You guessed it.  Here’s today’s report from Think Progress:

Both MSNBC and Fox News devoted more coverage to Anna Nicole Smith — three weeks after her death on Feb. 8 — than they did to the multiple developments involving the neglect and deplorable conditions at Walter Reed military hospital.

The most lop-sided coverage by far was aired by Fox News, which featured only 10 references to Walter Reed compared to 121 of Anna Nicole — roughly 12 times the coverage. MSNBC featured 84 references to Walter Reed and 96 to Anna Nicole.

For the full report, see here.

I think I want to learn how to make a website (suggestions welcome).

The issue raised by the post immediately above seems to be whether to stop trying in the face of intimidating odds. I say don’t stop trying. Here’s my prejudice: Get off the couch!  Write those letters and articles to politicians and the media, attend marches and rallies, have those difficult talks with friends who don’t get it, get involved with your government, stay informed and try to make a difference.

That said, Cleptomanx makes a good point regarding the limits of the human attention span and its consequences.   We are awash in so much stuff (much of it worthy of our attention) that it paralyzes us.    Who ever said that we have the capacity to care in all important regards?   We clearly don’t.

Luckily, there are a lot of us.  If more of us would try, we would have more people incrementally making the country run functionally and fewer people messing things up.  

Issues can be complex. I’m in an aldermanic ward with an open seat that is hotly contested for the coming March election. The 3 most visible candidates are hard to tell apart. Well, one is cutest, ethnicity is distributed, one is richest, one has the most experience, one is youngest and energetic, one has done nothing anyone can nail him for,…
Issues? As with the high profile federal offices, you can’t actually tell what a candidate will do until they are in the seat. You have to elect on promises. Yet the published promises are generally either vague or have gaping escape clauses.

Let’s just wonder about who killed J.R. I mean Ms. Smith.

Yeah! That’s right! One person can save the world! Look at Martin Luther King jr. or Mahatma Ghandi, etc, etc. God, what total obliviousness to think that we live in the same world now as those people did then.

Before I go, let me shed a little light on why these examples don’t apply anymore. You see, during those days coverage of stories was practically non-existent and people had nothing else to do, but to get behind a movement. Rosa Parks was a spark that led to a wonderful blaze of civil rebellion, but that just can’t happen in the America of today.

Why? You ask… because we all have a voice! Does that concept seem a bit strange to you? Like, “If we all have a voice in this society, then we should be able to do more than those before us.” WRONG! We live in a world drowning in the uninspired and ignorant opinions of the masses. There are any number of “movements”, “causes” or “good deeds” to get behind which means that there is no longer the ability to get behind one clear and substantial cause.

“Let’s save the environment!” (Cut into 1200 different groups with their own strategy for handling the issue)

“Let’s save children in 3rd world countries!” (Cut into 1200 different groups with their own strategy for handling the issue)

“Let’s do something about the War!” (Cut into 1200 different groups with their own strategy for handling the issue)

“Let’s do something about South American drug cartels or Conflict Diamonds or Fast Food companies getting us fat or TV rotting our minds or… WHATEVER!

For any number of issues there’s a PETA or AA or Weight Watchers or The “Bodunk” Anorexic girls with too much money Society.

Let’s put it this way. Let us for a moment just say that we knew for a fact that the Christian God was actually the one true God and everything was actually as it is in the Bible (Ten Commandments and such). If these things were held as truly self-evident then the greatest trick that the Devil ever pulled was the proliferation of all the 100s (if not 1000’s) of other religious beliefs in the world.

It’s the old lawyer trick… when a big firm is battling a smaller one in a case, don’t withold information, just bury the competition in paper then hide the truth somewhere inside.

You guys may think you know what issues should be discussed and which ones should be ignored, but I guarantee for every ONE of you there are a MILLION others who ignore your issues and focus on others. We are drowning in the opinions of the MAJORITY, which is why the MAJORITY will be followed because it’s too much work and hassle to dig through all the paperwork to find the issues that you guys care about.

When America comes home from work, they don’t go digging for a blog like this, they click on the tube and listen to the latest news stories. Sorry, grumpy, but you’re just going to have to stay gumpy because this isn’t your grand-daddy’s world anymore. We’ve got too much to deal with without also dealing with your holier-than-though crap!

Anyway, I’m done dealing with you idealistic social deficients. Do yourselves a favor and take a sledgehammer to your noggins so you can come back down to earth and actually live in the reality that the rest of us live in.

Good bye and Good Luck to you all, because I’m sure that two seconds after I make this post it’s just going to be ignored as, “some idiot’s rantings…” because the obvious always seems to slip off your backs like water off a duck. My arms are tired from dumping the water, maybe someone else will be able to crack those nutshell brains of yours.

Writing a “ballsy” story requires neither terribly great writing skill nor deep investigative resources; it merely requires asking challenging questions that should be screamingly obvious to anyone. Questions such as: when Bush claims (as he has done for nearly six years now) that he is “winning the war on terrorism” or “making progress in Iraq,” or that “Americans are safer now than they were before 9/11,” by what metric is he measuring his performance? Why should anyone believe his apparently baseless, yet obviously self-serving, claims? Good journalism isn’t necessarily about getting embedded in a front-line military unit and taking the risk of having your head blown off. It’s just about saying what needs to be said.

Cleptomanx continues: “I can hate the man [Bush], but I still have to follow his decrees because that’s what the Majority of the country wanted. That’s it!”

No, that’s emphatically NOT it. The Majority is very often wrong (especially when it is guided by an incompetent, self-serving fool like George Bush) but it will rarely change if left to itself. That’s why it is up to individuals to take a stand against a misguided Majority. That’s what Rosa Parks did when she opposed segregation on a public bus. It’s what Nelson Mandela did when he opposed aparthied in South Africa and spent 27 years in prison. Heck, it’s what the Founding Fathers of America did when they signed the Declaration of Independence.

Indeed, why do you think the Founding Fathers created three co-equal branches of government, instead of just letting Majority rule decide everything? It’s because they knew that a Majority can be just as tyrannical, just as bigoted, and just as evil as can a lone dictator. If you are on a burning ship and The Majority says everything is fine, do you take action to try to save lives (even if just your own), or do you just sit still until you burn up with everyone else, just because The Majority says so?

Wake up and smell the coffee, Cleptomanx: the only lemmings in a society are the ones who blindly follow “the Majority.”

What you say may indeed be true (we are just wasting our time), but that does not make it wrong to continue to publicize the war. Not many people saw Fahrenheit 9/11, and further, most Americans consider Moore an extremist. Not many people know what is happening in Iraq.

What if we (America) really did want to stop the war…it doesn’t look like the President would allow us to stop it anyway. Practice time is over, the story needs to be told!!!

Look… everything you’ve said and all those articles said and anything that news folk are currently saying in opposition to the war was already stated much more eloquently and forcefully by Michael Moore in 2004 in his documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11″.

Everything said after this movie has been both redundant and ineffectual. If this movie wasn’t able to fuel the masses to stop being “bumps on logs and take action”, then nothing will and honestly nothing should.

The movie layed everything out beautifully and the public enjoyed it, but didn’t do anything about it, so we deserve to be lemmings falling all the cliff. Majority rules in Democracy and the majority of our fellow Americans may say they care, but they obviously don’t. So, I defer to the masses and choose not to care as well. Maybe it will eventually change when the american soldier death toll gets up to 4 or 5000, I really don’t know.

Hell, if you guys want more reporters to do more editorials beating a dead horse, that’s fine. But, I voted against Bush twice and got upset twice, but afterwards I didn’t pick up a sign advocating Bush’s abdication of the thrown because I’m an American and am also governed by Democracy. I can hate the man, but I still have to follow his decrees because that’s what the Majority of the country wanted. That’s it! So, stop being whiny bitches thinking that another report on the war is going to change something and just relax and read about a dumb, wannabe starlet’s death.

http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=395
http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=1039
http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=976
http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=914
http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=836

Sometimes things have to be said often enough to get people who marquerade as bumps on logs to wake up and take action. It’s not redundant until that happens.