Thursday, May 26, 2005

Last Week’s News About Manufactured News

I know that most of the country has already moved on from the conundrum over riots and deaths in the Muslim world as the result of Newsweek’s made up story about Koran desecration at Guantanamo Bay. But I wanted to take notice of award winning author and journalist Orson Scott Card’s angry but insightful article on the subject.

Card, a Democrat, rips the MSM for the elitist anti-American sentiment that runs rampant through its ranks. His remarks swell to cover all such elitists. Card juxtaposes Smartland – a state of mind inhabited by elitists – with Heartland – the state of mind where most of middle America dwells. Though he is talking about a state of mind, his Smartland-Heartland seems to closely align with the (mostly red) red/blue map showing how the US voted in the last general election by county.

Card also takes the politically incorrect position of taking aim at the Muslim rioters. He rightly demonstrates that Muslim extremists have become the monsters that many Christians were during the crusades.

Card concludes with a forbidding warning about what life would be like if the Smartlanders got control of our government. Hey, I think we’re largely already there.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's no evidence that it is a made up story.
There does seem to be increasing evident that the violence it sparked was blown out of proportion by certain new outlets that recieve their highest ratings in the "Smartlands."
Will you call them on their BS as well?

Scott Hinrichs said...

OK, so the story wasn't totally made up, but the point is that we have a major MSM outlet failing to exercise the journalistic excellence (at multiple levels) that is required of a high school newspaper. As far as other Smartland outlets over-capitalizing on the fallout from this mess, I heard former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY) on the radio the other day talk about how willing these outlets are to turn on one of their own. He called them "jackals." Well said.