Monday, 20 July 2009

Buffy

Willow: Is it me, or is the school paper getting kind of depressing lately?
Oz: I dunno, I usually skip straight to the obits.

Buffy: You want credit for not feeding off bleeding disaster victims?
Spike: Well... yeah.
Buffy: You're disgusting.
Spike: (exasperated) What's it take?

Giles: It's the apocalypse.
Xander, Willow, Buffy (in unison, slightly annoyed): Again?

Buffy: mausoleums: big freaky cereal boxes of death.

Friday, 17 July 2009

Power Without Responsibility

From Curran and Seaton's 1997 classic, Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain, which has been on my reading pile for a significant proportion of my adult life...

a Foreign Office official added, “it cannot be the object of foreign policy to wipe a tear from every eye – however much the cameras would like us to.”

(Curran and Seaton 1997:251)

It might also be helpful if, rather than saying that we know what shape the future holds - and consequently abdicating responsibility for it - we began to ask again what it might be possible to do to make it better.

(ibid.: 262)