not to knock your friend, I have relatives who are totally uninformed also, doesn’t it just drive you crazy how they can be so unaware? They just hear snippets of the network news to form important decisions, important to some of us anyway.
I agree. I mean no disrespect to my friend but I was surprised at her lack of attention to the news.
I guess in any equation, depending on the issue, there will be people on either side of a debate who seem to be able to cut to the quick (maybe they/we are the kool-aid drinkers). There will be people like my friend, who take news at face value (the complacent ill informed). And there will be the middle of the roaders who are either unable to recognize or dismiss falsehoods and thereby lend credence to idiotic notions.
For instance- on the way to work each morning I listen to 1210AM in Philadelphia. The host, michael smerconish, is well spoken, educated, extremely well read, etc. Yesterday smerconish covered all his bases when speaking briefly about the attack on Rush Limbaugh. I only caught a bit of what he said, but it amounted to the notion that Rush was wrong to say what he said about michael j fox (why bring that up?) BUT the senate was wrong for attacking Rush about what he said about the military, UNLESS Rush had actually said what the dems in the senate accused him of.
I took his comments to mean that he didn’t know what to think.
Today, smerconish laid out the chronology of the events surrounding Rush’s comments. He cited a date and time when Rush first spoke of a particular phony soldier and then went on to prove to his satisfaction that Rush was indeed referring to people who claim they are soldiers AND not the U.S. military in general. In other words, he agreed with Rush and the senate was wrong for what they were doing.
What bugged me about all of that was that it took brainy smerconish all this time to come to that conclusion. Rush’s show airs on the same station as smerconish’s. Both host radio shows that are aired on a primarily conservative radio station with a primarily conservative audience. That aside, it seemed plain as day to me- average joe- that the dems in the senate were taking Rush’s words out of context and using them to further their agenda- YET this well educated talking head had to go through all that analysis to reach the same conclusion. Even one of his on-air assistants noted that prior to smerconish’s explanation, he was leaning more toward what the dems were saying about Rush!!!
smerconish would say that of course I’d automatically take Rush’s side because I’m just eager to drink the conservative kool-aid and that the topic required time to digest before coming to a conclusion. I think the guy is too caught up in trying to avoid being seen as too conservative to his audience for fear he would lose the liberal listeners. Perhaps he doesn’t trust his instincts.