micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links |
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Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm. Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net. Holmquist's full archives are listed here.
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Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution) Aljazeera.Net English Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development) Thivai Abhor |
Tuesday, May 06, 2003
Hard to believe In the previous entry, "Team Bush got me," I wrote that I no longer believe the Bush Administration knew that Saddam Hussein's government possessed and/or was developing weapons of mass destruction before the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom but that I still suspected such weapons would be found. Now it appears that the Bush Administration might not even expect to find them. "The Bush administration has admitted that Saddam Hussein probably had no weapons of mass destruction," writes Neil Mackay in Sunday's edition of the Scottish newspaper The Sunday Herald. "Senior officials in the Bush administration have admitted that they would be 'amazed' if weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were found in Iraq. According to administration sources, Saddam shut down and destroyed large parts of his WMD programmes before the invasion of Iraq." Nobody in the administration is quoted on the record and the report is a bit sketchy since it veers from news reporting to analysis in an awkward manner, so it is a bit early to take this report as the unqualified truth. Still if it turns out to be true, the Bush Administration should have a lot of explaining to do. *** While verifying off the record comments is not an easy task to do, determining t.v. ratings and audience demographics is, which meant that Noy Thrupkaew of The American Prospect should be embarrassed for writing: In this almost literally black-and-white world (Latinos, Asian Americans and other minorities don't seem to figure as strongly in TV execs' demographic obsessions), UPN looks the most poised to bridge the gap. The network already appeals to African Americans with sitcoms such as Girlfriends. And many of its shows -- Enterprise, [sic] WWE Smackdown! and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer -- probably draw some of the whitest audiences around.Actually there is reason to believe that Smackdown! gets plenty of viewers of color. In a March 11 press release UPN writes: WWE SmackDown! continues to be UPN's highest rated show among total viewers and across virtually all key adult and male demographics. With an original SmackDown! 52 weeks a year, UPN ranks as the number one network on Thursday among male teens, and a solid third among persons 12-34 and young men, behind only CBS and NBC. It also has regularly made UPN's Thursday night one of the top destinations for African Americans and Hispanics, and is the most watched English-speaking television show among Hispanics.Now maybe everything in that paragraph isn't true but the idea is out there, and found with ease through a site you might have heard of called google.com, and Thrupkaew should not be casually making statements about things that could easily be looked up when he in fact probably doesn't have first-hand knowledge since I doubt the author has regularly watched television with even a sizeable chunk of the viewing audience in the United States. |