A lot of talk here lately about newspapers folding or shutting down and stopping. It might be because of the popularity of the Internet or the plain simple fact, that a lot of what they print is not news, it doesn’t even come close to being described as news.
A lot of it is just garbage. People want more news, not garbage.
From time to time, I will write an article on the media in this country and I usually frame them with titles that say “Media Fatigue” or “Crap Sandwich.” Last week USA Today, The Nation’s Newspaper, fed us some more perhaps you caught it.
If you didn’t here is the link.
In this article written by Thurston Clarke in the opinion or forum page, we were fed another media crap sandwich. In this article “Can We Handle The Truth?” that used a tired line out of an old movie, “A few Good Men.” (You want the truth Danny? You cannot stand the truth! Jack Nicholson) Mr. Clarke implies that most of the problems in this country, or at least, some of the problems we are currently facing are “OUR” responsibility and we need to as citizens, assume some of the burden.
Well we all know what that is ….. You spread it on your rose’s in the spring, water it, and it makes them grow better, it is a bovine by-product you can buy at the home garden center. And I assume, that his book that is now on sale, is just some more of the same.
There seems to be this under-current running thru our country that we all need to acknowledge our collective culpability for the major issues here at home and for some of the damage that is being done in the Middle East under the guise of “Democracy.”
That our environmental degrading is somehow a product of our making, and that we are in fact willing participants in an unnecessary and illegal war, that we as citizens of this country condone torture of other human beings.
Again … We all know what that type of thinking or free speech idiom this seems to be.
Mr. Clarke states in part that “we all bear some responsibility for what has happened on Wall Street and Main Street.“ Which is a crap sandwich for sure. How is it that I as a citizen of this country, who bought a house that I could afford, pay my bills and obligations on time, month after month, can be responsible for any of this garbage? That is simply ludicrous.
Why is it as a taxpayer and good citizen I am to assume a measure of responsibility for what are clearly in my book, morally reprehensible and border line criminal acts by dishonest, lying politicians and those bonus motivated bottom feeders in the business sector.
It is far too easy to sit back and write, that American’s who bought houses they could not afford are clearly the problem. We didn’t coin the phrase “Ninja” loan, the bankers did (No Income – No Job – No Assets) they were the people who APPROVED THESE BAD LOANS how it the average American is supposed to assume ownership of that?
Get real.
When the war started I called my representatives in Congress and strongly urged them to NOT support it, and called to their attention that it was all based on a lie, from the data available to me at that time. We know who the “guilty” are in this, and we sat back and we did nothing about it. The media it seems to me should be sharing the lion’s share of the blame on the majority of this.
They are the folks who conveniently looked the other way when Bush flat out said, “He was sick of questions on the subject, and was not going to answer any more. The world is a safer place without Saddam and that was the end of the story.” Instead of pressing the issues, the press folded up their tents, and moved on.
So life as we know it moved to the back of the stove, and our media reported that Donald Rummsfield was “the sexiest man in America” and that “Britney wasn’t wearing her underwear” and the dirt was swept under the rug and we moved on to the next big non-story in America.
I got news for you.
Most of the people in this country, a large percentage of them are paying their mortgages on time. Most of us did not vote to prolong this war or ask for or order the incarceration of people in Gitmo or secret prisons in Europe, and find that just as equally insulting as the rest of this tripe.
I buy a cop of USA Today almost every day, and frankly folks, this is just more “kicking the wrong dog.” You want to write about responsibilities lacking and falling short of the mark, just take a look around the room, plenty of candidates there.
I am not buying your book Mr. Clarke and I don’t buy any of this … “Can We Handle The Truth” garbage either. If you feel the need to walk around carrying a #3 washtub of guilt about any of this or all of it … fine. Don’t try and lay it off on me. I personally find it just as disgusting as your so-called article.
We need and desire news, not this watered down McLean Virginia cup full of horse crap, with the foam farted off of it. Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors. Aren’t we just as responsible not only for the lies we speak but for the truth we fail to speak.
The average American on whatever street, is NOT responsible for any of this, this idea that we are all in this collective boat of despair because we wanted it is rubbish if not an outright lie.
In my neck of the woods (Oklahoma) they have an expression. “You can buy oats two ways. Before they have been thru the horse or after.”
And this article is definitely … After.
000
Don’t you find it interesting that with the taxpayers having to fund literally TRILLIONS of dollars for the financial crisis caused by bankers, that not one of them has even been charged with fraud? Let alone convicted. Hurricane Katrina devastated the gulf coast and we squealed about the cost of helping our fellow citizens. Yet, hundreds of billions are thrown to bankers simply for the asking even though they caused the disaster themselves. Now some, like Mr. Clarke want to point the finger of blame at us. I’m not buying it either.
Comment by James W. — December 16, 2008 @ 9:24 pm