Oct 09 2007
LA Times: Public Health a “liberal issue” and other st00p1d reporting on Google
Update: The Huffington Post’s Eric Williams has even more on this, and coins the term of the week: “Flag Hag.” Perfect.
So, in an unbelievably asinine piece, the LA Times has declared, as part of some really poor reporting centering on how self-proclaimed “conservatives” are upset with Google’s little logos commemorating historical events, that “public health” is a somehow partisan issue.
The article is basically a puff piece tossed to some fringe right-wingers about how “unpatriotic” Google is because they change their logos for different events (in the LAT piece, they show the Google logo with an image of Sputnik that they put up last week on the 50th anniversary of the first artificial satellite) but not for historical events these “conservatives” deem more important.
The whiny wingers want Google to be more “patriotic” by pushing American themed events in their logo art. Google rightly points out that it would be hard to capture the depth and breadth of something like, say Veterans Day with a small piece of logo art. In fact, it would trivialize such events which deserve actual full-brain attention and study by all of us. It should be obvious that Google serves an audience that is fare wider than the 300 million Americans… there are 6 BILLION other people in the world too. Should Google cater to everyone’s patriotic demands? How would these folks react to that? (One shouldn’t have to think too hard on that one to know the answer…)
More outrageous is the LA Times’ characterization of anything that Google does as “liberal” and that issues as basic as public health are somehow partisan. Last time I checked, even “conservatives” need (amongst other things) safe drinking water and sewers. Clearly the LAT Times reporter, a Jim Puzzanghera, and his “conservative” friends need the sewers even more than the liberals since they are SO clearly full of crap.
Google’s little logo homages to historical events are charming, fun and need no tweaking thanks. Oh, and a note to the LA Times: Paper and ink are expensive.. perhaps you should dedicate some of it to real issues that need to be exposed… like the lack of mental heath services for your city’s citizens, or perhaps your Mr. Puzzanghera’s sources.
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