Does Anyone Know...

I have a few questions bouncing around in my bald head and I kind of hope there are a couple of people with some information.

Let's start with some guy named Donald Somethingorother who runs a blog titled, I believe, American Power. I do not know the guy, nor do I read his blog. He only comes up on my radar when he does something inexplicable. The first time he popped up was when he posted that "keyhole" video of that woman sports reporter, I think she works for ESPN, I don't follow anything but NASCAR anymore so I do not know the young woman.

A few Bloggers I respect took issue with this and I agree with them. There are a lot of places on the 'net to see women without clothes on, why show a woman who had this keyhole movie taken against her will? Donald Whathisname claims that because the woman works in a public medium, the movie is news. Well, yes, that this movie was made is news. The movie itself isn't news, it's just evidence. Donald is too smart to understand that. So he covers it up in a cloud of meaningless words.

Donald's latest escapade is posting the pictures of that young serviceman killed in Afghanistan. Again, he claims it to be news. I can just see an old movie where the gruff old cigar chomping editor screams out "Stop the presses! New Headline!" Young Men Get Killed In War!

Of course, Donald's action is not the first mystery in this story. This picture, or series of pictures was taken by an Associated Press photog embedded with that outfit. One of the things that one must do to gain an embed slot is agree to and sign a list of rules. High up on that list is no identifiable pictures of dead and wounded troops with express permission of those troops. The reporter/photographer gave her word. Then AP gave it's word. Then they broke that word.

I'm not the smartest guy in town but I know what a news organization has to sell. They can put people in places that we cannot be and tell us what happened. How do we know they're telling the truth? Well, we only have their word and the word of other reporters who were there. And we now know exactly what AP's word is worth. I do not understand why the stockholders of that corporation haven't formed a lynch mob and gone after that bunch.

Enter Donald again, posting one or more of those pictures on the grounds that that young man was a public figure. And, of course, that it was news. Now it was a long time since I swore the oath of enlistment but I don't remember a single word in it about me being a public figure. It said things like preserve and defend the Constitution and obey all lawful orders but there was nothing in it about public figure. And again, young men dying, well, here is some news, we're now losing young women, too. And neither of those are news. So, what is Donald's motivation?

Two times in the last couple-three months he does something many of us think is despicable, why? The people who called him on it get a big cloud of words. Words that are much like an Obama speech, they sound soothing but on careful reading mean very little. I first thought it was something simple like he wants to draw traffic. That doesn't really make sense though. Who wants to see the movie of the sports newsperson? Mostly, perverts. Who wants to see the picture of that young man dying with his leg blown off, as well as other injuries? To put it simply, ghouls. There is, quite simply, no good reason to post pictures of that young man's death. I would like more hits on my little blog here. I do not want perverts and ghouls as my readership, though.

Why do it? I don't know, unless Donald himself is a pervert and ghoul. I could be wrong but that's how it looks from here.

Now, a complete change of subject: Does anyone know what happened to Jennifer Martinez? She was blogging at A Collection of Thoughts and she was changing websites about the time I had my stroke and I lost track. I cannot find where she's writing now by googling her name and, unfortunately, that is the limit of my mad cumputer skilz.