Stuff my Dad Says

This post (and it's title) is meant as a somewhat satirical example of "false balance."  I had some fun with my mother the other day, so I've got to have something from good old Dad, right?  Well, yeah I do, but... Strangely the original statement in question was actually something I agreed with, 100%.

There he was reading the Wall Street Journal, when he comes across a story about the cobra that escaped from the Bronx Zoo.  Specifically, that someone had thought to set up a twitter account (@BronxZoosCobra) so the "snake" could tweet about it's ensuing adventures.

I don't remember his exact words, but they were something to the effect of, "What a stupid story.  What the hell is wrong with people?"

And... Yeah: I agree 100%.

Giant cobra escapes from the zoo? THAT'S a story.

Some numb-nuts opens a twitter account? Uh... No. Sorry.  That's not even all that clever, actually.

Yep.  We're getting pretty stupid as a nation, we both agreed.

Of course... We'd have a very different opinion about exactly WHY that is, and who's driving it, and what should be DONE about it.  As it was the conversation ended there. But I found great irony in the fact that it was lost on him that this was RUPPERT MURDOCH'S Wall Street Journal!

And you know what I think about all these stupid, bullshit stories about now only tweeting snakes, but all the inane celebrity bullshit stories - marriage, divorce, arrests, rehab...?  You know what that is?

It's CONSERVATIVE BIAS.

That may strike some people as an odd conclusion, seeing as how so few of these stories have much to them in the way of political overtones.  But that's just the point.  If we're constantly fed nonsense about celebrities, reality TV and tweeting snakes, not to mention truly anomalous court cases, and government "waste" which collectively adds up to about 0.001% of the overall budget, what are most of us NOT thinking about?

Well, just to name a few things: The War in Iraq, Global Warming, Gas Prices, High Unemployment, the Erosion of our Manufacturing Base, the Stagnation of Middle Class Wages, Discrimination, Inequity, Exploitation, Pollution, our failing schools, our crumbling infrastructure, the Right's war on Social Security, the Right's war on Science, the Right's war on Religious Freedom, every promise Obama broke, every lie the Right told us about Obama, the crimes committed by Bush & Cheney that Obama let go unpunished (shit: un-INVESTIGATED, even!), etc, etc, etc...

See... It's not a coincidence that the WSJ has to fill at least some of their pages with bullshit now.  (And to the extent that liberal publications do the same thing, just to bring in the readers, I lament the necessity, but say "shame on you" at the same time.  That's the biggest flaw with HuffPo, for example: Too much Celebrity bullshit.

It would be easy to say that the TWO biggest issues with the media are: (1) Conservative Bias and (2) Too many bullshit stories.  But IMHO, that's really just two parts of the same issue.  Keep 'em fat dumb and happy: That's the Conservative way.