Seeing Things Rightly
The newspapers, rather than being a useful source of information (as many of these practitioners believe), is mostly valuable for revealing the amount of ignorance and misinformation in the public consciousness -- that is ripe for opportunists to exploit and manipulate, beginning with the most vulnerable, who are the most vain and proud of their knowledge -- the reporter/editor themselves, seeing a steady stream of the rich and powerful reveal themselves to them, and feeling that they themselves could do that also because the world’s greatest make it seem so easy. They’re not aware of how much work went into perfecting that art -- and are likely to think that the most superficial aspects, are the profoundly distinguishing ones, proudly proclaiming on their first day of work, “I’m not sure what I want to do in life, but I’m pretty sure I want to be rich and famous,” as though that was what distinguished those who were, from those who aren’t.
So the envy and resentment against the truly rich and powerful, reach a frenzied pitch among these most ambitious yet frustrated types -- and every time, upon seeing the president, beg the question once more, “Why not me? I’m smarter than he/she is! I should sit in the front row, in the first seat, and ask the first and last question -- and talk as much as I want, because the First Amendment guarantees my right to speak as long as I want, saying whatever I want, and not allowing anybody else to speak. And you people have to listen to me.”
Which is not what the First Amendment says, of course, but that is what they will be saying in the many articles they present to us -- as well as the ones they exclude. While relentlessly suppressing every opinion not to their liking, they will tirelessly impose their right to speak as much as possible, exclusively, and everybody else better not get in their way and protest, or else the next day, it’ll be even worse for their "enemies."
And so today’s newspapers have become the veritable modern Tower of Babel (Babble) in which everyone speaks and demands to be listened to -- and nobody is interested in listening to anyone else anymore because in their attempts to bully and intimidate with their impressive jargon, they have become so obscure and obtuse (nuanced) that it doesn’t matter what they say anymore. They’ve tuned any possible audience out -- through their own oppressive censorship and arbitrary political correctness that has even themselves confused.
They no longer know if they are FOR the environment -- or want to burn as much of it as possible at guaranteed low prices. While suggesting that obesity might be a public health problem, they preclude all possibilities of making alternatives feasible by promoting favorable biking and walking conditions -- but instead, desire that everybody patronize the fixed rail solution as the answer to the "transportation" problem. So nothing is connected and related to everything else -- in their world of partisanship, fragmentation, confrontation, ambition, confusion, contention, disintegration and deterioration.
That is the Master Plan -- for creating infinitely more high-paying jobs to fix the ever-growing problems escalating out of control.
posted by Mike Hu @ 8:08 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
That is the great reason that electronic forums, discussions, blogs are the superior medium of these times -- because no one person controls it, unless of course, it is the old media’s control (moderation) of these discussions which famously fail each time because of these heavy-handed control tactics -- and then we’re back to the old familiar control issues.
Instead, they divert the attention to the babbling protester, as a symbol of the oppression going on in society that one such individual should be allowed to bring a halt to the rest of the world. If that is not the ultimate in the dysfunctional mentality of these newspaper people, I don’t know what is. A lot of these editors are so confused as to think that terrorist attacks are guaranteed freedom of expression -- except if they are the targets. However, they encourage these attacks on others as the ultimate expression of freedom -- in a seriously disturbed and irresponsible mind.
I wouldn’t have them acting as gatekeepers of any organization and society one wishes to be associated with.
One of the most common defenses of status quo information, is that the blogs, forums, discussions only discuss what the mainstream press provides as “facts” -- which many do, but not most. That is not the entirety of the universe. New media subsumes old media and everything that came before it. New media is not opposition to old media, or simply another option; it is the larger universe which includes the old media ways -- but it is no longer the fullest range of the possibilities. In fact, it can be said that the old mainstream publications are also blogs -- in the way they want to do it, in the only way they know how to do it.
And many, on considering what it is they want to do with their blog (homepage, website, whatever), think the forms have to follow certain protocols, conventions and traditions -- which may be artificial limitations on effective information and communications, just as the contrived Robert‘s rules for discussion doesn‘t facilitate communications but restricts them. Characteristic of the old style communications is one -way communications, rather than interactivity -- as peers. Therefore, the purpose of the former, is for one to dominate the other -- rather than that they collaborate to arrive at something greater -- than everybody persuading everybody else to their exclusive point of view. That is the limitation of hard-copy publications; they are virtually etched in stone, guaranteed to elicit an argument.
People used to that communication style, think the whole objective, meaning and purpose of communications and language is to win the argument -- of which they are perpetually creating, to reinforce the dominance hierarchy. It is very destructive to human relationship and society -- and assures that most energy is consumed negating every other competitor for the exclusive top spot.
That is also the mentality of their government and leadership -- only about dominance and control -- and nothing else. What they say to get into that position of dominance, is anything they can get away with, and others enable them to do so.
Why don't these people get real jobs?
http://www.aim.org/media_monitor/4510_0_2_0_C/
The Post and the Phony AIDS Crisis
By Cliff Kincaid | April 25, 2006
It came almost two years after the Boston Globe exposed it, but the Washington Post on April 6 acknowledged that the number of HIV/AIDS cases in Africa has been grossly exaggerated by the United Nations in order to generate money through the world body to spend on the disease. In an April 10 editorial, the Post admitted, "The United Nations' credibility on AIDS will now suffer." So should the credibility of the media for taking the world organization seriously.
The Post editorial declared, "It's been clear for a while that UNAIDS, the agency responsible for these statistics, was reluctant to contemplate good strategies for fighting AIDS lest these undermine global support for expanded funding." The Post found the U.N. guilty of publishing "dubious AIDS data."
The FAIR Foundation, which stands for Fair Allocations in Research, had known about and exposed the dubious data. On its website, it highlighted how the UN AIDS office, the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Institutes of Health, and AIDS activists "continually speak of AIDS decimating the world and use that argument to argue for more research funding." It had posted the John Donnelly Boston Globe article of June 20, 2004, explaining how the figures had been exaggerated.
"Recent studies in Kenya have confirmed millions of Africans previously thought to have AIDS are disease free," noted the FAIR Foundation. In Kenya, as the BCC reported on January 9, 2004, estimates had put the figure at 15 percent, when a subsequent survey found only 6.7 percent infected.
That's January 9, 2004—more than two years before the Post published its correction of the record.
What the Post didn't acknowledge is the role it played in this fiasco. But writing in Human Events, Tom Bethell commented, "Back in 2000, the Washington Post was one of the main sources of hype about AIDS in Africa."
He explains: "The wildly exaggerated claims promoted by the mainstream media created an atmosphere of crisis. Guided by U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Secretary of State Albright, the Clinton Administration took the issue of impending population collapse to the U.N. Security Council. African countries weren't going to be able to field armies or defend themselves because so many young men would soon be on their death beds."
Bethell says his new book, the Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, deals with this manufactured "crisis" over AIDS.
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