I came home for Easter this weekend and found myself running up against that great brick wall of disinformation that passes for news on teevee and the local fishwrap these days.
I wasn't really prepared for it, because I don't rely on the idiot box for my news feeds (except for the Daily Show, of course). I've been fed a good wholesome diet of foreign news and blog supplements.
So when ABC started babbling about the sick sad situation in Iraq this week, they ran the Fallujah clip, of the truck on fire, and they kept pushing the lie that they were simply "American contractors." I let slip my snark and said, "So they're still calling them contractors? I guess it sounds better than mercenaries."
Which prompted my grandfather, who enlisted in the Marines the week before the North Koreans crossed the 38th, to say "It's time to stop fucking around and drop some napalm on those bastards. Show 'em we mean business."
"Yup. And then the entire country'll be up in arms."
"They only understand force. They need to stop shooting at us and let us straighten their country out. What they should do is spend less time causing problems and more time working on rebuilding their country."
And then came the story about Dr. Rice and her performance in front of the 9-11 commission. ABC kept pushing the "historical document" crap, but followed up with some lame points about how it contained some warnings that bin Laden was planning something. I could barely control myself when they showed her giving the title of the PDB.
"What a crock. I listened to her on the radio on Thursday. She spent the longest time going on about how it was warning about attacks on foreign targets, and when they asked her the name of it, she said 'Bin Laden Plans to Attack in the United States.' " (paraphrasing the title)
My grandmother, who's voted Republican since 1960 and is right now scrambling for a reason to justify voting that way again in 2004: "Oh, it's not like they could have done anything to prevent it. Clinton couldn't do anything, this moron couldn't do anything, nobody could have."
"Are you kidding?! The asshole went on vacation for a month the day after they gave him that report!"
"It couldn't have been helped."
And then this morning there was an article in the local fishwrap (the Troy [NY] Record, which if anyone's ever been exposed to it knows what passes for journalism there) about the border checkpoint (100 miles away from any border) that held me up for 15 minutes on my way home. "What a bunch of stupidity," I said.
"It most certainly is not! I sure don't mind them checking my bags and my car, if it means they're going to get the bastard in front of me or behind me with bombs in their luggage," said Grandma.
"It's a bunch of crap. Ever get the feeling they're scaring you into it? Meanwhile nobody asks why they're doing this stuff."
"Of course they are," said Grandpa. "These terrorists are trying to scare us, to destroy the economy."
"And no mention at all about our foreign policy in the Middle East. Nothing about the dictators we prop up for cheap oil."
"And what would you do about it?"
"For one thing I'd stop relying on dictators to pump dinosaur bones to power our cars."
At which point the conversation changed to somebody who died of diabetes complications.
This past weekend has been utterly frustrating and saddening. Try as I might it's utterly impossible to penetrate the brick wall of disinformation. Every time I begin to get optimistic, I have to come home and be disappointed by the absurdity that passes for teevee news. No wonder the country's going to hell.
