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Black and white and read all over
I will be the first to admit I've got a real fetish for semantic ironies, especially the kinds that are forever present during these strange times we live in. Escalators in gyms, reality shows on television, invasions that claim to promote freedom, "healthy" potato chips that warn their consumers of "anal leakage," the official reduction of civil liberties which profess to maintain liberty, the constant barrage of diet advertisements which, without fail, note that the examples shown as success stories are actually "extremely atypical." This list goes on indefinitely, but certainly some of my favorites are ironies concerning the "news." It seems "news" is a shady business these days, because I can read newspapers and I can watch news programs and get totally different information about the same event, all the while noting that all of them claim to be "fair and unbiased." Who do I trust? Who do I look to for the truth? Where are the facts actually hiding? Or is the reason The Matrix was so popular because that's what's really going on? Keanu, how could I have been so blind? Well, anyway, for the time being, it's a safe bet to quit relying solely on other people's reportage of "facts" and instead rely solely on other people's opinions for your intake of external reality. See, opinions are fantastic creatures because they don't have to pretend to be based on "facts" if they don't feel like it. They can wander ubiquitously through the downtown park, pointing at the homeless people sleeping under the trees as dawn approaches. They can stream through the author's consciousness, taking note of matters of no importance but perhaps some entertainment value, with the sentence at the end noticeably trailing off into the echoing mist with the proverbial dot dot dot. But, the greatest thing about opinions is that they can be "wrong," but that's okay, because they're not necessarily trying to be "right." They just want to make you think. "Hey guys, I'm writing this down because I want to, not because I'm pretending it matters or that it's necessarily true. Just don't blame me when you start forming your own opinions ... " Now, mind you, even in opinion, it's good to have a strong base of information on which to stand. At least, if you want people to care about what you have to say, you need to give them a reason to want to care. So, if you're talking about something specific, it's good to have reliable data. Something to consider, huh, Rupert? So, the point: This column will be a weekly opportunity to use an "opinion" to analyze some piece of "news" that happens to spark some interest. It will be a weekly opportunity to point out fallacies or discrepancies of the news media or, perhaps, maybe even an opportunity to point out an exceptional piece of news or two that actually have a logical point and conclusion. For better or for worse, and for reasons I don't pretend to understand, today's news is mostly full of sorrow and disaster, deceit, propaganda and situations people can't do anything about. In my opinion, tomorrow must be better. |
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