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Making It Up As They Go Along

August 23, 2010 – Another correction! My apologies – the issue of Permaculture Activist I alluded to last week was the Autumn issue, not the Summer.

Just when I think the Republicans might not be hell-bent on self destruction after all, the sound of the misinformation machine clanking away brings me to my senses. All this nonsense about a mosque planned for ground zero, when it’s a community center being built many blocks away. (The imam has been a friend to the United States, helping both the Bush and Obama administrations.) Then there’s that idiotic story about Obama’s ostensibly hard-to-figure-out religious convictions surfacing again. Do we actually have to SEE the media in bed with the R’s to understand what’s going on here?

When did newspapers, television, and radio begin running stories based on the (admittedly fascinating) question, “Guess what the Republicans are alleging today?” If there ever was a mystery about why readership and audiences in this country have declined, there is no longer. There is no end to how stupid Republicans think Americans are! After all, winks the GOP, who can keep all this inconsequential tripe straight - right? So no harm done. Those lies the media “reported” about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange? They’ve been withdrawn as unfounded. What’s that? You never heard about THAT? You weren’t supposed to. Anymore than you’re supposed to know that the charges drummed up by that masseuse against Al Gore were also dropped as unfounded. I wonder how much that masseuse was paid by the Republicans to resurrect that scurrilous attack?

The Party of the Tea Party doesn’t even care if you believe what you hear. As long as you hear.

Anybody besides me detect a pattern?

Meanwhile, Time magazine runs an article about organically grown foods vs. conventionally grown foods. So far, so good. While Time seems to generally come down on the side of organic foods, they get all wishy-washy on fruits and vegetables, saying either is fine. Then – as an aside! – they make very brief mention of the fact that chemicals sprayed on conventionally grown crops are bad for the environment. The environment – hmmm, let’s see – that includes you and me, doesn’t it? Didn’t the President’s Cancer Panel just report in May that the link between cancers and chemicals has been “grossly underestimated?” Have we really been trained so well by the me-too media that we automatically ignore stories that contain three-syllable words or honest-to-goodness news, not necessarily in that order?

“Freedom of opinion is a farce, unless factual information is guaranteed.”

- Hannah Arendt

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