Journalists Required to Donate to Anti-Choicers In Order To Cover Palin’s Speech

By GottaLaff


PayMe McBlabFest is making one of her screeches at a fundraiser for the "faith-based" anti-choice group Heroic Media. And the press must pay admission in order to cover the event.

And who exactly is it who is intruding into the lives of U.S. citizens again? Oh, that's right. The "lamestream media" aren't really citizens unless they show their papers, so they have no freedoms. Only PayMe and her clan have them:

[I]n order to cover Palin’s speech, the Austin-American Statesman reports that journalists will have to make a contribution to Heroic Media:

Restrictions: Heroic Media will try to prohibit video and audio recordings of Palin’s appearance, and news organizations wishing to cover her speech must buy a ticket, the proceeds of which will go to Heroic Media.

[...] Earlier this year, after conservatives criticized Palin’s $100,000+ fee to speak at the Tea Party convention, she said she would donate the proceeds to “the cause.” Perhaps that’s what she is trying to get the media to do as well.

I posted about another event to be held on May 12th at which McBlabFest is charging the press:

The high-priced tickets for the May 12th event are still quite plentiful. For the rest of this week, WIND is just giving the tickets away. From 4:00pm-5:00pm, those looking for tickets need only show up at a given Merlin shop each day this week. The first 25 listeners to stop by the Merlin locations each day will receive a free pair of tickets to see Sarah Palin speak in Rosemont and a $30.00 gift certificate to be used towards service at a Merlin 200,000 Mile Shop. [...]

In a related note, by request of Sarah Palin's people, no Chicago press or media members are being easily allowed into the event. Those media outlets who wish to be there, will have to buy the expensive tickets themselves.[

As you can see, at that event, they are giving seats away along with gift certificates. Maybe the media contributions, should there be any, will compensate for the losses. So much for "free press".

If you recall, PayMe also pre-screens questions. I'm beginning to think she has a few control issues.

Meantime, who exactly are these "Heroic" types?

Think Progress:

The group’s Internet strategy tries to direct Google users to an anti-choice website:

Heroic Media utilizes an online strategy to purchase top listings on search engines, such as google, so when teens “google” the word “abortion,”… “I think I’m pregnant,” … or “terminate pregnancy,” one of the top web sites they’ll see is our partner web site http://www.teenbreaks.com

Teenbreaks.com provides information about abortion, communicating with parents, adoption, cutting and more.

Oh, it gets worse. Follow the Think Progress link. And when you get there, they won't even charge you.

Now they're giving Palin tickets away!

By GottaLaff

First the Tea Patriot event ticket prices were cut in half, now they cost nothing. Zero. Zilch. Maybe OverPaid McFreebie needs a ghost speaker.

Via Chicago Media and Radio:

This may not come as a surprise to some, but the upcoming WIND-AM event with Sarah Palin speaking is not selling very well. The high-priced tickets for the May 12th event are still quite plentiful. For the rest of this week, WIND is just giving the tickets away. From 4:00pm-5:00pm, those looking for tickets need only show up at a given Merlin shop each day this week. The first 25 listeners to stop by the Merlin locations each day will receive a free pair of tickets to see Sarah Palin speak in Rosemont and a $30.00 gift certificate to be used towards service at a Merlin 200,000 Mile Shop. The special Merlin locations for the rest of this week are:

Tuesday: 8504 S. Harlem Ave., Bridgeview, IL
Wednesday: 234 West Roosevelt Rd, Lombard, IL
Thursday: 400 Dundee Rd, Elgin, IL
Friday: 1911 S. Arlington Heights Rd, Arlington Heights, IL

In a related note, by request of Sarah Palin's people, no Chicago press or media members are being easily allowed into the event. Those media outlets who wish to be there, will have to buy the expensive tickets themselves.

The desperation is palpable. The media must pop for their own pricey tickets, and the audience has to be enticed with free seats and gift certificates. Gee, that's not embarrassing at all.

As for giving away freebies, sounds a little like... socialism!

I'm willing to bet she still won't be able to fill the house.

H/t: Windy City Watch

No More Goodies for Doctors From Drug Makers

By GottaLaff

My dad is a (now retired) doctor, and he used to bring home all kinds of pharmaceutical toys: We got free rulers, pads of paper, pens, even posable human forms that I used as models for drawings (I was an art major). Well, those days are over for kids and parental MDs everywhere:

Starting Jan. 1, the pharmaceutical industry has agreed to a voluntary moratorium on the kind of branded goodies — Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers, Lipitor mugs — that were meant to foster good will and, some would say, encourage doctors to prescribe more of the drugs.

I'll have you know that my dad was not in the least influenced. He was one of those really good doctors you only see in old movies and dream of when you're dying of the flu. He also made house calls, just in case you think I'm exaggerating.

No longer will Merck furnish doctors with purplish adhesive bandages advertising Gardasil, a vaccine against the human papillomavirus. Banished, too, are black T-shirts from Allergan adorned with rhinestones that spell out B-O-T-O-X. So are pens advertising the Sepracor sleep drug Lunesta, in whose barrel floats the brand’s mascot, a somnolent moth.

Some skeptics deride the voluntary ban as a superficial measure that does nothing to curb the far larger amounts drug companies spend each year on various other efforts to influence physicians. But proponents welcome it as a step toward ending the barrage of drug brands and logos that surround, and may subliminally influence, doctors and patients.

I still have my old Pfizer ruler. I'm sure of it.

The new voluntary industry guidelines [...] bar drug companies from giving doctors branded pens, staplers, flash drives, paperweights, calculators and the like.

Nooo! Not "the like"! Anything but "the like"!

The guidelines also reiterate the group’s 2002 code, which prohibited more expensive goods and services like tickets to professional sports games and junkets to resorts. And it asks companies that finance medical courses, conferences or scholarships to leave the selection of study material and scholarship recipients to outside program coordinators.

I can promise you right here and now that my dad was never influenced by a paper weight. A stapler, maybe.... but a paper weight? Don't be ridiculous.

The guidelines, for example, still permit drug makers to underwrite free lunches for doctors and their staffs or to sponsor dinners for doctors at restaurants, as long as the meals are accompanied by educational presentations. [...]

The industry code also permits drug makers to pay doctors as consultants “based on fair market value” — which critics say means that companies can continue to pay individual doctors tens of thousands of dollars or more a year. [...]

About 40 drug makers, including Eli Lily & Company, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, have signed on to the code. [...]

The restrictions come as a blow to the makers and distributors of promotional products, an industry with an annual turnover of about $19 billion, according to Promotional Products Association International, a trade group. Such companies, accustomed to orders of up to a million pens a drug, stand to lose around $1 billion a year in sales as a result of the drug industry’s voluntary ban, the group said.

Of course, there's always that one doctor who goes overboard:

Dr. Jeffrey F. Caren, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, has collected more than 1,200 pens and mounted them on a pillar in his office.

Some doctors are a little offended by the guidelines. After all, would you ever let a vaginal-med-pen get the better of you?

Dr. Hurson said she paid no attention to the logos on the pens she carries around in her doctor’s coat. Prompted by a reporter’s question, she pulled out a handful of pens from her pocket and read off the drugs advertised: Clindesse, a cream for vaginal infection; Halo, a system for detecting breast cancer, and Evamist, an estrogen spray. “It’s hard for me to believe it influences what you prescribe.”

She can't fool me. I bet many a pharma-sales rep has gotten a rise in sales because of her Viagra roller balls.