Fake News II

Nobody asked but …

I’ve always wondered why there were op/ed pages in “news”-papers.  Opinion is frequently advanced as an effort to control the news.  There is a great struggle going on in the world to control the news, to dominate communication.

It is an irony that a man, a man without a lot of substance, a man made by the media, is now POTUS.  It is a further irony that we are at this pass because the media manipulated the man, while the man manipulated the media.  Both sets of manipulation continue.

When I was a kid, my elders would caution me about town fools and village idiots, saying “do not pay attention to them, it only encourages them.”  Sometimes, I would be admonished with a folk rhyme:

Foolish names and foolish faces, always appear in public places.

Just look at any public activity.  Are there not fools aplenty, and are not there also a gaggle of “journalists,” perched like vultures, to collect memos of the worst behavior, to present the extremes as commonalities?

And perhaps the worst actors are those of us who seek comfort from the manipulators rather than demanding real news.

— Kilgore Forelle