It’s probably no big secret to anyone that knows me that I would rather be completely uninformed rather than rely on Fox News as a “news” source. I put it in quotes, because rarely does Fox News, rather it be a local channel or the national network, merely relay the news.
Gawker.com has a new columnist, apparently an undercover Fox News employee, who is regurgitating all sorts of juicy tidbits from inside Fox News corporate headquarters.
This person verifies what any normal person already knows – that Fox News is racist, that it invents news, that it has a willful disregard for facts, and its sole reason for existing at all is to put more money into the Murdock family pockets. The more controversial it is, the more it supports the Murdock empire. It has little to nothing to do with news.
Don’t even get me started on the talking heads at Fox, such as O’Reilly. How can such one-sided bias be tolerated by the masses? It’s the worst of yellow journalism.
On a more pleasing front, Rick Santorum has tossed in the towel. This leaves Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich battling it out for the Republican nominee position. I’m sure that Newt will give it up soon, his campaign seems to be bouncing checks, so that can’t be a good thing.
Can Romney pull off an upset and win the election? The Republican party has done a fine job of upsetting about 80% of the women in the country, so I’m not so sure. I’m positive that as the campaign moves forward, his Mormon religion is going to become a talking point, and the butt of some jokes. Trust me, Mormon Underwear will never be added to my extensive collection.
Personally, I don’t care what anyones religion might be, as long as they don’t use it to make rules that I should live by. I truly believe that government and religion have nothing to do with each other. I’m not so sure Romney can keep the two separate.
More disturbing though is his apparent complete disconnect from reality when it comes to how real people live their lives. How can you truly govern a country where the majority of the people have to feed a family of four on what he spends for lunch?
Too much time on ones hands? The handsome young man on our left, John Steel, apparently known to aficionados of finger art as The King of South Carolina leaves me wondering whether or not he suffers from autism or is otherwise handicapped. Perhaps I’m just not all that enthralled with finger art. You can watch an example here.
The 1960’s were scary. We had the Vietnam war, riots at the political conventions, the shootings at Kent State, the beginnings of Black Power and race riots, and some really scary mass murderers. The Manson Family was all over the news in 1968 with the killing of Sharon Tate and others. To my then 12-year-old eyes and ears, he was far worse than any imaginary bogey man I could dream up.
In the news today is that the 77-year-old was denied parole yet again. In poor health, it is doubtful he’ll ever be before the board again, but his crimes were so heinous, and his personality so defective, I am confident he could live to be 150, and still never be paroled. He is one scary man.
But he wasn’t the only one. In 1966 there was Richard Speck, and the news stories of how he tortured, raped and then murdered eight student nurses from a hospital in Chicago also scared the crap out of me. He ended up dying in prison at age 49, a bizarre character who lived his prison life as a female, voluntarily whoring himself out to other prisoners. I suppose it was his way of surviving.
There was also Albert Desalvo, otherwise known as the Boston Strangler and the Zodiac Killer. These stories of mass murderers, blended with the sound of the Vietnam war in the background, all told in the sonorous voices of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley are what I think of when I think of TV news in the 1960’s.
But, at least all they did was tell the news. They didn’t opine about it, or make it more or less than it was. It was scary enough without any embellishments.