Originally emailed to friends in NZ on 4/30/07... I mean 30/4/07
Spring is in full swing in New York, and the previously transparent and skeletal brown "woods" are becoming opaque with green. A not-so-welcome sign of spring is the plethora of apparently stinging insects, which seem to be able to find their way into the house, and not out again. I have seen various shades of red and black, orange and black, yellow and black, brown and black striped creatures, as well as the real terror: the tick, which can make people sick for months with Lyme disease.
The tick is not tiny, certainly bigger than a sandfly, so going unnoticed while it feeds is no small feat. It chooses a place where the skin is thin, anaesthetises the area to give itself time to gorge itself on its host's blood, and uses a harpoon structure to tap into the bloodstream until it has had its fill. Even if you spot the tick and try to pull it off, the harpoon is so robust that it remains in the skin and the body is ripped from the head. The tick is unparalleled as a vector of Lyme disease.Lyme disease infects about 23,000 people in the US every year, while Newscorp has a viewership closer to a hundred million. As a vector for propaganda, Fox appears to be unrivaled in this country. Its highly partisan, biased, and misleading presentation of 'information' I already knew about. But what I have learned over the last week is how adept it's parasitic survival is.
The "American Idol" television program is a huge draw for Fox. It is said that more Americans voted in the finals of the last American Idol series than voted in the last election. Last week Fox screened a pair of "Idol gives back" episodes where they charitably offered to donate 10c from every txted-in idol vote to the starving people of Africa, whilst also encouraging viewers to call in donations to their own IdolAid charity. The amount of hype they surrounded these shows with was incredible, all the News Corp papers lauded the event before and after, and it was lead story on the (Fox) news.
I suppose on the face of it that doesn't sound too bad. Raising awareness and funds for Africa is to be applauded. A revenue collecting exercise masquerading as a charity is despicable though. The unpalatable stuff was in the detail:
Fox was giving 10c from each txt to charity -- each txt costing the sender 99c. Some operating overheads. But NewsCorp also put a cap on how much they were willing to donate, $5 Million (50M votes) over the 2 episodes, when normal American Idol shows usually attract 30-35 Million votes (you do the math). And the votes are only a tiny portion of the revenue collected over the 2 hours of commercial-ridden programming and the medium-term ratings boost that the hype will attract. One assumes that Fox took rather more than it gave on this occasion, and yet I haven't heard a word of criticism from any of the non-Fox media.
In this sunny weather, you can't walk out the door without someone telling you to be aware of the insidious ticks, but I have yet to be warned as I walk back inside and reach for the remote.
Richard
PS Still without a job, visa, flat, or guitar, so am keeping busy by getting angry. Hope you are all well and happily donating and txting in your votes ; )
