Political Theatre category archive

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):

Among its findings: More Americans (43 percent) have a negative view of media than have a positive view (33 percent); 66 percent say media do a poor job of separating fact from opinion; 58 percent say it is harder to be well informed today because there are so many news sources available; asked to score news media on a zero-to-100 scale with 100 representing maximum trust, Americans gave news media an anemic 37.

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.

Fact-checked frolics.

Via the Raleigh News and Observer.

Alfred Doblin remarks on Marco Rubio’s dissemblance of a human being.

Daniel Ruth muses on Americans’ susceptibility to being suckered. Here’s a bit:

But if the Russian lies and deceit suggesting the country is on the verge of adopting sharia law arrived via Facebook — bracketed by a friend’s notice he was eating nachos at Taco Bell and the latest adorable picture of your sister’s cat chasing its tail — well, it must be true.

You have to give some grudging credit to the Russian trolls. They didn’t create American gullibility. They didn’t invent American civic illiteracy. They merely exploited it.

In the Raleigh News and Observer, Billy Maddalon suggests that it’s time for Americans to face America’s reality. A snippet:

America’s current reality is sobering: Our expensive health system is one of the worst underperformers in the industrialized world (17th out of 37); Our education system is one of the worst (25th out of 37); Our mental health systems are fragmented and underfunded, with an opioid epidemic raging out of control in our rural communities. We also are the most violent country in the industrialized world (with gun homicide rates that are 25 times higher than our peers).

(snip)

All of these problems persist because we refuse to learn from what other countries have done to solve these same challenges. Remember, we’re different, better, smarter, we’re exceptional. Screw the facts!

Follow the link for the rest; it’s worth the three minutes of your time.

Aside:

This condition is a natural consequence of having a major political party that has set as its mission the destruction of the common good.

Blocked and silenced (unless, of course, you are a Russian Troll).

Excerpt:

The biggest fake news problem is that we have a lot of stupid people who believe fake news.