Seriously, I just went for a bathroom break.
What?
How many months ago?
Really?
Oh. Well...sorry. I'm here now. Oh, and by the way, you do NOT want to go in there.
Anyway, I'm attempting to re-enter this stupid blogosphere again after a major (and unannounced) sabbatical. I'll try to keep this one short, so as not to tax my little noggin or the patience of those who may have stumbled onto this item. Want to know how my brain works? Check the archive. You'll get the picture. More to come soon.
So, what I'm incensed about this week is the coverage of the Shirley Sherrod story. You know the deal. Right-wing media lies about something, Obama administration employee gets axed to avoid further recrimination from right-wing media, no one apologizes, and we talk about something completely irrelevant for a few weeks.
Now you're saying, "Hey, MAB. This is totally relevant. We should be talking about this." To which I would say, "Shut up. This is my stinking blog." But what I would really say is, "No, we aren't talking about it. The conversation is about something else entirely."
Watch last week's Sunday talk shows. Both CBS's "Face the Nation" and ABC's "This Week" had as their big fat topics "race". Great. A fine topic. And one we probably should talk about more. But this isn't what the story is. The story is, and let's gather around close here so we don't miss it, the right-wing media lied about something and got someone fired on purpose.
Really, people. Race was just the tool that was used. But the real issue here is not how we talk about race. It's that we were told something that was untrue and we were told it deliberately in order to make someone look bad. Why are we talking about anything else? Is it so commonplace for bottom-feeders like Faux News and Andrew Breitbart to propagate this sort of disgraceful bullshit that it isn't even a story anymore? If this is so, what the hell have we become as a nation?
Please please please, American media. Can the race talk for a bit and concentrate on the real story.
Oh, and thanks for waiting for me, readers. And for not knocking on the bathroom door the whole time. It only makes me nervous.
1 comment:
I have missed you dearly. Thanks for coming back.
I managed to just skirt the edges of the Sherrod story; I was on something of a media fast for a few weeks and missed the NPR coverage (and I'm on vacation this week so I have NO idea what's going on in the world). I managed to get the idea that the entire scene was caused by deliberate manipulation of the speech, and that no one apologized publicly or was called to task for the rotten journalism that caused the problem in the first place. The entire thing disgusts me.
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