The Expansionist

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Media Monomania. If you aren't interested in the Japan earthquake/nuclear-power-plant story, there is little reason to turn on the network news, because pack-journalist monomania has shoved every other story in the universe out of the network news. Why is that?

What's happening in Libya? Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain? Wisconsin? Haiti? The economy? Who knows?

New Zealand's recent earthquake is the oxymoronic "old news". Japan's current problems will be old news next month. Meanwhile, where is the balanced view of the world, and attention to EVERYTHING that we as citizens of the world's one superpower need to know?

We can't do a THING about Japan's earthquake. We are not authorized nor empowered to control Japan's nuclear-power-plant problem. But we CAN do something about Muammar Qaddafi, yet the media have so downplayed that story, that Qaddafi is using world focus on Japan to slauter thousands of his people — MORE people than have died in Japan — to take back the areas of Libya taken by pro-democracy forces, and Americans pay NO attention, because the media, from which most people take their cues as to what matters and what does not, pay no attention to Libya. That is just plain wrong.

We do NOT need all those "human interest" stories about found babies and faithful dogs in the single half hour a day — 22 minutes, after commercials, and there should be NO commercials in network news — that the major networks (NOT including Fox, which offers NO national/world news on its over-air broadcast stations) provide each day. You want to be considered a major network? Then show national and world news. Fox has a cable 'news' station. But it can't provide a half-hour broadcast on Fox over-air stations once a day? And surely the FCC can require the major networks to eliminate commercials for one half hour a day. If they then decide to end those broadcasts, the FCC should tell them it will take away the licenses of their O&O (owned and operated) stations for failure to use them 'in the public interest'. There is no reason for us to tolerate the intolerably bad news that the citizens of this superpower get, so bad that we cannot make good policy decisions because we have NO INFORMATION about most things most of the time.

Military Aid to Japan, but Not to Libya? The United States is using military personnel to help with humanitarian efforts in Japan, from ships offshore and a military base on land in northern Japan. Perhaps we should be glad that the military is engaged in positive behavior rather than destructive. But meanwhile, where is the no-fly zone over Libya? Humanitarian assistance can be provided by civilian authorities. A no-fly zone — authorized by the UN Security Council today — cannot. That is a military operation. Where is the brave U.S. military when it comes to military activity? Why is Obama such a pussy? If I were President (what a great idea!), U.S. warplanes would have been ordered to attack Qaddafi's air force and its bases the SECOND the UN resolution was approved.

As for U.S. efforts in Japan, is the Obama Administration providing more aid, more timely, to Japan than the Bush Administration did to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina?

Japan is not part of the United States. Should we really be doing things that the Japanese government and society should be doing for themselves? If Japan wants the kind of assistance from our Federal Government that only Americans are really entitled to, it should petition for annexation to the United States as several States of the Union. Then it will always have a backup to its own local governments in times of grave emergency, as of right, not as recipients of charity.

Bigotry Survives. At a time when nearly a majority of Americans approve of gay marriage, the NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade still bars openly gay marchers — and the indignation long ago dissipated, again, because of a lack of media coverage of the issue. The bigots who ban gay marchers pretend that the Parade is a "religious procession". Yeah, right. And all those black Baptists in marching bands are participating in a Catholic religious procession! Of course they are.

(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 4,439 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:32 PM

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