Shoddy Quotes

(in 1954) I don`t sing anywhere as good as I used to, and I feel sincerely that it`s getting worse. I don`t see any purpose in trying to stretch something out that was once acceptable and that now is merely adequate, if that. I don`t know what the reason for this condition is, unless it`s apathy. I just don`t have the interest in singing. I am not keen about it any more. Songs all sound alike to me, and some of them so shoddy and trivial. I don`t mean I didn`t sing some cheap songs in the old days, but I had such a tremendous interest in singing and was so wrapped up in the work that it didn`t matter. I don`t know how to diagnose the condition, but it seems to me that possibly this apathy, this lack of desire, when I have to go to a recording session, transmits itself into nervous exhaustion and fatigue.

"Most everybody today that`s young is operating under the insane idea that what we`ve got going on is the best that there is. But it`s not. Current entertainment is cheap, shoddy, infantile, adolescent, not grown-up. We`re fed imagery that`s really pornographic, by people with an infantile idea of sexuality. It`s a sad and depressing thing."

It was a very shoddy and weak production. And there weren`t enough Black faces in the show for my liking. I don`t think it achieved anything. Bob Geldof is too self-serving.

I think that there`s been an unfortunate tendency for right wing think tanks to dominate these discussions. They often produce very shoddy studies and policy recommendations, which are nevertheless taken very seriously.

(While the Mercury News series could arguably be faulted for occasional overstatement, the elite media`s attacks on the series were clearly driven by a need to defend their shoddy record on the contra-cocaine story--involving a decade-long suppression of evidence ( Extra! , 6/87, 3-4/88). The Washington Post was typical.) When Brian Barger and I wrote the first story about contra-cocaine smuggling for the Associated Press in December 1985 (12/20/85), ... the Post waited a week, added some fresh denials and then stuck the story near the back of the national news section.

Children will watch anything, and when a broadcaster uses crime and violence and other shoddy devices to monopolize a child`s attention, it`s worse than taking candy from a baby. It is taking precious time from the process of growing up.