0 comment Saturday, September 27, 2014 | admin
Obama picks Biden for V.P.
Barack Obama selected Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware late Friday night to be his vice presidential running mate, according to a Democratic official, balancing his ticket with an older congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and defense issues.
Biden, who has twice sought the White House, is a Catholic with blue-collar roots, a generally liberal voting record and a reputation as a long-winded orator.
And , it appears, a plagiarist. He stole part of a campaign speech from British politician Neil Kinnock, if I remember correctly.
Why Biden? He seems a very lackluster choice. What is gained by having him on the ticket? What motivates this choice?
Not that it really makes any difference to me; to me, the two-party rigged system is not to be taken seriously anymore. I will vote third party regardless, but I am curious as to what my readers think of this, if anything.
Besides, I have little else to blog about tonight; does it seem to anyone else as if the blogosphere is especially quiescent lately? Or dispirited?
I've noticed that many of the blogs I used to read daily have either died or been abandoned, or have such infrequent posts as to be virtually extinct, while several are going on some kind of indefinite hiatus. Does anybody else notice this?
And does it seem lately as if the news is always just more of the same old same old, nothing 'new' about it? Has the news ever been more boring or ennui-producing than it is now?
Barack Obama selected Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware late Friday night to be his vice presidential running mate, according to a Democratic official, balancing his ticket with an older congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and defense issues.
Biden, who has twice sought the White House, is a Catholic with blue-collar roots, a generally liberal voting record and a reputation as a long-winded orator.
And , it appears, a plagiarist. He stole part of a campaign speech from British politician Neil Kinnock, if I remember correctly.
Why Biden? He seems a very lackluster choice. What is gained by having him on the ticket? What motivates this choice?
Not that it really makes any difference to me; to me, the two-party rigged system is not to be taken seriously anymore. I will vote third party regardless, but I am curious as to what my readers think of this, if anything.
Besides, I have little else to blog about tonight; does it seem to anyone else as if the blogosphere is especially quiescent lately? Or dispirited?
I've noticed that many of the blogs I used to read daily have either died or been abandoned, or have such infrequent posts as to be virtually extinct, while several are going on some kind of indefinite hiatus. Does anybody else notice this?
And does it seem lately as if the news is always just more of the same old same old, nothing 'new' about it? Has the news ever been more boring or ennui-producing than it is now?
Labels: Blogosphere, Elections, News, Party Politics, Politics, Presidential Candidates
0 comment Wednesday, September 3, 2014 | admin
On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, 1932, grocery store ads show these prices for the turkey dinner and various 'fixings':
U.S. Prime Turkey 25c lb.
U.S. Prime Corn Fed Geese 20c lb.
U.S. Prime Corn Fed Ducks 20c lb.
U.S. Selected Spring Roosters 10c lb.
2 lb. jar Extra Good Mince Meat 23c
Fancy Almonds 18c lb.
Fancy Walnuts 17c lb.
2 lbs. Cranberries 29 cents
3 1/2 oz. Bottle Stuffed Olives 10c
2 large cans Solid Pack Pumpkin 23c
9 lbs. Sweet Potatoes 25c
Fancy Celery, per bunch 4c
Hill's Bros. Coffee; per lb. 35c
Free Delivery
A far cry from today's prices, and of course the free delivery is mostly a thing of the past.
Also at this time in 1932, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the country was in somewhat the same situation as we find ourselves in today. A new president had just been elected, the country was in economic distress, and the president-elect was expected to come into office and clean up the mess, put things right. President Franklin Roosevelt was of course the president-elect, a Democrat who was seen by many as some kind of knight on a white horse who would 'fix' the depression which was widely blamed on the outgoing Republican president, Herbert Hoover.
The New York Times editorial page has lately called for President Bush to leave office without delay, simply break precedent and clear out so that today's Man on a Horse can come in posthaste and put the world to rights. However, it's odd that back in 1932 the installation of the new administration was still by tradition delayed until March of the following year.
An editorial piece in this 1932 paper, titled 'Speed Lame Ducks' Passing' says this:
Franklin D. Roosevelt does not take office until next March. However, it is already apparent that he will have a tremendous influence on the government policies that take shape between now and then. He and President Hoover are trying to shape a mutually satisfactory stand on the war debts; the short term congress is looking to him constantly, for guidance and advice.
All of this adds one last, clinching argument to the case for the now pending 20th amendment to the constitution -- the lame duck amendment which would abolish the short session and cause a new president and congress to take office at the beginning of January instead of the beginning of March. That amendment must be ratified by 19 more states. Let us hope that their action can be prompt."
U.S. Prime Turkey 25c lb.
U.S. Prime Corn Fed Geese 20c lb.
U.S. Prime Corn Fed Ducks 20c lb.
U.S. Selected Spring Roosters 10c lb.
2 lb. jar Extra Good Mince Meat 23c
Fancy Almonds 18c lb.
Fancy Walnuts 17c lb.
2 lbs. Cranberries 29 cents
3 1/2 oz. Bottle Stuffed Olives 10c
2 large cans Solid Pack Pumpkin 23c
9 lbs. Sweet Potatoes 25c
Fancy Celery, per bunch 4c
Hill's Bros. Coffee; per lb. 35c
Free Delivery
A far cry from today's prices, and of course the free delivery is mostly a thing of the past.
Also at this time in 1932, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the country was in somewhat the same situation as we find ourselves in today. A new president had just been elected, the country was in economic distress, and the president-elect was expected to come into office and clean up the mess, put things right. President Franklin Roosevelt was of course the president-elect, a Democrat who was seen by many as some kind of knight on a white horse who would 'fix' the depression which was widely blamed on the outgoing Republican president, Herbert Hoover.
The New York Times editorial page has lately called for President Bush to leave office without delay, simply break precedent and clear out so that today's Man on a Horse can come in posthaste and put the world to rights. However, it's odd that back in 1932 the installation of the new administration was still by tradition delayed until March of the following year.
An editorial piece in this 1932 paper, titled 'Speed Lame Ducks' Passing' says this:
Franklin D. Roosevelt does not take office until next March. However, it is already apparent that he will have a tremendous influence on the government policies that take shape between now and then. He and President Hoover are trying to shape a mutually satisfactory stand on the war debts; the short term congress is looking to him constantly, for guidance and advice.
All of this adds one last, clinching argument to the case for the now pending 20th amendment to the constitution -- the lame duck amendment which would abolish the short session and cause a new president and congress to take office at the beginning of January instead of the beginning of March. That amendment must be ratified by 19 more states. Let us hope that their action can be prompt."
Labels: History, News, Presidency
0 comment Tuesday, September 2, 2014 | admin
Many of you may have already read it, but the subject under discussion is the selection of one Tino Cuellar to head up the new administration's working group on immigration.
"Cuéllar has been described as a close adviser to Obama on immigration, and the American Bar Association recently suggested he could be on the short list to head the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency." In other news, president-elect Obama has announced that: a Mr. Fox will be placed in charge of the US Department of Hen Houses; The US Sheep and Lamb Protection Agency, will have a Ms. Wolf as its new head; the CIA will be co-chaired by Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale (of Bullwinkle fame;) and that the Department of Homeland Security shall have either Osama bin-Laden or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as its new secretary. It is believed that Mr. bin-Laden is the stronger contender of these latter two potential appointments, since President Ahmadinejad is currently running his own country and might have conflicting interests� As always, God help us all! Posted by John PM at 6:28 PM on November 24 Amen.
This would be funny were it not so tragic.
"Cuéllar has been described as a close adviser to Obama on immigration, and the American Bar Association recently suggested he could be on the short list to head the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency." In other news, president-elect Obama has announced that: a Mr. Fox will be placed in charge of the US Department of Hen Houses; The US Sheep and Lamb Protection Agency, will have a Ms. Wolf as its new head; the CIA will be co-chaired by Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale (of Bullwinkle fame;) and that the Department of Homeland Security shall have either Osama bin-Laden or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as its new secretary. It is believed that Mr. bin-Laden is the stronger contender of these latter two potential appointments, since President Ahmadinejad is currently running his own country and might have conflicting interests� As always, God help us all! Posted by John PM at 6:28 PM on November 24 Amen.
This would be funny were it not so tragic.
Labels: Borders, Ethnic Conflicts, Ethnic Solidarity, Illegal Immigration, News
0 comment Friday, June 27, 2014 | admin
The events of recent days are so strange that it's hard to sift the news stories and the chatter about them to discern where the truth lies.
First, the bizarre flyover of Manhattan by Air Force One, accompanied by fighter jets; here's one blogger's take on it.
I've been following numerous internet discussions of that incident as well as talking with people about it in the 'real world.' Just about everyone agrees that the official explanation makes no sense -- that is, the story that a new photo of Air Force One flying over the Statue of Liberty was needed, and that the failure to notify the appropriate authorities or the public was just a 'mistake.'
It seems that there are theories aplenty of what really happened, and we will all be left to speculate and shake our heads about it, as we are not likely to hear a reasonably truthful account of it that makes sense.
My first thought when hearing about this supposed 'photo-op' flight was: why not just use Photoshop? Even I could put together a reasonable composite photo with Photoshop, and I am a rank amateur. No, I don't buy the photo-op story, but any other alternative explanation I can think of is so bizarre that it's pointless to speculate. But these days, almost anything, reasonable or not, seems possible, so strange are these times.
The second subject which defies our efforts to get at the truth is, of course, the Mexican flu story.
No, I won't call it the 'swine flu' as most of the MSM are doing, because from what I've read, the flu involves strains of not only swine but avian and human influenza viruses. And the fact that the politically correct get irate when someone calls it the Mexican flu, based on the site of its first known occurrences, convinces me that Mexican flu is just the right name for it. Whatever gives the PC crowd the vapors must be right.
The left-wing blogosphere is already using the term 'racist hatred' to dismiss any attempt to make the obvious connection between immigrants and this disease.
I've read and heard so much speculation and opinion about the flu from various people, and on the right it seems the most common response is skepticism; "it's just another flu, no big deal. It's a scare story cooked up by the mainstream media, who lie about everything" (which is nearly true, actually) or it's "created by the current regime either to 'cause panic' or to push through a nationalized health care plan", or to "justify repressive measures like martial law" or other outrages.
If it's true that there's nothing to it, that it's just another round of the flu virus, no different than the usual ones, what are all those images of Mexico City with people wearing masks, and the stories of the closing of many schools, and cancelling of public events? Or the closing of borders by other (more sensible) governments? How do the scoffers explain that away? Are the pictures all faked, like the supposedly faked footage of the moon landing in 1969?
If it were a manufactured crisis with a political end in mind, like 'pushing through nationalized health care', it would seem like a rather odd way to go about it. Why would such an event be needed? Does anybody think that the administration would have any trouble passing their health care plan, with the current Congress? How would a pandemic help, unless the idea is that a presidential directive or something would nationalize health care, that it would allow the administration to unilaterally do this?
It would seem to me that a pandemic, or another such nationwide health emergency, would be a bad time to try to institute a cumbersome bureaucratic system which included everybody. And there are the economic considerations; how could the enormous expense be justified in the current climate? I suppose that's a silly question, though, given our current wild spending spree with the economy on the rocks.
It may be a way to justify the need for some kind of 'global governance' to combat a worldwide health crisis; that would be more plausible to me, and if so, it's disturbing.
But regardless, the bottom line is: I don't think it's wise to scoff at the possibility that this flu epidemic might escalate into a real crisis, with widespread illness and lives lost. I certainly hope and pray it won't be as serious as that; I hope the doubters are right, but as of now, they are not basing their doubt on anything more substantial than stubborn skepticism and cynicism. They certainly have no solid reason that I've heard for their certitude that this is all hype and hysteria. Methinks they are whistling in the dark, or to use a grimmer metaphor, whistling past the graveyard.
Regardless of what one believes about the reality of this flu epidemic or about the degree of seriousness, it should trouble us that our supposed leadership seem to be more concerned with the political ramifications than with the health of the citizens of this country. It should disgust us that the people ''in charge'' seem oblivious to our well-being and safety, and that they have a completely passive, feckless attitude, reflected in their cavalier statements that 'there's nothing we can do to contain it' so there's no use in closing borders.
I've heard some cynical citizens make that same statement; they say it's too late; the horse is out of the barn. However I say it's not useless to try to close the door to the many illegal immigrants -- and the legal immigrants, tourists, and visitors from Mexico. I mean, is it not common sense to reason that the more such people enter our country, the greater the likelihood of the disease being transmitted to more Americans, faster? The government seems to take the attitude that since we've undoubtedly let the virus loose in our country, let's just say 'what the heck?' and bring in more and more of it via more immigrants and visitors. What does it matter if there are 1,000 people bringing the virus or 100,000 people bringing the virus? This is essentially the reasoning of our incompetent officials. One, or one hundred thousand, it's all the same, since it's here already.
What kind of 'leadership' is this?
Somebody in the blogosphere had my blog on a list of 'women misogynists', and I know this will further incriminate me in the eyes of such people, but I would feel a lot more confident with some old-style gray-haired gentlemen in positions of leadership. Call me misogynistic if you must, but the girls (of whatever age) with the grade-school-teacher personalities who are standing up there before the microphones inspire no confidence in me. They look and act and speak like sing-songy schoolmarms rather than people who should be in national leadership positions. (And please, if you are a grade-school teacher or any other kind, this is not meant to offend you. I am simply talking about a certain type of liberal female. I know there are wonderful conservative schoolteachers out there -- somewhere. And God bless them.)
Leadership is lacking, truth is in short supply, and the population is in a state of confusion and discontent.
This would be the perfect time, given the leadership vacuum, for local and regional authorities to step up to the plate and do what they should do; there is no direction from those at the top. America truly is, for now, a flock of sheep without a shepherd.
First, the bizarre flyover of Manhattan by Air Force One, accompanied by fighter jets; here's one blogger's take on it.
I've been following numerous internet discussions of that incident as well as talking with people about it in the 'real world.' Just about everyone agrees that the official explanation makes no sense -- that is, the story that a new photo of Air Force One flying over the Statue of Liberty was needed, and that the failure to notify the appropriate authorities or the public was just a 'mistake.'
It seems that there are theories aplenty of what really happened, and we will all be left to speculate and shake our heads about it, as we are not likely to hear a reasonably truthful account of it that makes sense.
My first thought when hearing about this supposed 'photo-op' flight was: why not just use Photoshop? Even I could put together a reasonable composite photo with Photoshop, and I am a rank amateur. No, I don't buy the photo-op story, but any other alternative explanation I can think of is so bizarre that it's pointless to speculate. But these days, almost anything, reasonable or not, seems possible, so strange are these times.
The second subject which defies our efforts to get at the truth is, of course, the Mexican flu story.
No, I won't call it the 'swine flu' as most of the MSM are doing, because from what I've read, the flu involves strains of not only swine but avian and human influenza viruses. And the fact that the politically correct get irate when someone calls it the Mexican flu, based on the site of its first known occurrences, convinces me that Mexican flu is just the right name for it. Whatever gives the PC crowd the vapors must be right.
The left-wing blogosphere is already using the term 'racist hatred' to dismiss any attempt to make the obvious connection between immigrants and this disease.
I've read and heard so much speculation and opinion about the flu from various people, and on the right it seems the most common response is skepticism; "it's just another flu, no big deal. It's a scare story cooked up by the mainstream media, who lie about everything" (which is nearly true, actually) or it's "created by the current regime either to 'cause panic' or to push through a nationalized health care plan", or to "justify repressive measures like martial law" or other outrages.
If it's true that there's nothing to it, that it's just another round of the flu virus, no different than the usual ones, what are all those images of Mexico City with people wearing masks, and the stories of the closing of many schools, and cancelling of public events? Or the closing of borders by other (more sensible) governments? How do the scoffers explain that away? Are the pictures all faked, like the supposedly faked footage of the moon landing in 1969?
If it were a manufactured crisis with a political end in mind, like 'pushing through nationalized health care', it would seem like a rather odd way to go about it. Why would such an event be needed? Does anybody think that the administration would have any trouble passing their health care plan, with the current Congress? How would a pandemic help, unless the idea is that a presidential directive or something would nationalize health care, that it would allow the administration to unilaterally do this?
It would seem to me that a pandemic, or another such nationwide health emergency, would be a bad time to try to institute a cumbersome bureaucratic system which included everybody. And there are the economic considerations; how could the enormous expense be justified in the current climate? I suppose that's a silly question, though, given our current wild spending spree with the economy on the rocks.
It may be a way to justify the need for some kind of 'global governance' to combat a worldwide health crisis; that would be more plausible to me, and if so, it's disturbing.
But regardless, the bottom line is: I don't think it's wise to scoff at the possibility that this flu epidemic might escalate into a real crisis, with widespread illness and lives lost. I certainly hope and pray it won't be as serious as that; I hope the doubters are right, but as of now, they are not basing their doubt on anything more substantial than stubborn skepticism and cynicism. They certainly have no solid reason that I've heard for their certitude that this is all hype and hysteria. Methinks they are whistling in the dark, or to use a grimmer metaphor, whistling past the graveyard.
Regardless of what one believes about the reality of this flu epidemic or about the degree of seriousness, it should trouble us that our supposed leadership seem to be more concerned with the political ramifications than with the health of the citizens of this country. It should disgust us that the people ''in charge'' seem oblivious to our well-being and safety, and that they have a completely passive, feckless attitude, reflected in their cavalier statements that 'there's nothing we can do to contain it' so there's no use in closing borders.
I've heard some cynical citizens make that same statement; they say it's too late; the horse is out of the barn. However I say it's not useless to try to close the door to the many illegal immigrants -- and the legal immigrants, tourists, and visitors from Mexico. I mean, is it not common sense to reason that the more such people enter our country, the greater the likelihood of the disease being transmitted to more Americans, faster? The government seems to take the attitude that since we've undoubtedly let the virus loose in our country, let's just say 'what the heck?' and bring in more and more of it via more immigrants and visitors. What does it matter if there are 1,000 people bringing the virus or 100,000 people bringing the virus? This is essentially the reasoning of our incompetent officials. One, or one hundred thousand, it's all the same, since it's here already.
What kind of 'leadership' is this?
Somebody in the blogosphere had my blog on a list of 'women misogynists', and I know this will further incriminate me in the eyes of such people, but I would feel a lot more confident with some old-style gray-haired gentlemen in positions of leadership. Call me misogynistic if you must, but the girls (of whatever age) with the grade-school-teacher personalities who are standing up there before the microphones inspire no confidence in me. They look and act and speak like sing-songy schoolmarms rather than people who should be in national leadership positions. (And please, if you are a grade-school teacher or any other kind, this is not meant to offend you. I am simply talking about a certain type of liberal female. I know there are wonderful conservative schoolteachers out there -- somewhere. And God bless them.)
Leadership is lacking, truth is in short supply, and the population is in a state of confusion and discontent.
This would be the perfect time, given the leadership vacuum, for local and regional authorities to step up to the plate and do what they should do; there is no direction from those at the top. America truly is, for now, a flock of sheep without a shepherd.
Labels: Leadership, Mass Immigration, Media Bias, News, Open Borders, Political Correctness, Public Health, Rumors
0 comment Monday, June 16, 2014 | admin
Our cotton-candy-fluffy-bunny news
...To confirm the permanence of our society's deterioration, news of Lindsay Lohan, as well as the meltdown of Britney Spears, spread across TV screens Thursday and Friday like a bad virus on your computer. Yet these are these stories Americans want. We clamor for news about our favorite celebrities. Does she trim her nails herself? Did he have a weekend fling on the beach? Will they get married, or just continue living together for the next 12 years?
Why are we so shallow?''
Are we so shallow?
I've blogged about the issue addressed in this article before: our junk-food news, or as Jonathan Krive calls it, our cotton candy news.
I question whether we are fed this stuff because of public demand, or because for whatever reason, our media elites want to feed us this non-nourishing, empty-calories substitute for real news of importance.
There are elements of both aspects: if people are demanding this non-nutritive filler as their 'news'-- and I suspect a certain segment of the public does prefer it -- it is because of decades of dumbing-down, in our media and in our school system and our popular culture generally.
Still, I encounter plenty of people, not overly educated or highbrow people, high-school educated, not hard news junkies, who express disgust at the surfeit of the 'bimbo' stories. Outside of Lohan's fanboys and fangirlies, I think many people wonder why the news channels waste so much airtime on Lohan's misbehavior. It is not just overeducated, ultra-serious people who are disgusted with the cotton-candy, bimbo-oriented 'news' on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. It is average people too who are sick of the fluff and nonsense that fills our news channels and those supermarket magazines.
However it is probably true that the younger generations in particular, having grown up in a trivia-driven, celebrity-fawning culture, are more accepting of it. And these younger generations have, not coincidentally, grown up with an educational system that neglects the basics and focuses on making kids 'feel good about themselves'. There is also an overemphasis on Politically Correct ideology at the expense of teaching young people about their own heritage and culture. I've heard from some of them that they spent more time in school learning about (probably apocryphal) African kingdoms than about the founding of our country, or about the English traditions from which our unique American system derives.
How can young people take an interest in the actual news of what is going on around the world, and hope to decipher it, without a grounding in history and political science and geography?
Krive, in the linked article, quotes from Joseph Farah's piece on 'The dumbing down of America.'
In that piece, Farah quotes questions from an eighth grade exam from the year 1895.
For example, these questions on American History:
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?''
Now I, despite having had a good solid education back in the olden days, might have to struggle a little on some of those questions, but I wonder how many could answer more than one or two nowadays?
Back in the era in which that test was written, an eighth-grade education was all that many Americans would have; they had a graduation ceremony at the end of the eighth grade school year, and received certificates, following which many of them would proceed to some kind of apprenticeship in a trade or livelihood of some sort; only the more academically talented would go on to high school, and even fewer of those on to college. That was perhaps a better system. It's often been said that an eighth-grade education then was better than today's high school education. Nowadays, even the high school education has been woefully dumbed down, so as to allow as many as possible to 'graduate', and then go on to college, where they are really out of their depth -- despite the fact that college, too, is watered down and geared to the lowest common denominator.
Even when I attended college in the 70s, my counselor, in helping me put together my class schedule, commented that few students were choosing a classical education, with basic courses like World History, English literature, and so on; most seemed to be choosing psychology and sociology and 'relevant' courses like Minority History and Women's History. Once the old core requirements were dropped and dumbed down and the politically correct pabulum offered, most students opted out of the basics and chose the fluff. Nowadays we read of classes having to do with the 'gay experience' and pornography, as well as the frivolous courses on popular culture, which is, after all, ephemeral.
The goal these days seems to be to grind out as many 'graduates' as possible, rather than to truly educate and enlighten the majority of students, or to fully develop the talents of the more able. And the goal is also to make students 'feel good about themselves' by forcing some kind of pretended 'equality' among people, with the mediocre student and the laggard not made to feel inferior by some inconsiderate prodigy.
So whose interest does it serve to make people more shallow and ignorant, or to focus their attention on the antics of drug-addled 'celebrities'? Are we fed this stuff because the media elites truly think it is newsworthy? Is it simply eye-candy, because people want to look at 'beautiful people' like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan? Or is it meant to distract us from the real, behind-the-scenes, world-changing events? Is it just a sideshow to keep us occupied and to further dumb us down?
Or is it merely another side-effect of the feminizing of our society? It does seem that many women are more focused on the doings of other women, the clothes they wear, the hairstyles, the plastic surgery, their private lives, who they sleep with and/or marry, and so on? I'm a female and I know that not all women are into this gossip as news thing, but a good percentage of them are.
Just look at the TV channels which are 'women's channels': the Lifetime Movie channel, which specializes in soap-operaesque movies about domestic abuse, troubled romances, and so on, and the Oxygen network, which takes a relentlessly PC, 'you-go-girl' look at the world, with focus on 'women's problems': relationships, fashion, sex, body image.
Back in the 1970s, in the era in which feminism was commanding so much attention, Irish writer Desmond Fennell
wrote a piece which asked an interesting question. I cannot locate anything of the piece online, and I no longer have it, but his question was essentially 'why do feminists act as if woman has no soul?' The question was in response to the new 'feminist' talk shows which were all the rage then: there were many such talk shows, hosted by some earnest feminist, interviewing other women of course, on subjects of interest to women. Fennell, if I am recalling correctly, pointed out that the women never discussed deep spiritual or philosophical questions, but only things like women's health, relationships, body image, and feminist politics and letters. They seldom seemed to deal with the wider, more inclusive world. The same gynocentric concerns are served up by Oprah and her ilk today. Fennell pointed out that the feminists criticized the 'misogynistic' prejudices of early theologians who questioned whether 'women had no souls' -- and yet the feminists themselves seemed to corroborate that opinion by dwelling only on parochial female concerns, mostly of a fleshly nature. That same observation can be made today.
But I stop short of blaming only my fellow females for this phenomenon of junk news. Maybe the reasons for this trend include a little of all of the above.
So what, if anything, can we do about it, if we don't like it? The usual answer is 'just turn the TV off', which may not be bad advice, but even those of us who turn off, tune out, and drop into the real world instead of the TV world, still have to deal with the reality which is fed and fostered by the trashy content of the media. And if we have children, those children are affected by the unfortunate trends, unless we truly do drop out and homeschool them and isolate them from the worst excesses of junk culture.
But my concern is the dire state of our country, and of the West in general, and the fact that the cotton candy news is acting to dull people's awareness, to merely keep them entertained and distracted. The junk news is empty calories, taking the place of necessary mental nourishment.
Ultimately this junk news diet will be deadly to our Republic, producing, as it does, dulled and disconnected citizens who lack information or critical thinking skills to make responsible decisions about our future.
Does it help to write to the networks or other news media and make your concerns known? Or will they respond once they lose sufficent viewers and readers? We read every day about how the dead-tree media, the old print newspapers, are losing readers at an alarming rate. Has this changed how they do business? I see no evidence of that yet. And with cable TV, news channels are not subject to the same pressures as newspapers, considering that cable channels are carried as part of a package, so that the channels with a tiny viewership are not eliminated from the lineup.
The only hopeful sign I can point to is that people are slowly getting disenchanted and downright fed up with their TV news and newspapers, and many are looking elsewhere, as on the internet. And now the blogosphere is an alternate source for news and especially opinion and analysis not allowed by the narrow standards of the controlled media.
I can only hope that the TV news media and the dead tree media will become increasingly irrelevant and obsolete, and that people will turn to sources which treat them as sentient, thinking human beings and not as dull-witted units of consumption.
...To confirm the permanence of our society's deterioration, news of Lindsay Lohan, as well as the meltdown of Britney Spears, spread across TV screens Thursday and Friday like a bad virus on your computer. Yet these are these stories Americans want. We clamor for news about our favorite celebrities. Does she trim her nails herself? Did he have a weekend fling on the beach? Will they get married, or just continue living together for the next 12 years?
Why are we so shallow?''
Are we so shallow?
I've blogged about the issue addressed in this article before: our junk-food news, or as Jonathan Krive calls it, our cotton candy news.
I question whether we are fed this stuff because of public demand, or because for whatever reason, our media elites want to feed us this non-nourishing, empty-calories substitute for real news of importance.
There are elements of both aspects: if people are demanding this non-nutritive filler as their 'news'-- and I suspect a certain segment of the public does prefer it -- it is because of decades of dumbing-down, in our media and in our school system and our popular culture generally.
Still, I encounter plenty of people, not overly educated or highbrow people, high-school educated, not hard news junkies, who express disgust at the surfeit of the 'bimbo' stories. Outside of Lohan's fanboys and fangirlies, I think many people wonder why the news channels waste so much airtime on Lohan's misbehavior. It is not just overeducated, ultra-serious people who are disgusted with the cotton-candy, bimbo-oriented 'news' on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. It is average people too who are sick of the fluff and nonsense that fills our news channels and those supermarket magazines.
However it is probably true that the younger generations in particular, having grown up in a trivia-driven, celebrity-fawning culture, are more accepting of it. And these younger generations have, not coincidentally, grown up with an educational system that neglects the basics and focuses on making kids 'feel good about themselves'. There is also an overemphasis on Politically Correct ideology at the expense of teaching young people about their own heritage and culture. I've heard from some of them that they spent more time in school learning about (probably apocryphal) African kingdoms than about the founding of our country, or about the English traditions from which our unique American system derives.
How can young people take an interest in the actual news of what is going on around the world, and hope to decipher it, without a grounding in history and political science and geography?
Krive, in the linked article, quotes from Joseph Farah's piece on 'The dumbing down of America.'
In that piece, Farah quotes questions from an eighth grade exam from the year 1895.
For example, these questions on American History:
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?''
Now I, despite having had a good solid education back in the olden days, might have to struggle a little on some of those questions, but I wonder how many could answer more than one or two nowadays?
Back in the era in which that test was written, an eighth-grade education was all that many Americans would have; they had a graduation ceremony at the end of the eighth grade school year, and received certificates, following which many of them would proceed to some kind of apprenticeship in a trade or livelihood of some sort; only the more academically talented would go on to high school, and even fewer of those on to college. That was perhaps a better system. It's often been said that an eighth-grade education then was better than today's high school education. Nowadays, even the high school education has been woefully dumbed down, so as to allow as many as possible to 'graduate', and then go on to college, where they are really out of their depth -- despite the fact that college, too, is watered down and geared to the lowest common denominator.
Even when I attended college in the 70s, my counselor, in helping me put together my class schedule, commented that few students were choosing a classical education, with basic courses like World History, English literature, and so on; most seemed to be choosing psychology and sociology and 'relevant' courses like Minority History and Women's History. Once the old core requirements were dropped and dumbed down and the politically correct pabulum offered, most students opted out of the basics and chose the fluff. Nowadays we read of classes having to do with the 'gay experience' and pornography, as well as the frivolous courses on popular culture, which is, after all, ephemeral.
The goal these days seems to be to grind out as many 'graduates' as possible, rather than to truly educate and enlighten the majority of students, or to fully develop the talents of the more able. And the goal is also to make students 'feel good about themselves' by forcing some kind of pretended 'equality' among people, with the mediocre student and the laggard not made to feel inferior by some inconsiderate prodigy.
So whose interest does it serve to make people more shallow and ignorant, or to focus their attention on the antics of drug-addled 'celebrities'? Are we fed this stuff because the media elites truly think it is newsworthy? Is it simply eye-candy, because people want to look at 'beautiful people' like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan? Or is it meant to distract us from the real, behind-the-scenes, world-changing events? Is it just a sideshow to keep us occupied and to further dumb us down?
Or is it merely another side-effect of the feminizing of our society? It does seem that many women are more focused on the doings of other women, the clothes they wear, the hairstyles, the plastic surgery, their private lives, who they sleep with and/or marry, and so on? I'm a female and I know that not all women are into this gossip as news thing, but a good percentage of them are.
Just look at the TV channels which are 'women's channels': the Lifetime Movie channel, which specializes in soap-operaesque movies about domestic abuse, troubled romances, and so on, and the Oxygen network, which takes a relentlessly PC, 'you-go-girl' look at the world, with focus on 'women's problems': relationships, fashion, sex, body image.
Back in the 1970s, in the era in which feminism was commanding so much attention, Irish writer Desmond Fennell
wrote a piece which asked an interesting question. I cannot locate anything of the piece online, and I no longer have it, but his question was essentially 'why do feminists act as if woman has no soul?' The question was in response to the new 'feminist' talk shows which were all the rage then: there were many such talk shows, hosted by some earnest feminist, interviewing other women of course, on subjects of interest to women. Fennell, if I am recalling correctly, pointed out that the women never discussed deep spiritual or philosophical questions, but only things like women's health, relationships, body image, and feminist politics and letters. They seldom seemed to deal with the wider, more inclusive world. The same gynocentric concerns are served up by Oprah and her ilk today. Fennell pointed out that the feminists criticized the 'misogynistic' prejudices of early theologians who questioned whether 'women had no souls' -- and yet the feminists themselves seemed to corroborate that opinion by dwelling only on parochial female concerns, mostly of a fleshly nature. That same observation can be made today.
But I stop short of blaming only my fellow females for this phenomenon of junk news. Maybe the reasons for this trend include a little of all of the above.
So what, if anything, can we do about it, if we don't like it? The usual answer is 'just turn the TV off', which may not be bad advice, but even those of us who turn off, tune out, and drop into the real world instead of the TV world, still have to deal with the reality which is fed and fostered by the trashy content of the media. And if we have children, those children are affected by the unfortunate trends, unless we truly do drop out and homeschool them and isolate them from the worst excesses of junk culture.
But my concern is the dire state of our country, and of the West in general, and the fact that the cotton candy news is acting to dull people's awareness, to merely keep them entertained and distracted. The junk news is empty calories, taking the place of necessary mental nourishment.
Ultimately this junk news diet will be deadly to our Republic, producing, as it does, dulled and disconnected citizens who lack information or critical thinking skills to make responsible decisions about our future.
Does it help to write to the networks or other news media and make your concerns known? Or will they respond once they lose sufficent viewers and readers? We read every day about how the dead-tree media, the old print newspapers, are losing readers at an alarming rate. Has this changed how they do business? I see no evidence of that yet. And with cable TV, news channels are not subject to the same pressures as newspapers, considering that cable channels are carried as part of a package, so that the channels with a tiny viewership are not eliminated from the lineup.
The only hopeful sign I can point to is that people are slowly getting disenchanted and downright fed up with their TV news and newspapers, and many are looking elsewhere, as on the internet. And now the blogosphere is an alternate source for news and especially opinion and analysis not allowed by the narrow standards of the controlled media.
I can only hope that the TV news media and the dead tree media will become increasingly irrelevant and obsolete, and that people will turn to sources which treat them as sentient, thinking human beings and not as dull-witted units of consumption.
Labels: Celebrity Culture, Education, Feminism, Junk News, Media, News, Trivia