Circular logic

I am reeling over this weekend's "liberal media bias" conservative talking point BS. What a cynical load of crap. It sounds to me like nothing so much as that classic rant from the backseat of the station wagon: "Mom! Make her stop touching me!"

After years of making a fortune on the claim that there is such a thing as an MSM (mainstream media) monolith, and that it is evilly biased against such homespun values as truth, justice, and the version of the American Way best represented by a Leave it to Beaver set, the right wing twit 'verse is promoting a study that claims that only 9 percent of Americans trust the media, and that more people think the media has a liberal bias than a conservative one.

Looks like a big circle to me. Wasn't it the radical right that first claimed there was a liberal media conspiracy? Now they've convinced enough people to look over their shoulders for the looming shadow of the MSM, they promulgate a factoid from their echochamber. We lie, you believe us, we lie more outrageously, you get more outraged over nothing, we lie some more - cha-CHING! This co-opting of reality, which is just like getting to write history except it's subject is NOW, has so many obvious advantages. Let's see...

Start by making the juvenile claim that there's such a thing as journalistic objectivity, then pretending that we're the only ones that have it. Then you can wildly distort reality with a perfectly straight face. After that, you can call it patriotic to quash dissent. And if you're lucky, maybe you can find a country with oil reserves to invade to distract everyone from the fact that you've lost all sense of direction -- not to mention imagination -- and that all you can think to do is whine about what the other guy is doing.

I'm tired of being a bleeding heart liberal. Where are my demagogues? It sucks to belong to a demographic whose defining political characteristic is reasonableness and understanding. Thank god for the patron saints of irony: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Without them we'd all either be rocking in the corner or, more likely, looking in the corners for rocks to throw.

When the media is forced to give airtime and space to a lunatic fringe for whom such concepts as equal rights, the big bang and evolution of species are as threatening as Kim Jung Il, it sets up a dynamic that is ridiculously out of whack. Now centrists like Barak Obama and the Clintons represent the left, while the right tips farther and farther into insanity.

Because - and I blame A&E's campaign of a few years back on this front for selling this concept - conflict is drama. And we all know that these days, the cheapest, most tawdry drama sells like gangbusters. Jon & Kate Plus 8 anyone? Let's face it - the potential to sell advertising relies heavily - solely - on the ability to deliver eyeballs and auditory canals. And whoever gets the most body parts wins.

So these dangerous nutjobs make ludicrous claims, say anything that will get the bright lights to shine on them, in order to pump up the volume of the "he said, she said" cacophony. And the "liberal" media, being nothing if not painfully reasonable, not only pay an ounce of attention to such ridiculousness, they give that stance a level of play equal to that of REALITY.

And it goes something like this:

Rightwing Crackpot: The sky is orange.

Leftwing Media Elite: If you say so.

The media: In a showdown for the ages, the left and the right squared off today with differing opinions on the hue and coloration of our atmosphere.

What I wish would happen when the politically deluded issue statements: NOTHING! Why would anyone pay attention to that claptrap? I mean, if some stranger on the street told you that the sky was orange, would you give them a second thought? But if Rush Limbaugh says it, we not only have to report it, we have to at least muster up some academic to give an opposing view.

I guess all this could have been said much more concisely: the reasonable person always loses. But I've always been a sucker for the screed.

'm out.

Such a Jezebel

Last week my husband and I took our cat Jezebel to the SPCA to be put down. She was 20 years old and I always thought of her as my familiar in the sense that witches were supposed to have familiars back in the day. She and I both had a brown spot in one eye, which I decided marked us as kindred spirits.

She was kind of a bitch - we had her and her twin sister Jasmine for 14 years, and poor Jasmine was totally dominated. If you were petting Jasmine, Jezebel would come up behind her and just sit there. And Jasmine would get all "oh, yeah, I forgot - I don't deserve loving!" and run away. And Jezebel would attack Jasmine for no real reason, and hog their food and try to make sure she didn't get treats. We did our best to even things out, but it was a bit of a battle.

I still loved her though. She was very feisty and opinionated and bold. When Jasmine died six years ago, Jezebel came into her own. She was so happy to be an only cat. As someone with lots of siblings, I kind of identified. Of course, I am now very grateful for all my remaining siblings, but there were certainly times when I was a kid when you could have had them all, thank you very much. So that was sort of endearing to me.

So what is a memorial for a 20 year old cat doing on a blog about peeves? Well, when we were looking for new cats, we got shot down for some cats that we saw at PetSmart. Apparently, having a 20 year old cat is not a good enough reference for some rescue groups.

Yeah, our cat was out of code. We took Jasmine and Jezebel to the vet when they were younger, but they were house cats and our vet wasn't too worried about vaccinating them. And let's face it - they HATED the car and getting them into their carrier was a nightmare. So we did not have good vet references for the cats, and we got shot down.

My husband was furious ("how DARE those &*^$#%*^ say we're not good pet owners!" to paraphrase a few of the choicer phrases he spewed. I was mortified. I had been found to be inadequate by perfect strangers - a life-long nightmare of mine. It took me days to work through that one.

I was talking to a friend whose daughter works at a shelter about the ignominy of having been shot down for cats. She said that her daughter told her that people lie all the time on applications for pets. I had thought about doing that. If I said we only had a dog, we had fabulous vet references - I keep my dog legal. But no, I went with honesty. And that turned out to be a mistake. My friend said "the liars get the cats" and we laughed because that is so true! In life and most places - the liars get the cats.

So - we did not get the cats from the rescue group. They are no longer at PetSmart, so hopefully they found a nice home -- maybe even with honest people. We did manage to get some cats from the SPCA. (I tried to post a photo, but blogger was fighting me and I gave up. They are 1 year-old males - a brown and an orange tabby. Optimus Prime and Bumblebee - obviously named by some Transformer fans.)

I think the rescue group missed an opportunity for education. In the process of trying to adopt from them, I did learn that there is a law in my state requiring cats to have rabies vaccinations. I never knew that.

We really liked the cats they had. We even volunteered to be on cat-owner probation, but when the rescue group found out that we had taken Jezebel to the SPCA to be put down, they decided that we were irredeemable.

So - now we have two other cats, and have learned that cats need to be vaccinated for rabies to stay legal in PA. Also that the liars get the cats. And that some people think it's better to judge than to teach. All things to keep in mind as we transition into the next phase.

'm out.