Letters to the Editor
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Ignorant America ? Let It Go, Joan.
Let it go Joan. Don't bother.
The ideologically driven White House trained seals on Fox News do not deserve, and are beneath, any sort of rebuttal. We all know that they are willfully ignorant, as are their viewers - - along with the idiots who listen to Limbaugh and really think, or would like to think, that he, Ann Coulter, and the rest of the insane blatherers (on both the extreme right and the extreme left) are telling it "like it is". If you read David Brock's daily "Media Matters" website, you will get gut full of the stupidity being spewed every day in the media.
Unfortunately, no matter how one may wish to interpret or distort Michelle Obama's comments, the low level of operating intelligence in today's USA is indeed striking.
At least 1/4 of the population blindly take its marching orders from babbling religious fundamentlist evangelists who rip them off handsomely, while they in turn worship these charlatans as gods. These mindless zombies live in our midst, and some of our politicians seem to feel the need to defer to them (ahem, read John McCain).
Nearly 1/2 of the voting population elected a religious fundamentalist moron, George W. Bush, to "lead" them - - TWICE !! It's frightening.
The level of education among the majority of our public is declining. Critical thinking about ANY issue by the "common man" in the US is becoming a rarity. Gullibility, apathy, and fear rule the market place and political scene. Many people seem to believe that they need hidden guns to protect themselves from - - whom ? The Russkies? Those "terrorists" and criminals lurking around the corner ? So the gun toting boobs are instead busy shooting each other or innocent people by the dozens!
Corporations, in league with the current administration, rule the roost.
And the baleful list goes on and on. In the face of this mess, Michelle Obama seems actually like an optimist !
But don't worry yet. Maybe there are a sufficient numbers of the rest of us who are NOT busy watching Jerry Springer, pro "wrestling'', or the ample clevages on the E Channel on TV, are paying attention, and may still pull us out of this quagmire - - and hopefully the other one in Iraq as well. Ya see, I'm an optimist, too.
Ignorant America ? Welcome to H. L. Mencken's world; he was no fool, and his only major error was that he was just a bit ahead of his time.
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The most important piece of information . . .
about this manufactured controversy was located in the first sentence: "As reported by Fox News".
I read Michelle Obama's statement to the audience as a challenge to "break out of our comfort zone". And as you note, she did use the pronoun "We".
As in: "We proud Americans denounce and reject Fox News's shoddy reporting, manufactured controversies, and blatantly biased 2008 election coverage".
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*yawn*
You just woke me up from a good nap.
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This Commentary is Instructive
Let's take a look at the letters in this thread, for example.
In one tribe we have people calling Joan Walsh a "concern [sic] troll" and a shill for Hillary Clinton.
Another tribe is yelling at her for trying to point out that Michelle Obama is being smeared and saying we just need to ignore FOX News, which has nothing to offer.
Still another tribe believes that Joan just doesn't get it and should -- according to them -- hop aboard the Obama Express.
Yet another tribe believes that Rev. Wright is creating serious harm because of the "garlic nose" comments.
Finally, we have a tribe that says we just all need to get over whatever "it" is and transcend (to where or what isn't quite clear).
To quote Joan:
"She was talking about everyone's stereotypes about other groups, and she wasn't wrong."
Get it?
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"Still it's hard to deny. . .
"that all the sound and fury, magnified through television and the Internet, coarsens the political culture. It makes tempers flare, helps breed distrust. And whether we politicians like to admit it or not, the constant vitriol can wear on the spirit. Oddly enough, the cruder broadsides you don't worry about too much. . .let them have their fun. It's the more sophisticated practitioners who can sting you, in part because they have more credibility with the general public, in part because of the skill with which they can pounce on your words and make you seem like a jerk...
In an environment in which a single ill-considered remark can generate more bad publicity than years of ill-considered policies, it should have come as no surprise to me that on Capitol Hill jokes got screened, irony became suspect, spontaneity was frowned upon, and passion was considered downright dangerous. I started to wonder how long it took a politician to internalie all this; how long before the committee of scribes and editors and censors took residence in your head; how long before even "candid" moments became scripted, so that you choked up or expressed outrage only on cue.
How long before you started sounding like a politician?
There was another lesson to be learned:. . .how a particular narrative, repeated over and over again and hurled through cyberspace at the speed of light, eventually becomes a hard particle of reality; how political caricatures and nuggets of conventional wisdom lodge themselves in our brain without us ever taking the time to examine them"
One guess for the source.
We do not need to remain complicit in this degradatory process.
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@ ljwalker
If you would address my remarks directly and explicitly, we might actually be able to have a dialogue.
Are you up for that?
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woops, "internalize" not "internalie"
I'm typing on my lap. and the eyes aren't what they used to be. might be apt though, interesting new word.
anybody read Brad Blanton (radical honesty man)?
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The controversy won't go away
Because the media won't let it.
Controversy life span is almost *solely* a function how how much the media props it up. First it was done on the speculation that the Wright stuff would be bad for Obama. Polls now show that that isn't true, so what's the new excuse?
The Whitewater controversy went on forever even though there was nothing to it, simply because the media would not stop reporting on it.