I think instead of worrying about soda cans, we should campaign for warning labels on the news. The inconsistencies and resulting confusion are far more damaging.

 

Fortunately, I turned to the channel that runs constant ads boasting they are the station that brings me the story first, and caught the cock fighting story hours ahead of everyone watching the other channels. It scares me to think what might have happened if another hour had passed before I found out there were six endangered roosters in a backyard right here in my hometown. However, the glow of being first to know quickly wore off and left me with serious questions.

In their haste to beat everyone else to the story, had the speedy channel neglected the bigger stories, like what sense does it make to rescue these roosters from their captors and then euthanize them? Or why is it a felony to endanger a rooster but only a misdemeanor to assault a human, who won’t be given the luxury of euthanasia no matter how debilitating the damage?

And then there was the bit on kids and sodas again, with an appeal to the public to call for the government to step in with warning labels and bans on sodas in schools. Yet they draw no connection to this and their reports of increasing violence and insubordination in the schools, never dreaming it might not be a good thing to raise our youth to believe that they aren’t responsible for self-control and must only comply when there’s a law and a government official watching over them.

Later in the day, George Bush trots across the screen hand-in-hand with Karl Rove, after Scott McClellan had obediently avoided every single question about Karl Rove earlier in the day. Bush did say if anyone in his administration was involved in the Valerie Plame scandal he would fire them, but we know he never means what he says, and Scott McClellan or Ari Fleisher, or whoever the hired liar of the day may be, will do all he can to try to trick us into believing he didn’t ever say what we know we heard him say. What ARE we supposed to tell the kids? I find it much easier to explain why people enjoy oral sex than why they enjoy endangering or trying to fool others.

I think instead of worrying about soda cans, we should campaign for warning labels on the news. The inconsistencies and resulting confusion are far more damaging.

Sandy Knauer