TOD: I won't back away from this because I think I can keep it non-partisan (overall). One of the news segments on this morning's local news had to do with the fact that "some" schools, nationwide, won't be carrying President Obama's address to school children. The brouhaha over this has become a symptom of what I think is a breakdown in society -- irrational hysteria fueled by deliberate lies and misinformation.
This is something that all political institutions perpetrate for the sole purposes of gaining power and destroying those who oppose them.
On the morning news segment, a white woman was distraught and could barely speak so hysterical she was over the possibility of her precious child having to be exposed to "that". Her husband, grinning broadly, stood beside her holding her.
It was the way she said "that" which aroused suspicions in my mind as to what it was she was really objecting to....was it the president, himself, or that he was going to be encouraging children everywhere to work hard and strive to get the best education possible? It doesn't matter at all that the White House has assured everyone there will be no references to Obama's policies or that there will be no requests for children to be challenged to think of ways they can help him work toward attaining his goals for the country. (I mean...how DARE he have goals that are for everyone??!!!) I have to wonder how careful the parents are at home when it comes to hiding the newspapers and magazines and monitoring TV lest some news item expose their child to "that".
I suspect some of this hysteria is fueled by media interest...media jumping on some disgruntled comment and then fueling the consumptive fires it spawns for the sake of news ratings.
So...the change I'd seek is that the media return to honesty and turn away from yellow journalism which, truly, has become the norm. I'd also appoint regional bitch-slappers to hunt some of these people down who turn on the emoting for the cameras and, likely, have a laugh about it afterward.
