The Oil Drum

This is an e-mail I sent out regarding my first Beck expereience a couple of days earlier:

"I don't watch (consume) much MSM anymore.  But last night, oddly, the satellite was 'out' for the two channels I do watch - FSTV and LINK - while it was working for others, including PBS and CNN. (big brother, anyone?)   So I watched the end of the PBS news talking about the assassination of Zarqawi.  Nothing illuminating.  But then there was a several-minute self promo for PBS.  Images of women, children, college students, earnest young men... soothing music in the background...text showing poll data to the effect of PBS/Newshour being "the most trusted source of news".  I was almost lulled to sleep, it was working, I was being indoctrinated, trust us... trust us... it'll all be OK... trust us...  It was just too creepy.  I honestly felt like I was being set up for THE BIG LIE.

Then I switched over to CNN Headline news - just for a peek, just for a moment.  There was a guy on - Glenn Beck - with what I can only describe as a Letterman-like take on the news.  He asked rhetorically if Americans celebrating the death of Zarqawi were the same as Palestinians dancing in the streets on 9/11 (which assumes that any really did that - unstaged, that is).  He proceeded to answer his question by stating unequivocally that no, it's not the same, because "we just got a real bad guy'.  He made mocking comments about Zarqawi not being greeted in heaven by virgins but rather being faced with some demeaning fate that was meant to be humor but that was just disgusting and that I've blocked out. Then - and I really can't believe this - he cut to his lackey on the streets of Manhattan (again, this was CNN at 7 pm and seemed really, really, like the most distasteful of late night 'comedy')  who had a pork-pie or bacon cake to mock Islam with lettering along the lines of "Happy Zarqawi Death Day".  He was to go do some "man in the street interviews".  I'd seen (way more than) enough, and turned it off at that point.

My point is that this is what's now accepted by this society.  Celebrating death.  Mocking religion. (not that I'm any fan of religion).  But juvenile, immature, sophomoric, imbecilic - we don't even have words ( or at least I don't know them) for the depths to which we have sunk.  And to quote James Earl Jones - This is CNN.  Pardon my language but WTF is going on that we accept this!?!  We pay for it.  We condone it.  We support it (if only by our silence).  We're making enemies and things worse and fools of ourselves every time our culture opens its collective mouth.  Please excuse me while I go throw up."