Praying To Your Red, White And Blue Security Blanket

  Fox News, which we all have known for years, is neither fair balanced. Or truthful either. Basically it exists to reinforce right wing talking points while stirring up the base about non-existent issues.
Recently, the network, in it's effort to rile up the corporate idiocracy, incorrectly claimed a school refused to let students say the pledge of allegiance. Without going into much detail about how the pledge was written by a Christian Socialist, the recitation of the pledge is one of the  forms of brainwashing foisted upon children at the earliest age . Essentially a prayer to a piece of cloth, it is however considered important to the weak and feeble minded people who think it actually means something.
Following the erroneous report by Fox News, the school began receiving offensive hateful and potentially criminal messages from Fox News viewers. Because nothing makes one more patriotic than threatening a school board.
The whole controversy began when an initiative from the leader of the Republican Youth called for the pledge to be recited at every school. Because nothing says freedom more than being forced to mouth empty words to a piece of cloth. The student, Sean Harrington, gave an impassioned speech to the board spewing right wing cliches and talking points such as 'freedom isn't free' and other such drivel. All was in vain, though, as board members deadlocked on whether or not to pass the proposal. The school principal offered a compromise, wherein all who wished could join the principal in the school lobby before the start of each day and recite the pledge, which Harrington rejected.

"I was really heartbroken," Harrington said of the deadlocked vote. "It's hard to think that something so traditional in American society was turned down. ... It tells me that we've basically cast aside what our country is founded on."

Um, I think Mr. Harrington needs to retake American History 101, because the pledge wasn't even written until 1892. Our country was founded on the Constitution, which prohibits the establishment of a religion, which is what the idolatry based Americanism he wants to force upon all his fellow students sounds like to me. And as far as being 'something so traditional in American society', one must remember that it wasn't even until the forties that it became compulsory for students to recite it. So it's not that much of a long standing tradition.
So basically, what we have, is a school board being terrorized by right wing fanatics because some arrested developmental Republican still needs his red, white, and blue security blanket. Boy, is he in for a shock when he walks out into the real world.

They Can't Give That Crap Away

A trip to grocery store today led to one of the saddest sights I've seen in some time, a representative from the local paper, offering to give away copies of today's paper to anyone who wanted to listen to his spiel. This is the Sunday paper, the one paper most people purchase, if not for the wonderful color comics then for he multiple advertising circulars each Sunday paper promises. There was but one problem:
No body wanted any.
I made eye contact with the gentleman as I politely refused his offer, but many other people were probably not as kind, like the people who nod politely at the differently abled greeters at the more upscale supermarket up the road where trophy wives push trophy children in shopping carts equipped with DVD players to prevent the children from ever having a moment where they could actually think, or, use their imaginations. But this store is more decidedly downscale, and most people ignored him like they would the project children who often lurk out front selling seventy-five cent candy bars for three dollars to raise money to fill in the budget deficits their school faces because the only tax people can vote on is the only one that should be raised.
Now, I have many issues with the local paper. Their choice of op-ed columnists (Cal Thomas, anyone?), their lousy writing, but most importantly, their decision many years ago to ban me from the letters to the editor. This is a paper that not only endorsed Bush for two terms, but then went on to endorse McCain/Palin, a ticket whose horrendousness is best exemplified by John McCain's recent inaction during the ongoing economic crisis. And yes, I still hold that whole "propaganda for an illegal war" thing against them.
But I'm not alone. In fact, it would seem that so many newspapers are struggling that the once venerated New York Times is offering survival strategies for dying newspapers.
Face it, print is a dying medium as a way to convey news and information. Television may have helped, but in these lightning quick times, the internet has killed the local paper. And I say good. No more trees chopped down. No more stacks of twine wrapped crap rotting in landfills, or trying to find someone who will actually recycle the damn things. I simply don't have the space to save them until some one some where decides to run a paper drive. So goodbye newspaper, you're as useful as a rotary phone.