Tidbits 7/10

• Clay Aiken fights back against media spin ... some truly REFRESHING (understatement of the year, if you ask me) coverage from the Clay nation blogosphere. And if you were curious, we are no longer listing the crap off Google News relating to this topic ... if you want to read that stuff, please go find it yourself.
  
• Something That Really Happened -

  It is interesting that so many mainstream news sources chose to either embellish the story or to leave out pertinent facts. The original news article out of Tulsa had accurately stated that Clay was asleep when the woman decided to attack him. However, the same news site chose to replace their original story with the AP story which conveniently left out that essential bit of information leading many reporters to assume that Clay was being obstinate about the placement of his foot and had come to blows with this woman. The actual facts belie this notion. Clay's placement of his foot was unintentional. The woman chose to attack him before he had a chance to remedy the situation. Clay did not retaliate. The "fight" was totally one sided. Yet somehow this has been spun by gossips and comics to be some kind of cat fight. Truly a sad commentary on our society as a whole and the lack of journalistic integrity in particular.

• God Forbid The Clack Skip Around -

  Fountaindawg made this wallpaper of where Clay's wandering feet have taken him over the last few years.
  
  I find it shameful that while so many media sources found the space to report their version of what happened on an airplane this past weekend, only a few have covered his trips to Indonesia, Uganda and Afghanistan. How sad that the suffering of children around the world doesn't carry as much importance to them.

• ClaySpots -

  No matter that we have Americans dying everyday in Iraq, children in Uganda have to wander the countryside in search of safe haven, and Afghani women and children struggle to get even a basic education. Our President's approval rating is in the 20's and he has squandered most of the good will and respect that other countries used to have for us, our politicians can't be trusted to do what's right for the American people, and New Orleans is still a quagmire of deserted and forgotten people.
  
  But God forbid, let Clay Aiken (or his foot) be the victim of an unprovoked attack and it's stop the presses and slant your story so that it gets the most hits.

• The ConCLAYve
• ... and last, but not least... special thanks to Idle-wandering for citing our article, "Media: This One Is For You" I posted yesterday in their blog.

  The person who runs cdd.blogspot has had it with the media! Read this great blog: Media, this one is for you. I thought about writing on this topic, but the writer of this blog has all the points are covered, including some examples of the kind of crap that ended up being "reported" by some media outlets about the Great Airline Debacle of '07.