I Am A TV Junkie

Full Episode Video -- @Current TV & @MarianaVZ in Uganda to Examine Criminalization of Homosexuality

First thing you need to do is read Mariana Van Zeller's blog post about Harvey Milk Day and the connections she makes between the U.S. Evangelical movement and the anti-gay bill being discussed in Uganda. That's at this link.

Then click this link and watch the whole hour of Current Vanguard ahead of its TV premiere.

Then call all your friends and neighbors and family members and tell them to watch.

Then we'll talk about it.

So get clickin', folks.

Video -- If You Watch One #LauraLing Interview, Watch This One Tonight on @Current TV

Why? Because it only stands to reason that her home network will have the footage you want to see from Laura's and Euna Lee's trip to the China/North Korea border and their subsequent incarceration, and she'll be most comfortable talking to her work colleague Mariana Van Zeller.

It's tonight at 10 eastern on Current TV. Check your cable or satellite program grid.

Of course the following Wednesday at 10 is the premiere of the new season of Current Vanguard which takes us to Uganda where anti-gay radical religious zealots from the US including a nasty li'l guy named Scott Lively traveled to affect policy in another country and make it a crime punishable by death to do the thing that makes one gay or lesbian.

See a preview at this link.

And they did so using the lies of people like Richard Cohen the alleged ex-gay therapist (unlicensed, unqualified, but therapy still ...) that Rachel Maddow raked over the coals a few months ago.

(You can check out my post on that interview and the whole interview by Maddow at this link.)

Though of course, as usual, most of the attention was on the purported horror which is sex between two men.

And sure, sometimes it is a horror, but it has nothing to do with the sex act. Some guys just aren't good in bed and I think that's horrible. Thank you, I'll be here all week, please tip your waiters and waitresses.

Let's Get @Current #Vanguard's @MarianaVZ On @Maddow Re: Uganda Anti-Gay Law,

In 2009 Mariana Van Zeller's work for Current TV won a Webby award. This past year her documentary for Current Vanguard, The OxyContin Express (watch it at this link) won the Peabody award.

Next month, Current Vanguard returns for a new season and opens with Van Zeller's piece on that Uganda anti-gay legislation that was promoted in the country by American Fundamentalist Christians and so-called ex-gays.

(Ex-gays ... don't get me started, you know how I feel about that but if you don't click this to see Rachel Maddow rip into Richard Cohen the uncredited unqualified therapist that says he can "cure the gay" in part by hitting couch cushions with bats. Seriously. I know, it's ridonkulous.)

 Up until now Maddow has been the rare broadcast outlet for this story so I'm looking forward to seeing what Van Zeller finds once she arrives in the country to talk with people on both sides of the story.

Watch a short clip via Hulu by clicking here.

Now about the Maddow thing ... I'd love to see Rachel have Van Zeller on her show before the episode airs. Wouldn't you?

The Maddow show email address is Rachel@msnbc.com and I think if enough of us actually sit down and write to the show and suggest this it might happen.

Van Zeller tells me via Twitter that one of the people she interviewed for the piece sent her home with something for Rachel so there's that, too.

Whaddaya think, wanna help me out? Write to Rachel, help me make this happen.

A #PeabodyAward For @CurrentTV, Mariana van Zeller's The #OxyContin Express

Haven't I told you all to set your DVRs for Current Vanguard? Huh?

Now, you must. You should be seeing this stuff when it premieres, not when it wins awards, that puts you right in the midst of the zeitgeist.

Again, from the Peabody Awards site, "With tales of drug-dealing MDs in Florida and Appalachian “pill-billies,” the documentary makes clear the enormity of the prescription-drug epidemic." 

Hey, I wonder if Druggy Limbaugh has seen this? Remember when he used to send his housekeeper Wilma Cline out to the Denny's parking lot to score his Oxy from drug dealers? Ah, good times, huh?

Watch the whole episode by clicking here.

Note to Florida's Governor, Charlie Crist ... how about crackin' down on this shit, huh? Yeah, just get outta the tanning booth (or the bus station bathroom -- allegedly, allegedly, people!) and do something to stop people from abusing this killer drug.

Update -- Current TV Reporters Held Hostage in North Korea Will Be Tried For "Hostile Acts"?

You gotta wonder exactly what that little guy with the really bad hair think hostile acts are? Didn't he just test a rocket and deliver veiled threats of use against US interests?

Oh, that's right, it's only a hostile act when it is perceived to be against Kim Jong Il. That must be the totalitaristic view of the rest of the world.

NY Times:

Pyongyang’s decision to put Laura Ling and Euna Lee on trial signaled that the regime has no intention of freeing them soon.

Their indictment comes amid heightening tension between Pyongyang and Washington over a North Korean plan to launch a rocket by Wednesday next week. United States officials consider a possible rocket launch a provocative test of theNorth’s long-range missile technology.

Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee, reporters for Current TV, a San Francisco-based media venture founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, were arrested by the North Korean military on March 17 on charges of illegally crossing the border from China. They were in China to report the plight of North Korean refugees who fled hunger at home and were living in hiding there.

I've also checked the State Dept. website today and there are no updates there.

This isn't Current's first look at this totalitarian state where just getting enough to eat is an almost-impossible task. They've done more coverage on this issue than almost any other channel lately, picking up outside video and having their reporters from the Vanguard series, not just Lee and Ling but also Adrian Baschuk & Jaron Gilinsky, report on the issues there. However, it seems Current has taken down the latter team's pod (that's what they call their stories at Current) called Three Days in North Korea.

However, there is some other coverage from outside journalists that has run on the channel that is still live on the web.

After the jump from Google Video is a 58-minute doc called Welcome to North Korea that I think will be very eye-opening for anyone who doesn't quite understand what the regime in charge is doing to their people.

It also will introduce you to the issues at play and the process of being a western journalist even attempting to report on the country.

They have nukes but no food. People just die in the streets as they walk along from malnutrition.

It's criminal.

More of Lee and Ling on a regular basis, this issue has been haunting me.

More about Laura Ling at her Current TV page at this link.

Euna Lee's page at the site is at this link.

Finally, I was clicking around the web yesterday and came across a blog written by a person who was obviously interested in this issue because of their own religious ferver and a desire to provide "religious freedom" to the country.

(Of course, what that usually means is that the person is an Evangelical that wants to convert all those people. Numbers do equal power in organized religion, after all.)

They are asking people to pray for Euna and Laura. I responded in their comments, "Prayer is wonderful, but diplomacy brings these women home."

Call your member of Congress and make sure this issue becomes their issue.

A statement from the Committee to Protect Journalists is at this link. And, I'm adding their site to my links list in the left column.

Full Episode Video -- Current TV's Narco War Next Door

Before you scoff and say this is only happening in TJ and doesn't matter 'cause you go to Cabo and Cancun? Read this from the LA Times the other day:

The suspect cruised around in an SUV that had been reported stolen. He toted corrido music glorifying drug smugglers and hit men, and allegedly helped them operate in this beach resort.

And until a few weeks ago, he was Cancun's police chief.

Now Francisco Velasco is in custody in Mexico City while federal authorities investigate whether he took part in the killing last month of a retired army general who had been hired to revamp the city's police force.

Simply put, things be getting mucho sketchy south of the border.

When you click over to the rest of that Times article it gets even scarier.

Cancun. Not TJ, not Juarez, but Cancun.

Now this episode of Current Vanguard feels a lot more relevant, huh?

 It's reported by Laura Ling (Lisa's sister) and there are moments during the thing that you actually fear for her safety.

And it's not just the violence but it's the vast massive corruption and the breakdown of social constructs and the possibility that we could eventually have a failed state right next door.

You know, like Afghanistan, only within walking distance.

Watch it, after the jump. And, as a Spring Break special, I'll have delightful stuff on the Mexican drug war all week just to scare the bejeebies outta you.

(Actually, because everyone has something and it's gonna quickly be news that affects us.)

It's after the jump. And if it's not there at first, be patient. I've been testing it and I don't see it loading quite yet. You can always click the link above the screen and go directly to it.

Full Episode Video -- Current Vanguard: Blood Roses and Deadly Diamonds

There are two Current shows on my DVR Series Manager. One is InfoMania, because I'm watching the career trajectory of Conor Knighton.

(He should have a talk show in ... wait, I'm looking at my watch ...)

And it's not just Knighton, I like the group of twenty-somethings that they've grouped with him to make the show. Especially the music guy, Sergio, who is just the right combination of fun, self-referential and self-loathing.

These Current "pods" (at least some of them) used to run willy-nilly throughout the day but now that they're grouped into this very tight li'l half hour. I can record just the one show and see it all.

The other show is Current Vanguard. And honestly I did start watching it the week they had an Adam Yamaguchi (below) story about robots. Robots? Adam Yamaguchi? I'm in!

After that I set the DVR to record the show and I haven't been disappointed since.

They go places where the rest of the TV press don't really care to go and they report on stuff like the conflict diamonds issue in Sierra Leone that you probably won't see from a TV network that runs those "A Diamond is Forever" ads constantly before Valentine's Day.

I didn't know about the situation in Colombia, however, where the chemicals that they're using to on the flowers that they import to the US and other nations are destroying the health of the women who handle them and the health of their potential children. They're only granting the flower handling jobs to women who have tubal ligation (fallopian tubes tied).

Don't get me wrong, it's great that Colombia is growing something other than Coca plants, but they gotta get with the green thing and the human rights thing. This is the problem with signing trade agreements that don't protect workers. Just because it's a Colombian 19-year-old woman and not a freshman at Emory doesn't mean I care less.

This is why Mariana Van Zeller calls the episode after the jump your Valentine's Day buzzkill.

Really worth watching either online or on the tube. The episode after the jump will be running on Current, or cable and satellite, for the rest of the week.