Political Theatre category archive
Overfill 2
Brad Stennerson argues that there’s such a thing as too much television news and offers advice on how to dial it back.
A snippet; follow the link for the rest:
Shoot for the minimum necessary news. Not a second more.
Obviously, that’s not what the networks want. They want you transfixed by the screen, eyes wide with terror, heart fluttering with every overly-Midwestern pronunciation of every unnerving word.
My own opinion is that any television news is too much television news (unless there are nice pictures of a snow storm to look at). Television reporting manages to be both overblown and superficial at the same time.
Why spend half an hour watching someone talk about something when you learn more in greater depth in five minutes of reading?
Under Cover of Coronavirus 0
While news of the coronavirus is grabbing everyone else’s attention, Will Bunch takes the time to look at what’s going on elsewhere. Here’s bit:
Follow the link to read why he wrote that passage.
The Other Epidemic 0
The writer of a letter to the editor of The Roanoke Times describes the symptoms and suggests precautions.
Grifters of God 0
The Orlando Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell comments on the who-shot-john in Florida over whether or not churches should be subject to shut-down orders in these viral times. He starts out with the story of the mega-church pastor who got arrested for ignoring a shut-down order.
That wasn’t even the nuttiest part of the story.
No, that honor went to the pastor’s rationale for why he claimed his congregants they were safe — because he spent $100,000 on some sort of magical electronic system to “neutralize” the virus.
“We have brought in 13 machines that basically kill every virus in the place,” the pastor said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “If someone walks through the door, it kills everything on them. If they sneeze, it shoots it down at a 100 mph. It’ll neutralize it in split-seconds.”
I know the Lord blessed us with brains. It’s a shame some of his followers opt not to use them.
Follow the link for the rest.
Lies and Lying Liars 0
David Evans, writing at Psychology Today Blogs, discusses the corrosive effects of lies on the polity and explores why lying has become pervasive. Here’s a snippet from his introductory passage:
But a “post truth era” is dangerous for any society. Lies are like high valence chemical ions, that zip around and clump together into “us against them” groups. And we become polarized. We become that “house divided against itself” that Lincoln warned us against. How did we get this way? What can we do about it?
Truth in Labeling 0
At the Tampa Bay Times, Stephen Buckley, citing John M. Barry’s research, looks back at how news of the 1918 flue epidemic was covered and reminds us that reporting facts is not being alarmist. Here’s a bit:
In North Carolina, some newspapers would not publish the names of the dead.
One newspaper in Phoenix declined to write about influenza deaths there, or anywhere else. The paper, Barry writes, “was utterly silent, saying nothing about influenza anyplace in the country until the news was such that it could no longer keep silent.”
