Area Woman Says, "Holy Shit! TV News is Really Stupid" ....Or 15 Minutes in Scarborough Country

OK, so Area woman is me. I feel like I really should be starting my entry with an Onion news-headline. I've been thinking about The Onion a lot lately when I encounter the corporate news, whether in headlines on newstands that I pass on the street, or like just now, on the TV's "Scarborough Country." (ewww..) The other day, I saw a headline involving Jude Law and some affair he had. I wanted the response to be a headline dedicated to my views, "Area Woman: I don't care about Jude Law's Sex Life."
But, man, you really can see how people wind up voting for George Bush if you watch only five minutes of "Scarborough Country." What inanity. First, there was fear-mongering coverage of the London bombings, in which the ill-informed and bogusly credentialied Steven Emerson, suggested both that the attacks in London are "chickens coming home to roost" - no, not for their support of the US in Iraq, but for their "turning away" when "terrorists" attack Israel -(?) and that these "new terrorists" at first seek to seize power in the Middle-East (??), and that they will now try to "seize power" in the Western nations, and oh yes, they're everywhere, among us. Then he started talking about how they weren't like previous types of terrorists, you know, and made a comparison with the movie "The Manchurian Candidate." If I didn't know anything about anything, I'd hear this and be terrified. Do you think I'm joking? Who IS this guy? (ok, you have some idea if you follow right wing ideologues or if you read the link to FAIR) but here's more and more and more.
As if that lynch-frenzy weren't enough to get some innocent folks harassed, beaten or killed, the Scarborough people goaded people into a frenzy some more...this time w/lame art criticism. They were in a twist tonight about an a guy named Steven Pearcy, who has painted an Anti-Bush painting that is hanging in a government office in San Diego. Apparently, the curator of the show found him through the furor over the effigy of a dead soldier hanging on the front of his house wearing the placard, "Bush Lied, I Died." The host (not Joe Scarborough, some woman) said "rightly so" when describing how the neighbors had vandalized the Pearcys' home. Beyond being annoyed at their lynch-mob gathering, I'm annoyed at these people for their complete failure to look at the art. Hanging the image of a soldier on your front door with the sign "Bush Lied, I Died" is not an example of approving of the soldier's death. A painting showing the US going down the toilet with a message saying "T'anks to Mr. Bush" is not anti-American, it's making a comment about the man who had done a lot to flush what some people think America means down the toilet. But they don't get that. Instead, the host imagined what the reaction would be had the image been of a Gay rainbow flag.
And of course, watching these people get so outraged is just weird. Their reactions seem genuine. But, aren't they outraged about the fact that the war was based on lies? Aren't they outraged that the president's top adviser is a criminal? No, they're outraged because of some guy in California who made an art piece that local tax dollars supported. I suppose they're outraged that someone's pointing out that the Emporer has no clothes. They all have so much at stake in propping him nd this war up. In a shocked tone, one reporter also noted that there was art there that said that the "Israelis were oppressing the Palestinians" - as if this were the first time she'd ever heard such a thing.
During the time I've been writing, John McCain has been sitting on "Hardball" claiming that the British a"have never retracted that claim" that Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger.
Oh really?
I just can't stand it....And now, they've got on one side the Washington Post reporter and on the other editorial page of The Washington Times. Tomorrow night I hope he has "The New York Times" on one side and the "Revolutionary Worker" on the other. It's only fair. enough.
IF I don't stop this, I'll keep going all night. I hear they've got breaking news coming about the Plame/Rove memo business. The fact that I know that the TV news is a big pack of lies doesn't stop me from being shocked at the extremity of the propaganda. If I did this all day instead of reading FAIR, I suppose I'd get jaded. What do you think, is it possible to stay outraged, or do you just get bored by the lies and distortions after a while.