The Truth, Brought To You By...

  First of all, I know what you're thinking. "Thank Odin he's returned! I thought we would never again behold the wisdom of that golden-penned wordsmith! Whatever have we done without him?!"
  I hope most of you survived this drought with your psyches intact. I know there were definitely some casualties. There are bound to be when people are left to fend for themselves without proper guidance. Let's just remember the fallen fondly and move on, shall we? We shall. Indeed, we must!
  Now, since it has been such a long vacation and most of you are still on slacker-time, I will keep today's lesson relatively simple. We'll get into the hard stuff next time. For now, just try to stay awake, and, for chrissakes stop drooling on your desks. Honestly...
  So lately I've noticed a few disturbing trends I think we should all be made aware of. Awareness, after all, is the first step to solving any problem. Just ask those highly affective problem-solving whiz-kids over at the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Those guys have been kickin' ass and takin' names for over twenty-five years. If I have learned nothing else from them, it's that getting a bunch of pre-teens crammed into a cafeteria for a one hour "awareness" presentation  can stop the flow of high-grade Colombian cocaine into American cities dead in its tracks. But I digress...
  I don't want to discuss drugs today. I just know without them I would be a train-wreck. Thanks, Doc.  Rather, I want to discuss the way we interpret the stories we read in the paper or see on the news and the bias those media impart on us. Subliminally, perhaps, they subtly sway our opinions with the simplest things. A turn of phrase. An extra bit of unnecessary information which adds nothing to the story except to direct your view-point in the desired direction of...someone. Be it the network, the network's parent company, an advertiser, or maybe the writer themselves (though not usually). It's a simple thing to do, really, and people can't wait to be told how they should feel about any given subject, so it helps them out, too!
  For example, I recently read a story about a young woman who was arrested for the deplorable crime of neglecting her three children. She left a very small baby alone and took the other two with her on a drug buy or something. The details escape me now. It doesn't matter. What matters is, the children were all put at extreme risk and she is obviously a very disturbed individual and a shitty mother.
  To me, that's the take-away we should all get from this story. Don't leave babies alone. Don't take toddlers to buy drugs. Maybe don't do drugs at all if you have kids. Don't be a shitty person. Period. That is not how the story was presented. Instead, the writer opened up something like this: This twenty-three year old woman with three kids from three different fathers, none of whom is she married to left her illegitimate...blah, blah, blah. "sources" say she has had at least one abortion...blah, blah, blah...drugs...blah...stripping...blah. Do you see the pattern developing here?
  There is a clear direction the reader is being pointed. We are meant to judge this woman for things that have nothing to do with her crime. We're meant to believe she is much more than a drug addict who neglected her children. We are to conclude she is a slut who has made a bevy of terrible life decisions. Decisions that not only make her a very bad and evil person, but we are made ever more self-righteous for NOT having made similarly bad decisions. We are good people. We are moral people. We are right. We are true. We have God on our side. Buy Pepsi.
  The point is this; we have to consider the source every time we read something, watch something, or listen to someone. All these media outlets have an agenda and it has gotten very far away from simply being an agenda to inform and educate. They have to turn a profit so they have to make a story sexy and interesting. They have to play to our biases and "help" us conform to the standards set forth by some ideal model-consumer. Journalism is fucked and truth is buried so deeply in a story you have to dig through a mile of bullshit to get to it. But don't ever think its not worth it. The truth is always worth digging for.
  That's all for today. Your homework is to read between the lines.

Thisistruth4you@gmail.com