On The Media

'Swine flu' number rises to 900,000,000 (hits):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UHAqOltww

Yes, this story has spread and worsened more than the actual flu itself. It's amazing how irresponsible the media have become over past decade and even when pointed out to them how irresponsible they have become and how wrong it is, they continue to pursue their irresponsibility. CNN in particular makes up, invents, scenarios seemingly to get attention and thus viewers. This is worse than the old yellow journalism of the earlier part of the last century. There are so many more stories such as war, famine, do I have to continue the list, that should be followed more closely and in depth.

It doesn't help when we look to our elected officials and their comments are at a minimum inconsistent, but more likely less than honest. In the end they also serve to add to the panic. These people know more than you and I and some of them are telling us to avoid public places. I find a lot to criticize in the media, especially OTM, but look at the incredible contradictions coming from the administration.

The recent "pass" that Katie Couric gave to Vice President Joe "When In Doubt Make It Up" Biden is the best "bad example" of how the media excuses Democrat public officials in a way that Republican public officials are never provided.

Your story is well done. I am less inclined to be as generous to the major media outlets as you. They promoted a story, central to which was that the swine flu was a major threat that deserved hysterical coverage and a hysterical public response. That story was false.

The correct course of action now, when the story is discovered to be false, is to print a retraction. They won't, because they are exploitative corporate tabloids, despite their claims to the contrary.

Couldn’t help but plug in the phrase, “widespread depression” into my Yahoo (another corporate plug) search engine and out popped the band of that name. Can’t recall, now, if they are originally local but it seems to me they were, first, the Widespread Depression Orchestra but that name did not bring out the crowds that the second name did and our media moguls must have learned from that example. It sells more papers, for sure, though how safe it is opening a public paper box, I don’t know.

Jack and Virginia Gentleman are correct about the double standard. Administration inconsistencies are being treated differently. On the other hand, it doesn’t rise to the same level as giving a pass for lying about and hiding the true the cost of killing people in Iraq, when they are spreading a mixed message that may, on one hand, save lives by inducing personal caution and responsibility (good conservative principles) and, on the other, prevent the hysteria our media was fomenting.

Good editing!

Talking about widespread panic, our governments are getting good at fomenting that, themselves. Much of Middletown, CT is still on high alert, today, after a campus shooting and killing at Wesleyan. Back when I was a kid, we learned to duck and cover but nowadays kids have to be prepared for other more present dangers, often random, well-armed, exploding people, even in America.

The widespread panic hasn’t turned to concrete action, such as in Madison County where, when a mine worker’s 3 year old went missing, the other day, the mine let their workers free to join the search under every bridge there but, I’d rather not see a bunch of vigilantes to join the search for this Middletown perp. He’s probably back in New York by now and any number of innocent Indians died when 1,000 vigilantes joined the army, paramilitary and deputized posses to go after Geronimo. We don’t need it to be people with longish dark hair, glasses and a beard, today.

What we need to generate is widespread consensus that those who make high powered, high speed weaponry or, more especially, sell them to the renegades of our society or other societies be made to be called to account for the damage they are doing by spreading a pandemic that had been somewhat limited to our own 2nd amendment protected one but has long since gone to the Middle East and, even, our neighbor Mexico as surely as when arms makers sold to renegade Chirichua in Geronimo’s day.

The average citizen no longer has any defense against this weaponry, any more than strap on bomb vests, nor any real appetite to get it.