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Posts published in “Day: June 28, 2008”

If you let O’Reilly run wild

This week's "Rogue of the Week" for Willamette Week is a national figure, but a former Portland (KATU-TV) broadcaster, Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly was only engaging in his usual routine of overheated misinformation, but this time he was pointing it back at Portland. Hence the reference.

Details at the link. In general, as the Week suggested, if you take O'Reilly's core shot - “If you let the crazy educators run wild, which they are in many, many parts of the country, then we’re just going to lose the country, because the kids are confused. They don’t know what the heck is going on” - and replace the references to educators and kids with "O'Reilly" and "his viewers," you've about nailed it.

Spokane/Kootenai and where else?

Interesting post out of Spokane about the development of an apparently national database of wi-fi locations.

Tom Sowa of the Spokesman-Review adds, "It’s no surprise that a Boston mobile services company hired drivers to spend hundreds of hours prowling Spokane and Kootenai counties. That company, Skyhook Wireless, is collecting the location of nearly every Wi-Fi signal in public spaces, building a database that is the key resource it sells to customers like Apple and others."

Quick, simple shots

Afew days ago we pointed to a badly blown video against Washington Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, mainly because of the theme music it employed (from "The Sopranos"). The theme music wasn't it's only problem, though; the ad was simply so busy that little of its mass of message stuck.

Contrast that with the series of quick, simple 15-second spots developed by the group Evergreen Progress (whose main backers, it says, are Service Employees International Union Washington State Council, Democratic Governors Association, Washington Federation of State Employees, Sheet Metal Workers Local 66 PAC, International Union of Operating Engineers Local 302). With 15 seconds to run, they aren't detailed. But they don't have to be. They each make a fast, hard point, then encourage people to go to their web site dontknowdino.com for the supportive background.

This is effective stuff. There are three of them now, and looks as if there could be a good many more. And you can imagine a candidate trying to swat away all those 15-second gnats. (Maybe something Rossi's campaign would be well to consider.)