Slow news daze
Quick review of Google News indicates we're in the handbasket, sooo... which way is hell?
Week of June 7, 2009 - June 13, 2009
Carrie Prejean stripped for our sins!
Looking absolutely smashing in string bikini, there she goes, ladies and gentlemen - Carrie Prejean, late Miss California, driven by catcalls (and some bust-out catty calls) up the Via Dolorosa of Political Correctness.
Did anyone notice, in her firing yesterday, that nary a soul in media bothered to get her reaction until about 24 hours of news cycle had elapsed? Is that fair? She's on "Larry King" tonight - so does the delay indicate he had exclusive embargo on what will likely be a tearful self-exoneration? Or was Ms. Prejean's vituperative foes given first shot at framing the story?
And what's with the constant references to her STRIPPED! of her title? How about "relieved" of the title? Cashiered. What? Not enough chop-licking subliminal stimulation? Who's writing news copy these days? The Mitchell Brothers?
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Alarm clock'd
Despotism loves alarm.
From the Reichstag fire so useful to the Nazis, to 9/11, in which a blameless country was sacrificed on the altar of our passions, we see outrages hijacked and used for purposes squarely adverse to proper responses - pursuit of justice, revelation of truth. Instead, crimes and sensational events can be refabricated with frightening facility to become weapons themselves. In the dazed aftermath of an astonishing atrocity, amid raging fear and anger, it's not difficult to whip up generalized frenzy and upheaval enough to install tyranny and assume control.
Oppression doesn't march in, crushing freedom with heavy boot-heels. It comes riding to the rescue - banners unfurled and bugles blaring. It offers refuge in storms of confusion, it promises safety from further attack. It has a friendly face and velvet gloves. The minions who help shred constitutions, torture anyone suspect, and dissolve the rule of law, do so because they're frightened, and because nothing can save them but order. In crises, they throw away everything they are - the better angels of their natures - because they are absolutely convinced it's the right thing to do.
In the past couple of weeks we've seen extremists attack and murder in the name of their aberrant beliefs; we have been repelled and we've railed at the injustice of their crimes.
And, in some case, we've overreacted.
Media picks next president: Liz Cheney!
Ever get the feeling Liz Cheney is running for something?
That's not the only reason she's shoving herself down our throats, to be sure. She and her father must keep the old man's ass out of jail. The Two Cheneys are suddenly everywhere, 24/7, to build a case that torture and his other crimes really were fine ideas; at least, to blur the line between legitimately defending the country and cavalierly offending all moral standards and sense of reason.
