Take It Down A Notch (Or Three)

A bit of a departure today...

People are needlessly crazy. Perhaps it's a poor choice of words, since name calling tends to just feed the fires of crazy, but crazy is the best way to describe what surrounds us every day.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. 

I feel that Yeats' Second Coming perfectly describes today. Nowadays we are complacent; we just don't care enough. Or is it simply that we've given up? Unfortunately, in today's media the more controversial, or extreme a person's view, the more attention they get. Really, when's the last time you read an AP or Reuters report and thought, "Wow! That was interesting!" Yeah, it's probably never happened. Take in your surroundings, and think; look at things objectively and think to yourself, "What is this doing for humanity?" What is more important: The real Housewives of [fill in the blank] or the actual housewives everywhere trying to make a go at this thing called life?

I feel like the media has a certain job to do and for the most part, they do a good job. No one wants to pay for their news anymore; once one gets something for free it's hard to justify paying for that same information (sometimes). There are a lot of people who argue that the media is unabashedly liberal, as if it is some giant conspiracy. To these people, Fox News is a breath of fresh air—the lone David struggling against the Goliath that is, well, everything else. But Fox News is also the most popular, and as a result, the most influential news organization as such I feel they have a certain responsibility to the American people. Lately, Fox News' latest crusade is against NPR, that is, National Public Radio, and therein lies the problem. Fox News is conservative; no one denies that (except for the latter half of their Fair and Balanced slogan). Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the Wall Street Journal and basically everything else in the media, but that's neither here nor there. Republicans don't like NPR; and lately that anger has boiled over and is crackling and steaming on the burner. Every few years, Republicans try and pass some sort of bill killing public financing of NPR, PBS, and the like. It doesn't work though, because people like NPR and PBS; I mean, who wants to kill Big Bird, Elmo, and Oscar the Grouch? (I won't even mention Cookie Monster.) NPR is incredibly important as a news (and entertainment) organization, as is PBS. The problem, for some, is that NPR recently fired Juan Williams for his rather unnecessary remarks about his fear of muslims. which leads me to this quote from Karl Rove:

45 percent of NPR listeners were Saddam Hussein.

I don't even know what that means. It doesn't make sense, neither logically or grammatically. Let's begin by attacking this from a mathematical standpoint. Let's assume Saddam Hussein did listen to NPR  (I know, I know) For the former dictator to make up nearly one-half of NPR's listeners would suggest no one even listens to NPR. Anyway, to suggest that half of the people who listen to NPR are dictators (dictators in training mayhaps?) is completely asinine. To even make a comparison bewilders me. But then again, Fox seems to like comparing everything to dictators.

To be fair, crazy isn't limited to conservatives and Fox News. Who cares that Linda McMahon kicked a guy in the nuts on the WWE, or that Christine O'Donnell dabbled in witchcraft as a teenager. Isn't there a maxim about people not throwing stones and glass houses? Yeah, that. Why not instead focus on their platforms (or in their cases the complete lack thereof). Christine O'Donnell wants to bring God and Jesus to public schools, convinced the Constitution makes no mention of the separation of church and state. Or, there's Linda McMahon who has slammed all of Connecticut in ads belittling and attacking Richard Blumenthal. But what are her plans? I've seen an awful lot of her commercials pleading to mothers to vote for her, but why? I've not seen a single ad of hers suggesting why I should give her my vote. So far, I've seen that she can afford nicely produced ads, she can get her friends to say what a wonderful person she is, and that Richard Blumenthal has slipped up a couple times. Oh, and that she has no experience, but Blumenthal has been in government for too long.


[As it happens, I wrote this post before Election Day. I'm glad Richard Blumenthal won Connecticut; truth be told, it's nice to be rid of her ads as well]


I feel like this video from Crossfire sums up the premise of this blog: