Nontroversy!
February 7th, 2016
In the event that you've at all watched the news in this era of hyperpartisan reporting, though I use the word reporting with a grain of salt and in an earnest attempt to avoid making air quotes, you're all too familiar with this phenomenon. What I'm going on about, here, is the inflation of a non-event into a top-of-the-hour news story, with enough 'political analysis' to make your head spin.
I'm sure you can think of at least a dozen such instances over the last decade or so. Instances such as the Obama Flag Lapel Pin scrum, or the Obama birther imbroglio, or the first lady's Healthy School Food ruckus, or even the Starbucks red cup ridiculousness. And let us never, ever forget EMAILGHAZICARE. Not that the right wing media will let you.
These, and hundreds more, are nontroversies. It's what happens when you get a group of people so mesmerized by the snake oil that the so-called conservative movement is selling, that they'll see conspiracies and controversies everywhere they look. But then, what do you expect of a group of nincompoops that was founded on the backwards notion of white supremacy?
And this, this is what I have to listen to at work on a daily basis, every time I brave the upstairs break room. Nonstop poutrage about nontroversies abound, and yet somehow I'd be the bad guy if I called them on any of their beeswax. Yes, beeswax. I'd use harsher language, but like I said, I'm trying really, really hard to avoid using profanity of late. Even if only to stop leaning on but a few descriptors.
If these ridiculous notions were simply the harmless ravings of a dying breed of racists, that would be one thing. But the American media is fully complicit in giving so much airtime to this garbage. Since Fox 'News' gets such high ratings, the other networks feel that they have no choice but to race to the bottom in order to get ahold of those almighty advertising dollars.
And this nutbaggery is just going to keep going on until these idiot fascists get a whole lot more people killed. Yes, more. If you don't think that this incendiary stupidity hasn't already gotten thousands of Americans killed, you're not paying attention. And if you don't think hundreds of thousands of others around the world have suffered as a result of our right wing douchebags, you're living in a fantasy world.