February, 2018 archive
All the News that Fits 0
Leonard Pitts, Jr., considers the results of a recent survey, which indicated that many person don’t trust the news (Full Disclosure: I don’t trust Fox News, but that’s a considered decision based on analysis and experience).
A snippet (emphasis added):
But there was one finding that leapt out at me: Four out of 10 Republicans said they always regard as “fake news” accurate news stories that cast a favored politician or group in a negative light. Let that marinate for a moment. They concede it to be true, but they regard it as “fake” if they don’t like what it says.
Aside:
I haven’t watched television news in years, except when there’s a snowstorm–then I watch local news in full panic mode. It’s not that I don’t trust it; it’s that I find it, for the most part, superficial pablum.
I can learn more in five minutes of reading than in 30 minutes (minus 10 minutes for commercials) of listening. Figures such as Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley, just to mention a few, are long gone.
Today’s “newscasters” are performers, not reporters.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
The drive for politeness:
The incident occurred around 5:30 p.m. while the woman was inside a car, was shown a gun and had shot herself, according to initial police scanner reports.
More guns no doubt would have prevented this.
Stray Thought, Sunday Dept. 0
I wonder whether the Evangelical right still teaches Sunday School children to sing
Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in His sight
and, if so, do they manage to do so with straight faces.
Tales of the Trumpling: Snapshots of Trickle-Down Trumpery 0
Trumpling high school students:
Stephon Chapman, a small forward for the Horlick High School Rebels, said fans in the Franklin student section made monkey noises when he lined up to take his free throw shots during the first half of the game Thursday night.
After the game, he said, a white male adult shouted a racial slur at players, most of them African-American, as they boarded their bus.
Down at the Farm 0
The blog has not been cooperative today. It threw a “fatal” memory error around lunchtime. After a bike ride–the May weather we are having here at the end of February was too nice not to go on a bike ride–I dug into it and found a workaround and it’s working again.
I will be digging into this a bit deeper during the course of the week, but at least I am back on line so I can bestow my deathless electrons on an uncaring world. . . .
If you notice any erratic or unusual behavior (with the website, that is), please email me at frank@pineviewfarm.net or click the “Email Me” link on the sidebar.
Aside:
This issue was in no way related to the problems viewing this site that occurred in late January and early February. Those issues have been resolved with enhanced security features.
Hey, Rubio! 0
Alfred Doblin remarks on Marco Rubio’s dissemblance of a human being.
“The Red Letter Year” 0
When I took my first class in Virginia history in third grade (yes, they used to teach history in school) that was the label given to 1619. The label referred to three events in that year:
- The first meeting of the House of Burgesses, the Virginia colony’s legislature.
- The arrival of the first English women to the colony.
- The arrival of the first “shipment* of Negro (as the text book styled it) slaves.
The Hartford Courant’s Frank Harris, III, muses on how to recognize the last event on that list. Here’s a bit of his musings:
It should not be forgotten. But how do we not forget it?
____________________
*Yes, “shipment” was the word in the text.
I paid attention in history class, even in third grade. I paid attention in history class up through graduate work in history, with a focus on “U. S. Southern,” and much subsequent reading, because the past explains the present.
In that text and in the construct it portrayed, persons were “cargo” because they were Not White. And many would take us back to those days.
