Anything for a buck

I made the mistake of perusing the local paper tonight (and it was the "good" one too) only to see the letters section still debating Michael Moore's idiotic 9-11 movie. For heavens sake, why? The guy who liked the film had a paranoid list of U.S. Atrocities and falsehoods that was missing only the fake moon landings and the UFO parts being kept in Roswell. The letter writer in question also knew - for a fact - that the U.S. sunk it's own ship, the USS Maine, as a pretext to start the Spanish American war. They also killed only black sailors in doing so. Don't ask how that's possible, or how the nutjobs come to know these things. They just know, y'know? Moore's questioning of the president is not a bad thing. But his line of questioning is so weak it must be dismissed. If you can call the president a fascist in the media and not go to jail, you are rather obviously wrong on that point. Why is no one asking questions about U.S. overreach? About what might happen to Iran in a second Bush term? About what might happen to Taiwan (for example) if the U.S. is seen worldwide as being stretched to the limit by being in Iraq and Afghanistan? There are good questions to be asked. To return to my point, why do such stupid, ranting accusations continue to get printed? Because very few people in the media actually subscribe to the notion that they have a duty to tell the truth. They see the truth as being irrelevant to what they do. What they do, really, is sell papers. And they will do anything, print anything, say anything, to achieve that end. Under the old paradigm, media outlets sold their credibility, and they had to be wary of what they published lest they sully that reputation. Letters for and against Moore get people riled up. The sell ads. The merit of Moore's attack on the presided is utterly beside the point. Record companies that sell profane, sexist crap to kids are doing the same thing. So are women's magazine's that scream "you need to buy this" and fill their with sludge extolling the virtues of the products advertised in their pages. There's a word for people who'll do anything for a buck... Maybe it's not all their fault. Maybe they were just raised that way. Brainwashing 101 :: AcademicBias.com