The End of Rational Discourse

My alarm is my radio and it goes off at about 6:15 a.m. I don't actually get up that early and I'm well trained to hit the snooze over and over. My radio is tuned to NPR news and many times I wait to hear the news story before I hit the snooze. I'm half asleep and I usually get the story in the middle, so maybe that makes the stories seem much more important. This morning they interviewed a fellow from Pakistan who said that the fundamentalists and taliban came to Afganistan and Pakistan in the 80's as part of a world wide jihad (whatever that means). Over the years they made it almost impossible to be a moderate or liberal in those countries. He called it an end to rational discourse.

Gee that sounds familiar.

Now granted I like to get my news from Jon Stewart, so I'm not claiming that there's anything fair or balanced about how I prefer getting information, but unlike Stewart I'm not amused by Fox news, I'm afraid. The morning that Foley abruptly resigned from Congress I had just caught the end of the story on NPR, so I turned on CNN and Headline News to see what it was all about. They were on other stories, so I flipped around and came upon Fox News. The trailer at the bottem of the screen said something like Foley, republican from Florida accused of sending sexual explicit instant messages to 16 year old page or something shorter like that--I don't remember exactly. Fox News had two people apparently giving both sides of the story (fair and balanced). The first person was a bright young girl, obviously a conservative republican and she said that the allegations against Foley were very serious and warrented investigation, but that a complete investigation was needed. Ok, I thought to myself, that's a stock conservative approach--what's the other side. The next commentator was an older white guy who was even more conservative republican who said that the leadership couldn't have investigated because that would be gay bashing. I admit that shocked me into a stuper and I turned the tv off.

Gay bashing? Investigating sexual harrassment by a Congressman against a minor is gay bashing? That guy must be from another planet, right?

Then I saw Jon Stewart and he showed a clip of Newt Gingritch (sp) saying that investingating the allegations against Foley would have been gay bashing. [Jon Stewart does this thing sometimes where he shows lots of people in the Bush administration all using the same words and phrases to describe something to illustrate how they have a memo of talking points and everyone just uses the talking points, so the fact that old Newt used the same phrase suggests that this was on the Conservative Repulican talking points memo.] Jon adroitly pointed out that lumping a 52 year old who sends sexually explicit messages to a 16 year old in with gays, is why the republicans are accused of gay bashing.

Ok, I'm not big on personal scandals--the guy was a weirdo and he resigned. The congressional pages are safe from further harrassment. I hope no one sues, because we already have a pretty big deficit and I don't want my taxes to go up.

But wait, the scandal lives on, because the leadership in congress knew all about the inappropriate behavior by Foley over a year ago and did nothing. Might be accused of gay bashing. Inquiring minds (fostered and trained by the nuns in catholic school) want to know if the leadership used this information to blackmail Foley into voting with them. Inquiring minds want to know if there are other skeletons in the closets that we should be worried about. I mean if they don't do anything about a guy who exploits minors IN CONGRESS (and he's the head of the committee for the protection of exploited minors shudder ) then what else is out there?

I'm depressed. So I turn off the news, but I tuned into Jon Stewart for a few minutes last night and he showed a clip of Fox News on the Foley story. He highlighted the caption at the bottom and they had "Foley D-Fla" If you don't like the fact that he's a republican, just subtly call him a democrat. Now I was really depressed.

The fact is they don't even need to go to those ridiculous measures. This morning NPR did a non-scientific annodotal survey of conservative republican voters to see if the Foley scadal would affect the way they are going to vote. The commentator said that their results match a gallop poll due out today which says, no. One lady said, she's pro-life and for the war in Iraq, so she's voting republican because that's what they stand for--she doesn't care who the person is that she votes for.

I'm with her. I never cared a hoot about the Clinton scandals. I agreed with his policies and that's all that mattered to me.

And now we come to the taliban and fundamentalists making it impossible to be a moderate, much less a liberal. Here I am in a conservative republican city with a smatering of conservative democrates. I keep my politcal opinions to myself and pride myself on keeping politics out of my everyday discourse. To keep the middle ground, there must be a balance to the ultra conservative, but I don't know any ultra librals--I can't think of one. Jon Stewart is not a liberal--he's a moderate and he's the only voice that I hear tipping the balance back toward the middle. He runs a fake news show. Sandra Day O'Connor is not a liberal, she was barely a moderate and yet she was the only voice on the court keeping an even keel.

Abortion was the bellweather. 9-11 changed this country fundamentally. Just what we warn will happen in Iraq (terrorists will incite a Civil war by pitting sunis against shiet) we are letting happen here without even realizing it. Conservatives are getting more and more conservative (Congress voted to end habis corpus for detainees accused of terrorism--what's that all about--how can they blatantly pass a law that is so unconstitutional, Jefferson is spinning in his grave????) and the middle is becoming the ultra liberal. Inquiring minds want to know, who's getting rich over this senerio?