The Big Evil

As an update to the many mini posts I've made in the last few days, here are some excellent comments and commentary on the subject of Tom DeLay & the NRA Convention, failure of the NRA people to substantiate the claim of wide spread bias in the MSM and a funny little editorial praising our HML for his help(?) in improving traffic in Houston. I guess the HC was a still a little sensitive to the bias charges, LOL. And here is one more tasty morsel that just popped up while I was linking the others. Seems DeLay has been reaching out to his peeps, trying to get the TRUTH to the faithful.

Which is really funny, because the subject of tonight's tirade was going to be the TRUTH and how we have all become so immune to hearing it. Let's start with William Raspberry's excellent column, questioning Fox News self-proclaimed, fair and balanced bias to the right. Raspberry worries that Fox News Channel is skewing public opinion, not only of the subjects they are reporting, but of TV News, the MSM and journalism as a whole. When they give a nod & a wink to the right in declaring the fairness of their reporting, it forces more than just their audience to notice the wide divergence between what is said on Fox to that of most other media outlets. When this difference is questioned, FNC reply that ALL NEWS is biased. We read what we want to believe, watch what we want to be true.

Americans are loosing clarity on what TRUTH really means. Fox News; Tom DeLay & the Christian Right; Dan Rather & CBS; Iraq & WMD; Bush, Rummy & Cheney; Kerry& his voting record, Gore & the internet; Bill & Monica; Reagan & Iran-Contra; Nixon & Watergate; Vietnam. Back in the 70's people were scandalized when told they had been lied to and Nixon was forced to resign. The press was lionized as the savior of the American way. Over time our leaders have continued to lie to us, and we have become more blase about castigating them. They are politicians after all, most of them lawyers, but the press continued to be the good guys.

Somewhere along the line, spin took control. There were no more black and white issues, just ones spun to previously unimaginable shades of grey. People do it, companies do it. Polititions & the press are all guilty of contributing to the spin factor. As the spin gets more out of control, so does our balance. Our inner ear, our inner voice, seek comfort and control, something to filter out the noise and what is more soothing - a peaceful lie or messy, dirty truth?

Now, I'm not advocating a return to the black and white simplicity of the wonder years. I wallow in pools of grey with every post I make on this site. The CCR would like to cover our country in a blanket of warm cozy deceit and self-deception, everything is beautiful (ever see Life is Beautiful?). We as people, as citizens, should keep our eyes, ears and minds open. It may not be pretty, but it is more true, more real than burying our head in the sand. We should ask the MSM, the blogosphere and our government to speak the truth. We may not always like what we hear, but it is a damn site better than living the big lie.