The mainstreaming of crazy

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From Phil Plait:
Perhaps you’ve heard all the uproar about President Obama’s speech today. A group of folks is very concerned about a speech of his today, because he’s talking to schoolkids. And hey, didn’t Hitler talk to kids…?

That’s about as good as their logic gets. I wish I were kidding. Read the transcript of Obama’s speech, and see if you can find the alarming parts where he calls for the formation of Brown Shirts, or the extermination of a group of humans, or the invasion of Poland. I must have missed it.
<snip>
Of course, there is a lunatic fringe in this country who will go ballistic about Obama no matter what he does; these are the ones saying the speech is indoctrinating children into accepting his socialist health care plan that will mutilate puppies and convert our elderly into Soylent Green. These people may be rabid racists, or simply mentally unbalanced, but we know for a rock solid fact that these people are utterly, completely wrong. Whatever you want to call them, it’s clear they are so far from the norm of the American people that they can’t even see the horizon from where they are. Simply reading the speech transcript shows that simply and clearly. But it’s also a fact that this subset of the population will always be with us.

But you know what? That doesn’t mean we have to give them a voice in the mainstream press. They have a right to their speech, but that doesn’t obligate anyone to pay attention to them, especially on the platform of national TV. I’m looking you right in the eye, Fox News. Not only do you give these people — factually wrong and provably so — a voice, you reiterate their comments and use your own voice to back them up.
<snip>
If I sound angry, then, yeah, I am. I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.

It’s killing any real debate in this country, where the system of government depends utterly on a well-informed public. When rampant idiocy is presented as reasonable discourse without any rebuttal, then we all suffer.

What we need are government officials not afraid to talk like Barney Frank did to such a voice of lunacy. To reiterate, crackpots have a right to air their diseased notions, just as we have the right to tear those ideas to shred when they do. More than that, the news media have a responsibility to do so.
<snip>
I would add that we all need to not be afraid to speak out against nonsense and to call out willful ignorance when we see it.

Never give up. Never back down against evil. Never tire, because this struggle will be eternal.

Remember:



http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/09/08/the-mainstreaming-of-evil/

Word!!

[Are_grits_groceries]

1. media..... responsibility

Never the twain shall meet anymore.