Listening to Tool on the drive. “You LIE CHEAT AND STEAL!!!!” I’m thinking of politics – and also, distractingly – of what it would sound like if Sean Connery were singing instead. “You LIE! CHEAT AND SHTEEL!!!” This amuses me greatly and kind of makes me titter.
This morning the New York Times makes me kind of angry. On the front page they advertise an interview with Glenn Beck. It makes me shudder, but I’m curious. The front page advertises an interview with the man who is “the face of the Tea Party” – which is unfortunate because there are some political things that I can get behind with the Tea Party – it’s just when they do things like put a racist, xenophobic, fear-mongering man of HATE forward as their spiritual leader and follow in his socially conservative and bigoted ways that I realize that there can probably be no reasonable discourse there. Of course in the fifth paragraph Mr. Beck declares that he “Not involved with the Tea Party,” …. Perhaps five paragraphs in seems buried until you realize that the interview spans for 10 pages.
James Bartlett acknowledging that yes indeedy, he knows he’s next at the Java Mammas open mic.
Not sure what to make of that. Is the headline accurate because he’s perceived as the leader of the Tea Party? Is the NY Times guilty of disinformation? Why the contradiction? Upon reading the headline I instantly reformed my Tea Party opinions from “if only they’d disavow the more socially conservative elements in their movement I could really support some of their thinking” to “wow, so it’s not just ELEMENTS, but their LEADERSHIP – the Tea Party fills me with RAAAAGE!!!” because I HATE Glen Beck. Is this purposefully divisive? Putting a not-completely-associated face with a headline in order to completely associate him? It all makes my head spin.
People? Have your opinions. Disagree with me freely. Just don’t be underhanded about it. Don’t skew your statistics. Don’t use soundbites. Don’t edit other people’s words!
Read the WHOLE ARTICLE and watch the WHOLE VIDEO.
