You can fool some of the people…

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… but it’s getting harder with all those pesky Blogs around. Intriguing story from this morning’s New York Times:

Clear Channel, thought by its critics to be the best representative of the creeping corporate weaseldom that has brought on the ruination of commercial radio, tried to dupe radio listeners in Akron, Ohio, by posing as an anticorporate pirate radio station.

Via some audio trickery, Clear Channel made it sound as though pirate signals from “Radio Free Ohio” were bleeding into several of the other stations it owns. The “pirate” signals, and a Web site set up to promote the new station, lashed out at corporate radio.

Suspicious, someone using the handle “Turbo Ninja” looked up the Web site registration for radiofreeohio.org, discovered it was owned by Clear Channel, and posted the findings to the message boards on the Web site of the independent station WOXY.

“They’re ripping corporate radio as a means of encouraging people to listen to a slightly different kind of corporate radio,” Turbo Ninja wrote.

The posting was picked up by several blogs, and in turn by The New York Times, which quoted a Clear Channel executive saying, “There’s a hole in the market here and we’re going to fill it.”

That hole is “progressive talk,” a notion that sent Carrie MacLaren reeling. She runs the blog stayfreemagazine.org, one of the first to publicize what Clear Channel was up to. “Progressive talk,” she wrote. “Yes, I will say that again: (Radio Free Ohio) is to be a progressive talk station! Now if you’ll excuse me I think I’ll go shove an icepick in my ear.”

Skinny dipping

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A sign in the window of a Dingle pub. ‘Ceol’ is the Irish for song or music. There is, however, a lively etymological debate about ‘craic’. It is conventionally taken to mean fun and/or bonhomie (often fuelled by alcohol). But some authorities hold that it derives from ‘ag buaileadh craiceann’ or ‘beating skin’ — a reference to “a highly private inter-personal (and usually inter-gender) activity which tends to promote mutual enjoyment, and sometimes progeny”. Er, I couldn’t possibly comment.

Hot Lines to the Almighty

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Hilarious story in The Register…

A Cardiff vicar has addressed the problem of falling congregations by offering his flock a quiet wireless hotspot in which they can seek the meaning of the word salvation on Google while chewing the fat via email with Pope Benny 16.

Keith Kimber, of St John’s in Cardiff city centre, has sold his soul to Cardiff Council and BT Openzone to acquire the wirless technology. Before inking the mephistophelean technopact, Rev Kimber was unable to access the city’s wireless services due to his church’s four-foot-thick walls. Now, however, he boasts a wireless node within the body of the House of God itself.

Said the good Reverend: “The church has to move with the times and I wanted to make St John’s a sanctuary for everyone, including business people with laptops and mobiles.”

Gorgeous George

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Nicely balanced column by Gerard Baker in the Times about George Galloway’s bravura performance before the US Senate. On the one hand…

When mortals appear before Senate panels, they are expected to show proper deference to these lawgivers of the American republic. But while senators may consider themselves Solons, Pericles they most assuredly are not. Going through life in an impregnable carapace of sycophancy is agreeable, no doubt, but as Marie Antoinette discovered, it does not tend to sharpen one’s skills in public argument. So when a feisty member such as Mr Galloway shows up in the midst of these august figures, the effect is a little like a character from a Damon Runyon novel let loose among the Gatsbys.

The average MP, schooled in the knockabout tactics of the House of Commons, is far better equipped to score points and persuade undecided minds. And Mr Galloway’s performance duly earned him some rave reviews, not least from startled American journalists who wouldn’t dare treat their betters this way.

On the other hand…

But forgive me if I don’t participate in the adulation. As I watched, it wasn’t a grudging respect for the perfectly tailored and coiffed tribune of the masses that filled me, but a wave of nausea. His testimony left me with a renewed understanding of just how uniquely repellent Mr Galloway is.

That “Non!” vote

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Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader and ex-EU Commissioner was interesting on Radio 4’s Today programme.

Talking about the French referendum result, he outlined a cogent case for regarding it as a wholly French-made shambles. He blamed Jacques Chirac for mismanaging the disastrous Nice summit which launched the thing on the world, and pointed out that instead of a simple document setting out the rules needed to make workable an EU of 25 countries, it had ballooned (under the tutelage of Valery Giscard d’Estaing, a former French President) into a bloated half-assed attempt to do for Europe what the Founding Fathers once did for the United States.

As for the interpretation that the Non vote was an expression of dissatisfaction with Chirac, Kinnock pointed out that it was the French Left who had put Chirac where he is today. Their failure to agree on, and support, a viable left-wing candidate in the last Presidential election led them in a panic to vote for Chirac in order to keep the fascist Jean Marie le Pen from winning. But on Sunday, those same leftists allied with fascists, racists, Europhobes and sundry discontents to ‘rebuke’ the guy they had installed in power. It was a truly great rant. If only Kinnock had been that sharp when he was Leader of the labour Party.