Thursday, March 05, 2009
Ghost malls!
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have been amazing of late.
I'm going to be lazy and let them do the heavy lifting today.
"I have to say, I find cheap populism oddly arousing." Hahahahahahaha.
This is the first time I'm seeing Santelli's rant, much talked about and lauded on the right. His words have actually become a rallying cry for right-wing groups, which are holding "tea parties" to protest the White House's economic plans. And now that I've seen it ... wow. I mean, words fail.
And what can one say about Glenn Beck that hasn't been said countless times about those who have suffered serious brain injury? I don't mean to put down those with serious brain injuries. It's horrible. (I just finished reading Forever Today, BTW, which I heard about on Radiolab and I recommend it highly. Sad, but deeply moving.) But there's just something totally unnerving about Beck's affect. It's just not right. If I'd never seen him on TV and you showed me a videotape of him speaking, I'd assume you were showing me footage of some deranged street-corner screamer who's been off his meds. And he has a TV show.
Here's the thing. My brother has always been to the right of me politically. Always. But it only dawned on me recently--it was when we were sitting around his dining room table at Christmas--that he's been completely, totally sucked in by this Fox News madness. He went off on a tear about subjects that he has no firsthand knowledge of, and ticking off every Fox News talking point he's memorized.
To give one example, The New York Times is a left-wing propaganda tool, and The Washington Post used to be a great paper, but has flushed its reputation down the toilet.
I can guarantee you two things: He has picked up The New York Times no more that twice in his entire life. If that. And he has never, never in his life read a copy of The Washington Post. Yet there he sat, getting angry and worked-up about them, his voice getting louder and his face turning red. I was shocked, actually.
Now, every time I go by Fox News and I see Hannity and O'Reilly and Beck spouting their deranged fantasies, I know my brother is soaking in every word. And that scares the shit out of me.
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4 comments:
I've got two brothers and an entire family of cousins that like and love me but don't understand how I've gone so wrong. Good folks all of us, we just got different political genes I guess.
I wouldn't mind so much if I thought he'd come to these opinions firsthand, after picking up the papers and actually thinking about them. The slant of WaPo's editorial page is actually conservative--I'm sure he doesn't know that, because Fox didn't tell him.
No, it's not like I read the NY Post every day--but I do pick it up in waiting rooms and at the barber shop, etc., so I do know its take firsthand. And I even force myself to see what Fox News is saying.
Ghost malls!
Thanks for the very interesting post!
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