Quid Pro Quo Vadis

Politics.

God, I hate politics.

Politicians, however, don't disturb me as much as their constituents, especially those who believe that the boisterous expression of their extremist views somehow legitimizes their position on their chosen end of the political spectrum.

What disturbs me even more is the widely accepted constituent caste system that elevates the more notorious of polarized pundits, celebrities, entertainers, newscasters, and any other political novice with enough clout to afford camera time, to the same status as our elected officials. These Alpha Constituents' ignorant tirades are deemed newsworthy and are touted as the voice of the people.

Theirs is not my voice.

I am fed up with feigned neutrality in the press; that bold-faced lie that airing the voices of either extreme denotes an unbiased stance. Their theatrical farces are nothing more than a parade of spin-doctor stereotypes, political pitch men trying to sell entire anthologies of half truths to the viewing audience at home.

Every aired voice, no matter how extreme, is granted credence by mere acknowledgment.

I remember a time when the news was news; when it was a public service offering untainted information for the enlightenment of the viewer; when journalists cared more about asking the right questions than leading the audience to predetermined conclusions scripted by whatever organization garners the network the most advertising revenue; when anchors were men and women of unquestionable composure, discipline, and poise.

What I find cynically hilarious is that the media reinforces its posture by self-parody and manipulative self-deprecation, not unlike an attention-seeking adolescent, and the people allow themselves to be taken in by it, hook, line, and sinker.

This is the part where my wife would ask me what my point might be.

I'm appalled.

A Fox News correspondent, an euphemism for accessory after the fact, dared suggest, mere hours after their safe return to the States, that the two recently recovered American journalists who had been arrested, tried, and sentenced in North Korea, should have been made to pay the price for their crimes there, and should not have been recovered, because the concessions they assumed that the current administration had made with Kim Jong-Il in order to secure their release were unacceptable, and amounted to placating terrorists.

Quid pro quo. It's not English so it must be un-American.

The same media that superficially advocates tolerance is preaching a gospel of uncompromising isolationism. Any flexibility in our dealings with other nations is regarded as a capitulation of values, a surrender to the enemy, whoever that may be this week. Any shift away from our failed system of elitist exclusionary capitalism, and we are no better than those pesky socialist commies we have yet to stop hating, even though we somehow forgot why we started in the first place. Any suggestion that health care should be a right not a privilege and the media's sucklings, even the uninsured, cry foul.

It never ceases to astound me how willingly ignorant our people can be; how they can be so lazy that they won't even bother forming an educated opinion of their own; how they allow themselves to become so addicted to mindless entertainment that the news itself has to play out like a classless reality show just to keep their attention; how, despite the unfettered accessibility to the global information grid and a near instantaneous connection with almost anyone on the planet, they still consider themselves to be the only humans who matter, and are morbidly apathetic about anything happening more than ten miles away from their homes.

America has become decidedly un-American.