Horny Pandas Disrupting a 200 Million Dollar Industry in *insert local town from tracking cookie here*

A sports reporter (and a good one, not throwing shade here), recently said this about changes to his network:

“…..our innovative new network that actually reports scores and gives great opinionated analysis.”

Remember when news used to be about objective analysis?

That, right there, is a problem with news in general, including sports news. “Opinion” and “analysis” are both important, but they're two different things, and the 24-hour news cycle has merged them in the name of manufacturing conflict for entertainment purposes. Once the news divisions were subsumed under entertainment, it became all about ratings and viewers, not objective reporting and analysis. It’s why, even hours after the offices of the President’s personal attorney were raided, a cable news network closed a prime-time show with a piece about how “sex-crazed pandas could kill you if they wanted to”. I can't watch cable news, because it's typically nothing more than a talking-head cage-match of officially sanctioned opinions (or view-bait on sex-crazed pandas) - in other words, entertainment designed to get you fired up and rooting for one side or the other. Segments may as well be introduced by Vince McMahon.

The President is right about one thing - it's all about the ratings, not about the content. And that's on us.

Shrugging From The Amen Corner

From CBS News, here's Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on gun control debate after Parkland school shooting: "I'm trying to be clear and honest here, someone who has decided to commit this crime, they will find a way to get the gun to do it."

As noted by Matt Yglesias, that's basically an argument against having any laws at all: we don't need to do anything because someone who has decided to commit a crime will find a way to (insert illegal action here) anyway.

The photo included here is meant to highlight something politicians need to remember as they craft their non-responses and excuses for doing nothing at all: the generation subjected to this violence (while the so-called adults shrug their "well, there's nothing we can do" shoulders from the amen corner) will remember what you say, and they communicate with one another instantly across multiple social platforms. They will eventually be a force to be reckoned with at the ballot box, and they will remember the people and organizations  who said "eh, a teenager would have gotten an AR-15 anyway if he wanted it."

How many kids have to be killed before a call to action is not considered a "knee-jerk reaction", as Paul Ryan called it? How many? If a certain amount of time must pass, what happens when the shootings become more frequent than the required non-knee-jerk waiting period?

By the way, have you heard about anyone getting killed by a machine gun lately? Do you know why you haven't?