Post by kessinger on May 4, 2010 14:27:39 GMT -5
I liked this and wanted to share it..........didn't list an author
Y’know, these days, so many people with so many different motives are trying to tell me in so many ways what the “truth” is that I wonder whether I’d recognize a “truth” — any “truth” at all.
I give up. I’ve collapsed under the oppressing weight of lies, prevarications, deceits, “policy adjustments,” rhetoric, no-longer-operative statements, attack ads, Perino-isms, cunningly packaged spin, and Rovian stump speeches with the rhetorical content equivalent to the unflushed contents of a toilet bowl.
Would someone please make possession of a Teleprompter a federal crime, punishable by listening to Rush Limbaugh 24/7 for life? Or Al Franken, for that matter? Can we stop the incessant harangue so reminiscent of “Father Knows Best” or, in the event Sarah Palin is speaking, “Mother Knows Best”? Or Hillary or Bill: “We Know Best”?
Now, if you do what I did for a living for 20 years (that journalism gig) and get enough advanced degrees and then do the professor shtick for 15 years, presumably you have the intellectual capacity and analytical ability to ferret out the posings of these all-knowing rodents.
But it’s too much. This pervasive, invasive crap comes at you in massive waves of media-borne and commentator-massaged messages crafted with a solitary purpose — to take something from me. It might be a vote. It might be money. It might be my soul. But they want something, and they’re willing to suspend any code of morality to get it. And you know who they are, don’t you?
I surrender. They win. The constant rush of words blending into a sheen of believability (polished quite nicely by those big-name “journalists” or CNN “contributors” purporting to “interpret” those words for the appropriate “truth”) has exhausted me. As the Borg said, “Resistance is futile.”
Because so many “sources” who have anointed themselves as “credible” have told me carefully orchestrated, artfully documented “truths” for so long, I no longer need to independently understand or articulate the political, social, cultural and economic “truths” around me. I now depend completely on them to tell me the “truth.”
They tell me whose fault everything is. So I blame whom they tell me to. They tell me whom to fear, so I’m afraid of those they tell me to be afraid of. It’s not that I no longer need to be told what to think and what to think about, it’s just that it’s become so much easier to be told rather than to choose.
When Telepromptered “truth” pours forth, I’ll simply look for the applause sign and clap when it tells me to. Yeah, that’s it. I’ll look for that neon sign that signals me that the “truth” is about to stride onto stage.
It had better be careful, though. That stage is already crowded.
Moral coda: Don’t. Trust. What. They. Say.
Y’know, these days, so many people with so many different motives are trying to tell me in so many ways what the “truth” is that I wonder whether I’d recognize a “truth” — any “truth” at all.
I give up. I’ve collapsed under the oppressing weight of lies, prevarications, deceits, “policy adjustments,” rhetoric, no-longer-operative statements, attack ads, Perino-isms, cunningly packaged spin, and Rovian stump speeches with the rhetorical content equivalent to the unflushed contents of a toilet bowl.
Would someone please make possession of a Teleprompter a federal crime, punishable by listening to Rush Limbaugh 24/7 for life? Or Al Franken, for that matter? Can we stop the incessant harangue so reminiscent of “Father Knows Best” or, in the event Sarah Palin is speaking, “Mother Knows Best”? Or Hillary or Bill: “We Know Best”?
Now, if you do what I did for a living for 20 years (that journalism gig) and get enough advanced degrees and then do the professor shtick for 15 years, presumably you have the intellectual capacity and analytical ability to ferret out the posings of these all-knowing rodents.
But it’s too much. This pervasive, invasive crap comes at you in massive waves of media-borne and commentator-massaged messages crafted with a solitary purpose — to take something from me. It might be a vote. It might be money. It might be my soul. But they want something, and they’re willing to suspend any code of morality to get it. And you know who they are, don’t you?
I surrender. They win. The constant rush of words blending into a sheen of believability (polished quite nicely by those big-name “journalists” or CNN “contributors” purporting to “interpret” those words for the appropriate “truth”) has exhausted me. As the Borg said, “Resistance is futile.”
Because so many “sources” who have anointed themselves as “credible” have told me carefully orchestrated, artfully documented “truths” for so long, I no longer need to independently understand or articulate the political, social, cultural and economic “truths” around me. I now depend completely on them to tell me the “truth.”
They tell me whose fault everything is. So I blame whom they tell me to. They tell me whom to fear, so I’m afraid of those they tell me to be afraid of. It’s not that I no longer need to be told what to think and what to think about, it’s just that it’s become so much easier to be told rather than to choose.
When Telepromptered “truth” pours forth, I’ll simply look for the applause sign and clap when it tells me to. Yeah, that’s it. I’ll look for that neon sign that signals me that the “truth” is about to stride onto stage.
It had better be careful, though. That stage is already crowded.
Moral coda: Don’t. Trust. What. They. Say.