With Sarah Palin calling on Obama to declare war on Iran (or as she says "Playing the war card"), I think it is time to do some preventive maintenance on our mental media filters. So I have provided a diagram, and I will walk you through it step by step. The various parts of the diagram have letters to make it easy to see what I am talking about.I am using an analogy of a typical oil filter, so motorcyclists and auto mechanics will be able to understand the basic idea. You can enlarge the picture by clicking on it.
A. This is a classical dupe. Information is coming in to the ear through a media funnel (D) , and it is coupled to a bullshit filter (E). The bullshit filter can get clogged, and can eventually lead to a total brain meltdown, i.e. the dupe first becoming fearful, then filled with rage, then voting for war.
A properly functioning filter is shown at F. But when the filter is clogged, a pressure relief valve opens, bypassing the filter element and feeding bullshit directly to the brain. This failsafe mode is shown in G. If the valve didn't open to bypass the clogged filter, their brain would melt down immediately for lack of oil. The bypass valve is there to give you time to replace the clogged filter element with a new one, but it should be done without delay.
It pays to keep the filter clean all the time, normally replacing it once a year. However if you have watched over 24 hours of Fox News (B) you will need a new filter immediately, as the element will be clogged and running in bypass mode.
Hopefully this little public service announcement will help you avoid becoming a dupe, and the more people I can help, the better. Otherwise the future is going to look pretty bleak.
So how do we keep a nice clean filter from getting clogged again within a week? In the USA, stop watching Fox News, in Canada stop reading MacLean's, and the National Post. Start reading this blog under the subject heading "Propaganda" or "Politics". If you are heavily into a religion that features a pro-gun Jesus, you can try reading my blogs under the topic label of "Religion". That should make your filter last at least another year.
The picture was a montage I photoshopped. The dupe is played by an ex-high school history teacher/sex offender, who had the expression I was trying to capture.
There was an old saw, back in the Henry Luce days: 'LIFE is the magazine for people who can't read; Time is for people who can't think.'
ReplyDeleteI fear that FOX News can now claim both those distinctions; i.e. people who can neither read nor think.
A recent poll released by Public Policy Polling (PPP) indicates that Fox News is the 'most trusted' television news operation.
Now, I find this interesting because PPP stands accused of being a Democratic Party shill. I'm a little confused as to how the PPP findings in this poll operate to aid the Democratic Party.
Nevertheless, the poll reports that 49% of Americans say they trust Fox News. Not surprisingly, 74% of Republicans trust Fox News, but only 30% of Democrats.
PPP concludes that, rather than placing their trust in 'the most neutral and unbiased conveyors of news, Americans are now 'turning more toward the outlets that tell them what they want to hear.
But ... 'what they want to hear' certainly need not necessarily be true.
Media Matters for America filters Fox News bullshit for those who are interested. But, I suspect, most Fox News viewers are not interested in 'the truth' as much as having their prejudices reinforced.
But, then, with the economic mess we're in at the moment, I suppose that it's simply beyond the means of many voters to have their bullshit filters serviced.