Prepare yourself for the insults to come.   Snobby liberal elites everywhere are going to analyze this and say the cause is that we stupid clingers to guns and religion have suffered a dip in our intelligence.   The ever so intelligent New York Times is in big trouble.   Fewer and fewer people are reading it.   According to one online news source, the Times' circulation dropped steeply over the past year.   "The New York Times lost more than 150,000 copies on Sunday. Circulation on that day fell a whopping 9.2% to 1,476,400. The paper's daily circulation declined 3.8% to 1,077,256."   The Times is not the only liberal rag to drop precipitously.   "At the Washington Post, daily circulation decreased 3.5% to 673,180 and Sunday dropped 4.3% to 890,163."   The high brow crowd will undoubtedly blame it on a dumbing down of the general population.   It's OK for them to think and say that.   We know the truth.   You can't rely on the slanted pages of the Times or Post to give you news unless that news is very favorable to Democrats and liberals.   We're tired of it.   We won't pay for it anymore.

Labels: Media

We are witnessing the demonization of some crazy Morman polygamist sect in rural Texas.   Some have suggested that Bush invented this to distract from his faults or Republican apparent inability to run the country as Clinton used Waco to move news coverage to something other than himself.   That may be - I have no idea one way or the other.   It is a tough thing to prove.   But a President isn't the only one who changes news coverage in order to alter the consciousness of the public.   The media themselves certainly engage in the practice.

On the surface, the practices of this sect certainly go past the line of what Americans consider normal and acceptable behavior.   But these things are allegations, not facts which have been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.   If they happened in the manner the news media says they did - children forced to "spiritually marry" and bear the children of middle aged men, borderline pedophilia, not to mention general "emotional, physical, and-or sexual abuse," the practices certainly should be stopped and the perpetrators prosecuted under the law.   But this should not be a front-page news item.   This should not involve a storming of the compound.   Not in this country.

We should not be obsessed with a single group of less than one thousand people whose, some would argue, legitimate religious practices involve men marrying minors who have attained sexual maturity, such marriages apparently occurring with the consent of the girls' parents.   We should not be obsessed with this in a country in which there is a legal aid society, the ACLU, indirectly supported by government (tax exempt status being in effect financial support), whose practices include defending an organization of middle age men whose sole reason for being involves the coercion (including seduction, kidnapping, you name it) of minor males into homosexual acts.

Come to think of it, where is the ACLU in this?   I have not yet read about how they have mobilized to defend this sect.   Have they made any public statements in support of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints yet?   Why weren't they there immediately?   If they can defend the most disgusting practices of the members of NAMBLA, certainly they can more than mobilize in defense of this group.   If they cannot, they are mere idealogues and their tax exempt status should be pulled since they obviously follow a politically motivated agenda.

We should not be obsessed with this group of polygamists in a country in which the media tells us regularly to simultaneously embrace multi-culturalism, especially as that concerns fundamentalist Islamic practices, homosexuality, and almost any other behavior or belief which does not fit neatly into our main-stream, heterosexual, Judaeo-Christian practices.   Never mind that the fundamentalist Islamic way of dealing with deviant behavior is rather more harsh than our own, punishing any act of homosexuality in a manner similar to the way we deal with murderers and other violent criminals.   We are supposed to be tolerant of others who practice "alternative lifestyles" to the point of promoting their "style" in public schools, as well as those who would jail them, perhaps even put them to death for the practice of their "style."   The only practices we are supposed to question are those of any fundamentalist Christian organization because, we are told, they are intolerant!

The media decides who and what it will demonize.   It forms an interesting juxtaposition with what it chooses to make angels out of.

Labels: ACLU, liberal spin, Media, Multiculturalism

I really do not give a good God Damn who the prostitute ex-Governor Spitzer hired for his private instant gratification session is.   She grew up not 15 minutes from my residence but her identity and everything about it are unimportant.   She is irrelevant.   Yet the media insists on knowing and publishing everything it can possibly learn about her.   That's very sad but not as sad as the actions of a man who was entrusted with a lot.   Human beings have weaknesses.   There's no doubt about it.   But we cannot simply write this off as some powerful man's fatal flaw.   We cannot even consider the apologists' commentary about "sexual addiction" or any sort of affliction Mr. Spitzer might have "suffered" which caused him to fall from grace.   The fact is Mr. Spitzer is a sentient being who committed a horrendous act which broke the pact he had made not only with his own sense of morality but also with every citizen of the state of New York including his wife and children.

It is one thing for the holier-than-thou, do-gooder, law-enforcer-turned-Governor to break a law which the apologists consider minor.   "It's just sex, after all, isn't it," they wonder.   "There's no victim!"   It is quite another thing for the man holding the reigns to arguably one of the biggest positions of power in the country to flaunt money laundering and who knows what other laws.   I'd like to know that law enforcement officials are 100% certain that the funds for this tryst came out of Mr. Spitzer's own personal pocket.   If there's any chance that any of the money came out of the state's treasury, Mr. Spitzer ought to repay it, pay a hefty fine for the transgression, and do the time required for embezzlement.   I hope this thing is carried to its logical legal end.

Aside from the legal aspect of this "victimless" crime, I'd like to see the public consider this from the point of view of the victims.   There's no such thing as a victimless crime once you get past perhaps parking tickets.   This man's transgressions had a lot of victims.   The most obvious one is his wife who has suffered the humiliation a spouse always feels in situations like this.   Oh, the apolgists will claim its no big deal because "everybody does it."   That's as far from Truth as it can be.   The fact is not a very high percentage of real adult men visit prostitutes once they get out of their teens and early twenties, away from their "frat buddies," and grow up into adulthood.   Spitzer is 48, married with children, and a very successful politician.   Prostitutes shouldn't be something which even enters his thoughts.   They shouldn't have entered his thoughts for two or three decades.   Its child's play.   It's something little boys mess around with during the days when they're out drinking until 3:00 am, getting into fights with other boys, and generally trying to grow out of their post-adolescent hormonal rage.   These are not the acts of a grown-up man.

I feel most badly for the man's children who are at an age during which they suspect their parents are losers anyway but now they know their father is one of the biggest losers going.   They now know that Dad pays thousands and thousands of dollars to have sex with a poor girl trying to pay her way through college.   They now know their Dad likes to have hours-long sexual encounters with girls nearly their own age.   That's about as bad as it gets.

The New York public is also a victim in this although hopefully it wasn't their money which was squandered on the playtime of the little boy.   One wonders what other sorts of breaks with the public trust Spitzer engaged in over the years.   When you encounter a liar, you go back over everything he has ever told you because you know instinctively that this cannot be the first time he lied to you.   The apologists will claim that's ridiculous but it stands to reason that this man has been entrusted with a lot and he cannot even live up to the agreement made with the most important people in his life, his wife and children.   He destroyed the trust with them and we expect he was honest when dealing with the contract he made with the rest of us?   How naive is that?

I've grown weary of these little boys in the seats of power.   The rest of us are out here trying to be fair, honest and make things work in our lives.   These people put obstacles in our ways constantly.   They tell us they know what's best for us but they cannot live up to a modicum of ordinary morality.   To hell with all the little boys!

Labels: Media

American television broadcasters are causing people to turn to alcoholism as a form of self-medication against boredom.   There just isn't anything to watch.   That's true regardless of any ongoing writers' strike.   The networks are beginning to scream uncle.   Ratings are in the toilet.   NBC has been forced to give advertisers their money back.   But there is positive news on the horizon as the network plans to roll out some sure fire hit programming including:

• Law & Order: Criminal Negligence,
  
• Law & Order: Civil Procedures,
  
• Law & Order: Constitutional Issues,
  
• Law & Order: Petty Larceny, and
  
• Law & Order: Insanity Defense.

They'll also take a look at some promising "new" pilots for possible series development including:

• Rocky: The TV Show - features an over the hill, out of work actor (played by Sylvester Stallone) who befriends sports stars, especially boxers, as well as politicians and other notables;
  
• Little Ed - a comedy about a guy who is the only one who can hear his dog, named Ed, talk;
  
• The Spartridge Family - a family of young female rock musicians from Louisiana who travel the country in a hybrid SUV painted all sorts of psychedelic colors, whiule wearing sexy undergarments in all sorts of inappropriate circumstances;
  
• My Favorite Taliban - Story of a Saudi man who escapes from Guantanamo Bay detention center and lives among us while holding down a job manicuring the lawns of suburbanites who adore him;
  
• Green And Growing - the adventures of a hippy-like band of pagan youngsters who find time to befriend the wildlife while sharing space at their vegan utopian organic farm home in the Montana wilderness; and
  
• Tales of Greed - a quasi news program featuring confrontation between a cadre of journalists who try to get the biggest energy hogs they can find to understand what they are doing to the planet.

Additionally, NBC will attempt to expand its newscasts to appeal to a younger audience by focusing on issues college kids think are important like global warming, freedom from religion, and the rights of illegal immigrants.   Shows such as Today will attempt to Jazz things up more by making Matt Lauer look intelligent as often as possible and having him do more episodes such as Where in the world .. but have these locations be selected from superfund sites and other places of environmental catastrophe.

Finally, the network plans to look into the possibility of producing a show in-house similar to "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" but with an emphasis on using GE products to create an energy-efficient, carbon neutral abode.   They are looking into the possibility of having Discover Channel's Mike Rowe MC the show.

Labels: Media