Archive
03/22/09
Octopus
These days of America's twenty-four-hour-news cycle, We way too easily surfeit our unenquiring minds on non-news Or news pulled, like taffy, to breaking that never breaks.
Seemingly, we revel in dwelling on, brooding on, fluff (O.J killing his ex-wife, driving his Bronco, on a wild-goose chase; The two possible fathers of Anna Nicole Smith's baby,
The starlet's merciless plumping up, ODing on diet pills, barbiturates) As well as stuff of negligible, if any, evidence (The smoke-and-mirrors WMD's "buried" in Saddam's Iraq).
For the past few weeks, we've been overexposed to AIG (The bogus bonus boondoggle — who knew what, when, and why?) And to Bernie Madoff's colossal Ponzi swindle.
Oh, America, where has your demand for substance gone, Your desire to get to the bottom of specious history, science — Creationism, revisionist Holocaust and global-warming theories?
Why have we dumbed-down our desire to ratchet up our culture, Glutted ourselves on living our lives through "reality" shows, Making love to our BlackBerrys, iPods, numbing video games?
The networks know what we're just beginning to discover: We've taken out too many subprime mortgages against our minds And now find ourselves so foreclosed as to be in a vegetative state —
A third of our nation believing in the literalness of its sacred texts, Half of its high-school graduates Not knowing which came first, the Civil or Revolutionary wars,
Virtually no one aware that the Constitution, as originally signed, Deemed slavery a legal institution, Many still convinced that President Obama is an Islamic terrorist.
What'll it be next, from the TV- and Internet-media octopus? Will it find a newer way to squeeze our brains, in its tentacles — C-Span-like coverage of celebrities, models, and athletes defacating?
03/22/09
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