I feel sorry for my sister and her husband. Not because they are the parents of the child I described in my diary title, but because they still live in Arizona. Not that there is anything wrong with Arizona, except that it means that they live near our mother and her husband.
Our mom still is so red that her ideology hurts her to the touch as if it were a bad sunburn.
Even though my sister and I are adults-- I'm in my early 40s and she is in her late 30s, I'm back to that big sister teaching role. Luckily, we already play for the same team, I'm just giving her insights. I introduced her to Keith Olbermann the other day through Crooks and Liars and pointed her to this special comment specificly since it mentioned Bush in Arizona:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/...
So she watched this, then downloads it. Watches it again with her husband and they both watch it mouth's agape. They are also going to run the risk of a panic attack and play it for our mom the next time she goes off on the "liberal media." The point will be that if the media were even "main stream" this is what it would look like.
So, I asked my sister what her son, my nephew, thought about Olbermann and she said "not much, he just looked at it with a blank look on his face and and then kind of made a break for his room as soon as possible when it was over."
I knew there had to be more to it than that and since my nephew and I chat a lot, once I knew he had seen it, I asked him about it. I don't have a log saved, so I'll do my best to recreate the conversation.
Me: "What did you think of Olbermann?"
Him: "It was nothing new, everyone knows Bush is a dick."
I wasn't expecting the conversation to go this direction at all so I was glad it was chat so I could compose myself.
Me: "You don't hear stuff like that on other TV channels."
Him: "Other channels are run by big conservative companies that get stuff from the government. They can't say that and still get money, duh!"
It was about then that short political attention span kicked in and we switched to things that were of more interest to him. But the idea that he picked up on the government influenced "Conservative Media" blows me away. He picked this one up on his own and I have to say that I'm a proud aunt.
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UPDATE
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I spoke with my nephew and passed along a few questions. He knows I tend to be interested in what the other kids think and things like that so it didn't seem out of character for me. I asked if the other kids at school felt the same way about Bush than he did and he couldn't really answer. He said that everyone he pays attention to does and everyone at "league" does (card games like magic and games based on anime).
Before I filled him in on corporate ownership of MSNBC, I asked him if he had seen any more of Countdown and he said that his mom watched it in the evenings now. He went off on someone I didn't know as being the "Worst person in the World...." His latest conclusion is that Countdown is so different than the rest of the shows, it must be made by the same people who make The Daily Show and The Colbert Report except that for some reason it has to be on another channel.
I'm sure you can imagine that I got a huge kick out of this. Well, I set him straight and I also sent him the link to The Nation that has all of the Big Ten media owners http://www.thenation.com/... I forget who to thank for that great link.
Thanks to everyone for reading this! I was only writing a little something to tide us over while waiting for the Monday morning Cheers and Jeers. I was shocked to see it catch on!