All the news that's fit to contrive

Every day, I browse the news several times on various sites and, more often than not, cringe helplessly at what I read. "Journalistic truth" is some subset of reality to which I do not hold the decoder ring. What makes me most angry is that the perspectives of major news agencies and media outlets (even those said to be liberal and leftist) perpetuate an egotistical, xenophobic and ignorant approach to both world affairs and domestic issues. The US is not alone in this despicable behavior - it is almost universal.

When I found this rant by Maximilian Forte on Open Anthropology, I was thrilled that someone else notices what I see. I'm sick of being called a Euroliberal when I'm Stateside because I criticize the way that Israel, Palestine, Muslims and America are portrayed on the nightly news.

This deserves to be quoted:

So THE WORLD trembles with love at the mere mention of “Obama,” while all those who oppose Israeli genocide and demonstrated against it were “Muslims.” In the meantime, the only real threat to peace is Hamas, and its bottle rockets. Palestinians, not being white, European, privileged allies of the U.S., unlike Israelis, are less than human, and less than important, except as “obstacles.” All that Israel ever does is respond and get provoked, it never initiates — a pristine white victim of irrational brown people, you can almost hear its maiden-like screams across the white Atlantic.

With “reporting” like this, the media will keep anthropologists in business for a long time to come, as we try to clean up the damage they cause in creating a deranged culture of war and hatred. And it is hatred, a subtle, insidious, and racist hatred that motivates and encourages AP to write the kind of articles about Gaza as it has.

In the meantime, as the message sinks in deeper that anyone who protests is a Muslim, or Jew hater, is it a wonder that some militaristic knuckleheads appear on this blog to insinuate that the author is somehow pro-Taliban, Taliban-leaning, or a Taliban sympathizer? It is a world of bleak ignorance, and self-destructive war lust that these people live in. If only they could live on another planet, and leave this one to humanity."

I agree wholeheartedly; except that perhaps it is humanity that should be left to this spent planet, while the rest of us move along to somewhere with less smog.



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