From StormBear's diary on Daily Kos:
At 3:44pm Eastern, Fox News Channel employee (I am guessing a segment producer) Eldad Yaron called me to arrange an interview for me to talk about BooksForSoldiers.com, our fundraising problems and how I am using the netroots to solve the problem.
BooksForSoldiers.com is a website run by a 501(c)(3) federally recognized tax-exempt charity. Any deployed US solider can go to the BooksForSoldiers.com website, fill out their contact info and tell us what they want - books, DVDs, video games, tube socks, almost anything - we will then send the item to the soldier for free. Plus we typically toss in snacks, chapstick, playing cards, and a brief note.
I started sending books to deployed soldiers during the first Gulf War. A bunch of my college friends were in the National Guard and they suddenly found themselves in Saudi Arabia setting up their Army hospital. When I heard of the extreme boredom of the troops after the shooting was over, I got all my friends I knew back in the states to give me their old novels and I sent them to the Army hospital in Riyadh. When Bush started his war, I knew I wanted to do the same thing, but on a larger scale, so I put together BooksForSoldiers.com.
I originally thought for this new war, the troops would be back home in 6 weeks - I never thought Books For Soldiers would still be going 5 years later. I was totally unprepared for that. What started as a six week project has become a 5 year plus journey.
I followed up the phone call with Fox News' Eldad Yaron with 8 emails - arranging for a driver to pick me up and drive me to San Francisco, sending them the BFS story, just putting the segment together for 10:20am Eastern today. I would arrive at their San Francisco location at no later than 10am and I would be on-air at exactly 10:20 - that was when they booked the sat time.
This morning, 45 minutes before the car was supposed to pick me up, another Fox News employee, Kelly, called me to tell me the segment had been canceled. "Something came up."
Well, Hell. I used the last of my shave gel, got all dolled up and had no place to go!
I smelled a rat, hard to avoid with Fox News, and I wondered what story I got bumped for, so I switched on Fox News. Here is their line-up for the 10am hour of America's Newsroom With Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly. Keep in mind, I was slated for 10:20am.
10:08 Running of the Bulls
10:13 Video of a car chase in Portland, Oregon
10:13 Oregon man flies in a lawn chair from oregon to idaho
10:20 MAN BITTEN BY SNAKE IN FLORIDA WALMART
10:22 Obama and McCain layout out economic plans
10:25 Baseball player, A-Rod might be involved with Madonna according to tabloids.
Books For Soldiers got bumped for a snakebite story! A bite where no one died!
I understand how cable news works and big stories could break at anytime. If Mugabe called for new elections or it started to rain in Big Sur, that I can understand being bumped. But a guy gets bit by a pygmy rattlesnake at the local Walmart and the soldiers get bumped?
WTF, indeed.
StormBear theorizes that FOX discovered he is not a supporter of the Iraq War, and therefore an enemy of the state or something equally stupid.
So BooksForSoldiers.com was snakebitten.
1 comment:
Books or snakes? Hello. The choice seems obvious to me. I mean when was the last time anybody was bitten by a book in Walmart? Target maybe but Walmart? Duh.
TBLMISBT
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