Candid Press from Chicago, Blogger First Amendment Rights and Media Credentials with a Recognized News Affiliation

It would be ironic and unwise for a blog named "Dull Tool Dim Bulb" to criticize any part of the "legitimate" press, but a recent court decision which found bloggers do not have the same first amendment rights or protection as journalists gives me a little pause. First, because even with my limited creds, I personally may have more journalistic experience (and I might even suggest integrity) than a good chunk of the journalists working today, and second because the so-called legitimate press is so damn questionable.

Not only that, according to David Ardia, co-director of the University of North Carolina center for media law and policy "There is no accepted definition of journalism or who is a journalist," The judge ruled against the blogger because she "failed to present evidence that she had any media credentials or affiliation with a "recognized news entity," or that she had checked her facts or tried to contact the other side to "get both sides of the story."

Hmm...Does Jimmy Breslin have a journalism degree? Did Studs Terkel or Mike Royko, both who were unfortunately based in the same town as the Candid Press above? If any of them do, they can easily prove it, which is precisely why I am phrasing it as a question rather than "reporting" it... I don't THINK they did, but they are free to sue me if they feel otherwise. Excellent reporters in every respect? Yes. In fact all three personal heroes of mine. But does the fact that they received a paycheck from a media conglomerate give them first amendment rights I as a citizen do not have?

Because Glenn Beck cashed a check from Murdoch for his chalkboard conspiracies mean he has more rights than I? (Can I say Murdoch again? I use his empire as an example because if ANY media is conglomerated-up with big time credentials, it is his, and we KNOW the journalistic standards he maintains.) I am inclined to send a few issues of the Candid Press, which enjoyed first amendment freedom, to the judge in the recent ruling.

Disgusting, ugly, sexist, offensive, putrid, obscene (to me anyway...) and gross. But fully protected by first amendment rights?

Ayup!

Chicago's Candid "Press" ran a long time and consumed plenty of forest. I might not have a degree in journalism either, but I suspect most of my pieces here would stand up pretty well if presented to a veteran fact checker at the New Yorker alongside any issue of Candid Press. I have a pile of them here. Don't take me up on my offer, I can't afford a lawyer.

Candid Press was so disgusting, I'd leave the second city over it in shame, except that I lived in Manhattan with Al Goldstein's Screw and survived. Al had first amendment rights because he was a fat, slob pig with media affiliation?

Who else has the credentials of media affiliation? Veteran journalist and not Pulitzer prize-winning beacon of truth Rush Limbaugh and George Noory, the voice of a late-night talk show I enjoy, but which "reports" on Big Foot, ghost sightings, voices from the dead and chupacabra on a nightly basis. I love Coast-to-Coast and so do many others apparently, as it airs nightly on no less than 25 radio stations in MY STATE ALONE...but does that give them any more rights than I have as a citizen? Hell, Bill O'Reilly HAS a journalism degree and he is wrong more often than a paid witness or a chiropractor.


Candid Press was a piece of pink-colored newsprint crap and completely devoid of the humor they tried so hard to provide. They claimed to be America's Largest Selling Adult Weekly. Well B.F.D. It stunk. The giant pile I have of them on the floor here still stink nearly five decades later. If they were protected any more than me simply because they dropped a pile at the corner news stand every Wednesday to stink up the hog butcher to the world, then we have a problem.


I know far more excellent journalists today who blog than I do judges. Many of them blog instead of receive a paycheck because big companies which provide "media affiliation" helped create a generation (and every future generation) who would rather watch ads on hand-held devices and flat screens than read. I can't claim to speak for our founding fathers (as judges and politicians do on a daily basis) but I think they intended first amendment rights to apply to all of us, not just those with a press pass and job re-phrasing press releases for the Huffington App.

Talking Chalk and Talk Chalkers Glenn Beck Hijacks an Art Form to Line his Pockets Chalk Talk

The ill-informed and dangerous charlatan Glen Beck made me concerned enough to look into chalk talk. Before the millionaire fraud hijacked the former vaudeville trick and started using his chalkboard "skills" to foster corporate greed under the guise of patriotism (and convince many of his floundering middle-class audience to act against their own best interests) chalk talking was an art, a skill and for many a profession. Of course, Glenn has nowhere near the skill and talent of the old guys, especially since his accompanying patter is so vile and poorly researched.

Beck is just one more of the swindlers who have taken the all-too-trusting American public for a big money grab in our history, a buffoon and tool who takes advantage of confused and scared masses to line his own pockets. As such he falls squarely into the long line of snake-oil salesmen, carnival barkers, faith-healers and quacks who litter our history. Beck is pretty good at it...His income in 2009 is reported at $32 million dollars. As his viewership hovers around a million per televised episode, that's about thirty bucks each...money which might better applied to individual gold purchases (though that is another of his scams being investigated.)

I'm not sure he even uses the chalkboard any longer, as he has been so soundly ridiculed for it, but the craft was once a quite beautiful thing. The examples here all come from the splendid book "Bright Beams from the Blackboard" by Hy Pickering. No date, but certainly approaching 100 years old. As you can see, Pickering fell into the "tell a good moral lesson" category of chalk talkers rather than, oh...I guess what you could call the "Amos and Andy logic out a financial transaction" chalk practice. You know..."take the 7 and deduct it from the 12...see? You owes me 50 dollars." A slightly racist example from vaudeville history, but still exactly what Beck does when he befuddles his audience with poorly drawn crud and poorly drawn conclusions.

Pickering, on the other hand, is presenting art of the highest order, and with practice, some slate and some chalk, an art available to anyone who can draw a straight line. (Like the straight line Glenn Beck makes right to the bank)

Rather than writing me, any Fox viewers who happen upon this post by mistake are referred HERE where Glenn's many mistakes are documented on a regular basis.