>Visalia voters endured a ballot with a stupid design--stupid in isolation,
>but doubly so after the infamous 2000 butterfly ballot--but nothing that
>screams fraud. When the left calls fraud when simple explanations suffice,
>it helps to inure the public against real frauds.
It's not surprising that Mark Crispin Miller would gravitate to the simplest explanation. He also pushes the most simpleminded version of the ownership concentration thesis to explain why the media suck. For a critique of that that steals from Bourdieu, see <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Why_TV_sucks.html>.
I've also never forgiven MCM for two other things:
1) His silly antics at the 1996 (?) Media & Democracy conference in NYC, where he shared a stage with then-Time editor Walter Isaacson, who for some reason had agreed to show up. Instead of talking with Isaacson about how he thinks and how Time works, Miller unveiled two previously veiled posters: one, a Time cover photo of a hurricane that looked remarkably like the other, the ad for Twister, a new Warner Bros. movie. Ha ha ha. Cheap and stupid and a waste of what could have been an interesting opportunity.
2) His dreadful song "Queen of the Forest," which he was circulating as a demo tape around 1994. He wrote it and performs it and it's really really bad. If this is his alternative to the corporate media then give me Time Warner. Listen for yourself (I encoded it from the tape, which I still have in my possession):
download: <http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/Queen.mp3>
stream: <http://shout.lbo-talk.org:8000/content/lbo/RadioArchive/Queen.pls>
Doug