopping, I have yet to find it in my 48 years. Wifey Poo and I went to a high school gym to do exactly that on Sunday afternoon. The bed we’ve been sleeping in…
Keep readingSo Long, Cards — Oct. 9, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Playoff Disappointment ⚾Oh, Britney 📲Friendship Failure 😔 In the span of just more than 24 hours, I went from the excited expectation of being in Busch Stadium to watch the hometown St. Louis Cardinals eliminate the Philadelphia Phillies and advance to the next round of the playoffs to watching those Phillies…
Keep readingPlayoff Baseball — Oct. 6, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Baseball Gear-Grinders ⚾Sunrise Woes 🌄Heavy Pumpkins 🎃 There are a few baseball-related indignities in my home that, as the saying goes, grind my gears. The first is that there is a state championship trophy on the mantel above the fireplace in our Humble Country Home with a gold-plated baseball player, bat…
Keep readingThere Will Be Blood — Oct. 5, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Weird Wound Treatment 🧂Phillies Bring Doom ⚾Meetings Suck 👎🏽 Apparently, I’ll take medical advice from waitresses and allow myself to receive medical treatment from busboys. This, I learned last night. I have a tendency to get hurt in really interesting ways. When I tell you that I once got a concussion…
Keep readingTop 5 Things From The Past Week: 9/26-10/2
Welcome to Issue No. 8 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. No. 5: I held an epic car concert If you were anywhere in the vicinity of my…
Keep readingPlace Your Bets — Oct. 3, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Football Picking God 🏈Fish Story 🐟Free Floating ☁️ A few months before Boy The Elder was born, I had about $100 set aside to buy Wifey Poo a gift that I intended to give her after she ushered our child into the world. It was the least I could do for,…
Keep readingSliced Bread — Sept. 30, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩New Route Home 🏎️Confirmed Weirdness 🤪Here’s Your Sign 🤦 I took a new route home from the western part of Missourah yesterday after doing the whole open-house thing for work in St. Joseph. Rather than shoot down to I-70 and traverse the state on that familiar road, I went across Hwy.…
Keep readingRental Tank — Sept. 29, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Woo-Woo vs. The Beast 🛻Dart Throwers 🎯My Job 📋 I am not used to driving a tank. My normal vehicle is Woo-Woo, AKA The Shitty Little Car, AKA a Nissan Versa. It’s practical. It gets great gas mileage. I hate it. Woo-Woo normally accelerates as quickly as a child asked to…
Keep readingLinkedIn — Sept. 26, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Unwitting Guinea Pigs 🐹False Bragging 🦹♂️Put Me In, Coach 🚀 My regular readers (hey, you three!) know that I have a hatred for social media’s influence on society with an intensity rivaled only by the heat of a thousand suns. The latest bit of “Are you fucking kidding me?” comes from…
Keep readingTop 5 Things From The Past Week: 9/9-9/25
Welcome to Issue No. 7 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. No. 5: I reached out to a friend I have not been shy about sharing that I’ve…
Keep readingiPhone Envy — Sept. 25, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩More Stupid Human Stuff 📱KC Trip ⚾Miserable Missourah 😠 Quick: Take a look around you. If you’re in a room with five other people, one of them thinks you’re financially struggling if you don’t have the latest iPhone. That’s according to a new survey following the release of the iPhone 14.…
Keep readingHuman Babies — Sept. 23, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Loser Species 👶Email Win 📧Dad Pride 👨👦👦 I’m pretty sure I’m not normal. Normal people respond to that statement with, “Oh, John, nobody’s normal,” which is just a sign for us non-normies that the person we’re talking to is normal. Yesterday, I was waiting for Wifey Poo to pick me up…
Keep readingIn It — Sept. 22, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Concert Thoughts 🧠Marriage 💍Drunk Idiots 🧉 There’s this scene in the 2004 movie Garden State in which Sam (Natalie Portman) looks at Andrew (Zach Braff) and notices … … And yeah, that resonated with me then and resonates with me now. Ever since then, being “in it” has become a thing…
Keep readingRemembering Sarah — Sept. 21, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Sadness 😥Beautiful Skies ⛅Two Terms For 2022 ✌️ Back in our early days at Pound Ridge Elementary School, Sarah was the fastest girl runner in the class, which bought her some serious playground cred. There were only a few of us boys who could hang with Sarah in the 50-meter dash…
Keep readingSmall Ear Canal — Sept. 19, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Ear Flushing👂Grunge God🎶Tech Guy📺 If you have to have a doctor tell you a body part or yours is small, I suppose one of the least offensive would be the ear canal. That’s what a doctor told me this morning, after I finally broke down and actually went to said doctor’s…
Keep readingSunday Randomness — Sept. 18, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Two, Four, Six, Eight👑Tips💰Book Buying📖 Some random thoughts from the week that was: Today’s Reasons to Keep Living
Keep readingNominee Day! — Sept. 16, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Toys in the Hall🪅Idiot Governors🗳️Flopping FedEx✈️ Last night in my hotel in Springfield, Missourah, I set out a glass of milk and a plate of cookies before going to bed. It’s not that I don’t know how to read a calendar or have any particular belief in a fat man in…
Keep readingSpringfields Aplenty — Sept. 15, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Which One?🗺️Leave Introverts Alone🤫Oxford Commas🤪 I’m on the road for work this week, in Springfield. Ahhh, but Springfield what? There currently are 35 populated places in the United States named Springfield, spread out over 25 states, including five in Wisconsin. In addition, there are 35 Springfield Townships, and Ohio owns 11…
Keep readingF’n COVID — Sept. 13, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Surrounded 😷Wood Splitter 🌲Morons 🤪 I’ve had COVID. Twice. The first time fucked up my life for a year. I’m still not back to the me I was before it came into my home, and I’m pretty sure that now, nearly two years later, that’s not going to change. The second…
Keep readingChange of Plans — Sept. 12, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Sunday audible🤒Fantasy Failure 🏈Anal Chess♟️ Sunday was supposed to be a romantic day spent in a canoe with Wifey Poo, the two of us paddling leisurely down the Meramec River. Mother Nature was not in the mood to play wingman and decided to pick the one day in the midst of…
Keep readingWhy Run? — Sept. 11, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Finish Line Scene 🏃♂️Baseball’s Better ⚾M-I-Z! Z-O-UC-H! 🏈 I have never understood the modern-day purpose of running for the sake of running. Sure, I understand it’s a great form of cardiovascular exercise and it’s a convenient way to get from Point A to Point B, yet the desire to strap on…
Keep reading