Category: Culture
Fox News in the Hen House
Here is a well written article noting just one, of what is many, examples of how Fox News is not a news organization. They are a political advocacy media group for the Grand Ole’ Party designed to slant events of the day against the Democratic Party or any group or person that does not share their political and Christian-centric view of American history, world history, or the present. Oh, and they extract money from people the way Christian televangelists do on CBN and TBN. That is strong rhetoric because Fox news is above being shamed into reporting in a balanced tone. They report. You decide. How can you decide without impartial reporting that does not play to your worst fear or lesser angel?
Fox News Attacks Black Lives Matter As ‘Lawless’ After Cheering Clive Bundy’s Lawless Militia
HuffingtonPost | Eric Boehlert, Senior Fellow, Media Matters for America
Fox News’ hate rhetoric isn’t just dangerous, it also reeks of hypocrisy when you recall that back in 2014, the same Fox News flaunted its disdain for law enforcement in order to champion Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. For two decades, Bundy refused to pay federal grazing fees on the public land his cattle used. According to Fox and the conservative media then, there was no more important battle than Bundy’s symbolic showdown with the federal government. Click here to read more.
Awakening
I grew up in a time when this tone on TV and radio was only a test or a signal of the end of the world. Anything other than a test meant that nuclear bombs were minutes away. Sometimes is was used to announce bad weather. I can remember only a couple of times when that was true where I lived. I am old enough to call the loud outdoor blasts that blare out in neighborhoods “civil defense” instead of tornado sirens. Following the EBS (emergency broadcast system) tone I waited to hear that it was only a test while the visual of what a nuclear blast would do to buildings and people ran through my head thanks to the films we saw at school twice a year. My sister and I must have looked worried one summer afternoon during the weekly EBS test. I remember her telling us. “They test this stuff and you can ignore it. It is scary, but the people in charge are not going to use the weapons that can hurt their families as well as ours. Do you hear the outdoor sirens too? No. So, there is nothing to be afraid of. Don’t be afraid, but pay attention. If you are out playing or out with friends and hear the sirens come home if you are not far away. If you are more than a five minutes from home go to your friend’s house. Their parents will know what to do. If you are at school the teachers will know what to do. Listen to them and do what they say. Ok. Alright. Now, go outside because it is a beautiful day.”
“The Day After,” a made for TV movie aired in November 1983. It told several stories about people living in and around Kansas City following a nuclear exchange. The very next day I had to give an eight minute speech in my “Introduction to Public Speaking” course on a topic I pulled from a hat. My speech was about the necessity of nuclear deterrence. In 1984 the BBC broadcast “Threads” which also depicted what people in London might experience in an exchange of nuclear weapons. Scientists can theorize, determine blast radius, and plot the course of radiation fallout that will damage humans, and all creation, at a cellular level. My father-in-law and other soldiers that landed in Japan following its unconditional surrender in WWII saw what nuclear weapons could do. He never spoke of it, but his body told the story of time spent in radiation fallout through a muscle disease and liver cancer. Only the ruins and survivors of the first blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki really know what these weapons can do, will do, when let loose.
President Obama, contrary to Republican talking points or perspective, delivered important and prophetic remarks at Hiroshima last week. Arguments continue about the necessity of dropping those crude weapons and the motivation behind the use of nuclear weapons. They indeed shortened the war, scared humanity, set off an arms race, a cold war, and now, if not secured by people who embrace the fear of mutually assured destruction (MAD), or disarmed by countries that have such weapons, there is a brand of political and religious fanaticism around the globe that would use nuclear weapons and lead to another, maybe the final, World War.
Below are the opening and closing paragraphs of President Obama’s speech at the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima.
President Obama Speaks at Hiroshima Peace Memorial
May 27, 2016Seventy-one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.
The world was forever changed here. But today, the children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. That is the future we can choose -– a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening.