Site Presented By
Wednesday, Nov 4, 2009
fightthetheocracy!
Published Letters: 1585 Editor's Choice: 27
First of all, I don't want any of those smoking girls to lecture me about "the moral decline of our culture". If you are going to preach "moral absolutes" then you have to practice "moral absolutes". That's the price you pay for being a self righteous prick, you don't get to have any bad habits.
Second of all, it doesn't surprise me that all of the forums were about the evils of "liberals", the cons ran out of original ideas during the Clinton administration. You think the Lewenski mess was out of concern for, again, "the moral decline of our culture"? Please! They didn't have anything else to run on except shouting "Ew...sex! sex!" Why do you think they've been playing the gay marraige violin for the past 15 years?
Third of all, I'm with the people who think there's something up with this. Newt doesn't turn on party dogma, ever. He must be trying to position himself as the "realist republican". He knows, hell, the whole party knows, that next year is a cake walk for the democrats and Newt probably figures that the only way to prevent that is to finally be straight up with people.
Let's not read too much into this just yet.
Every day, when I turn on my computer, my service provider brings up various "news" items, usually in video form. Three of these are fluff pieces and maybe one is an actual news piece. I believe this is done in order to keep from offending anyone for fear that they will cancel their subscription. No one is going to write in complaining about the worlds fattest cat or 10 mistakes new brides make.
For years, before they were complaining about a "liberal bias", conservatives were complaining about "no good news anymore". This was their way of saying, "stop giving me something to think about, I want my opiate, dammit!" Now it seems the networks and service providers have complide.
These people do not want "unbiased" news, they want all networks to look like Fox News. There is no way the networks can be balanced enough to make them happy. ANYTHING negative about someone or something they like is too much. What is fascinating is that many of these people are aware of the bias they are forcing on the media and justify it by saying, to the effect: "Well, the public has shown this is what they want, this is what the market has decided." In other words, facts don't matter, spin the news to make me happy even if the facts don't support it. Hence the complaints about no "good news out of Iraq". It doesn't matter if there isn't any to report, the public has decided that is what they want.
The networks are certainly stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to please everyone. I think we can all see how well it's working if forums like this are any indicator. It simply isn't possible. If they keep this up, everyone will simply abandon the legitimate news organizations for whatever source tells them what they want to hear. They need to go back to reporting real hard news; the critics and armchair journalists be damned! Yes, the networks will be running a financial gamble if they try and change from thier current pattern, but remember, the networks originally aired news as a public service, not as a ratings machine. If we really want to see change, they will have to go back to that. The networks need to remember that sometimes you can't let baby have something, no matter how bad she wants it.
Yet further proof that NASA made the wrong decision to shut down Hubble and keep funding their stupid space station that will result in nothing. And they wonder why people lost interest in the space program.
I can't believe, after eight years of King George, there are still some people saying "there is no difference between the two parties". Last time I checked, Clinton didn't suspend habeus corpus! When people first started screaming for this in 1999-2000, it was because we on the left had gotten a little too arrogant in our control over Washington. Eight years of prosperity under a democratic president, a naked persute of that president by republicans for nothing more then sex that ended up hurting them instead, it was easy to think we were in a position to demand a little bit more. We didn't know then how bad things could still get in this day and age.
We don't have that excuse now.
These people who are calling the democrats no better then republicans have either spent the last seven years on another planet, or are living so far in the clouds they will never come down. They are expecting perfection. To all of you out there taking the Kucinich route, listen up: no party is perfect but some are worse then others, there is such a thing as the lesser of two evils. Yes, the democrats have let us down on a number of occasions, but at least if they are in power they won't abuse it nearly as bad as the republicans did. We wouldn't be liberals if we thought they would. Hillary Clinton, for all of her faults, is not George W. Bush. Would you be able to say that about a Mitt Romney or a Rudy Giuliani if they get into power? We need to stop persuing pie in the sky dreams and live in the real world.
An Israeli columnist issues a scathing indictment of Israel and calls on the U.S. to apply pressure.
Even when government officials purposely subject an innocent person to brutal torture, they enjoy full immunity.
Hey, guys: Are adult films making you bad at sex?
What was once depicted as a grave act of lawlessness -- Bush's NSA program -- is now deemed a vital state secret.
The loony wing of the Republican Party prepares for a big day in Tuesday's elections
Salon headlines in your mailbox
