Friday, May 16, 2008

Screening room

I spent much of yesterday afternoon in a hospital waiting room with CNN blaring on the small screen and after reading everything from half a dozen elderly Field and Stream issues to the current Working Mother Magazine, I had to give up on the printed word and pay attention to the blather. I rarely watch CNN any more and if you wonder why, it's because in three hours, all I heard from them other than advertising, was about "John McCain's vision for the future" and the terribly, terribly important overturn of a gay marriage ban in California again and again like some fast paced version of Groundhog Day.

"Many people are concerned that we need more conservatives in government so that we won't have judges who decide this way" was nearly the entirety of the commentary, the balance was the observation that it was the Constitution (hence not the judges) that stood in the way of preserving the "sanctity" of marriage. Regardless of the now apparently reduced sanctity of my own marriage, I continued to wait for my dear wife to have her X-ray with undiminished dedication.

Sanctity, of course is indeed a subject that our Federal Constitution excludes from the business of government. Establishing religious rules or laws based on religious rules is specifically forbidden and not applying any laws in a discriminatory fashion, whether based on religious taboos or not, has long been established in the law. What does CNN mean to imply here: that we should get rid of that nasty secular Democracy thing so we can all be holy? What else can we infer?

And then there was John McCain's vision for the future. It seems rather blurry even for his 71 year old eyes, but then any serious predictions of a brave, new Republican World had better be blurry lest it appear too much like the cowardly old Republican World we've been suffering through at length. The "war" will be "won," sayeth John, quoting from the Gospel of Nixon. Of course he's right, since the war was won 5 years ago. What continues is the occupation of a hostile country and occupations are never won but maintained only at tremendous and usually increasing cost.

None of this seems to have left a trace, at least on CNN or CNN.com. Perhaps it's because of some fleeting sense of embarrassment or perhaps there are so many new inanities and so little time, but my sense of despair remains. No story hits the street save through such sources and no story is told without the Greek Chorus of hysterical idiots making it into something to stir the primitives to frenzy.

Maybe the public isn't as stupid as they appear. Perhaps the West Virginians John Stuart featured Wednesday night who told us they wouldn't vote for Obama because "we've had so much conflict with the Other Race" or "I've had enough of Hooooo-sayn" or "He's a Moslim" don't represent the rest of us, but the fate of old optimists like me is to become an old pessimist like me.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid we have the Dumb and Dumber transition. I didn't think it was possible there would be a dimmer bulb than Dubya, but I honestly think McCain is Dumber than Dubya.

A gutty PR campaign pushing the Dumb and Dumber line of reasoning, would be very effective. I get "dibs" on the idea.

MrSleep

Capt. Fogg said...

Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who's the dumbest of them all?

By George it's US!

d.K. said...

I'd rather read Working Mother than watch CNN these days too (that image was hilarious, BTW).

I'm amused by the all the media "cognoscenti" talking about the librel judges in California. I await the smear campaign to oust them (since the justices in California go before the electorate periodically) to begin in CA. I lived there in 86 when Chief Justice Rose Bird was booted out of her office because of the smear campaign that dealt with her opposition to the death penalty. It was purely Nixonian, and I'm sure we'll see Chief Justice George (a Republican appointee) demonized very soon for endangering the marriages of all heterosexual couples in that state.

I give the "Governator" credit for standing on principle here, but I doubt even he will be able to spare the court from the "Focus on the Family" onslaught that's already begun...

RR said...

OMG...

I stand by earlier comments: a significant percentage of Americans(maybe small in absolute numbers, but these people vote) are simply stupid.