SPORTS ON TV IS LESS AGGRAVATING THAN POLITICAL MEDIA

Having always preferred being a participant rather than a spectator, TV sports have not been my first choice for entertainment.  However, many things have effected a change in that view.  I'm not as physically energetic as I was thirty or forty years ago.  It is nice to keep part of my mind occupied while I am doing an otherwise  mindless task sitting down.  For years I have watched news channels and political talk shows. 

When I begin to not choose playing the piano to relax, it finally dawned that it is because the piano has gotten somewhat out of tune and is not pleasant to me.  Similarly, the media has also gone out of tune.  Instead of finding news about what is happening, we are fed opinions from biased people who pretend to have some authority to predict our economic and political future.  It feels as my piano does when it is out of tune so I turn to the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, or play around with some of the PBS channels. While I don't follow all of any sport, I tend to get hung up on the Baseball Playoffs, the Superbowl, the Masters and other tournaments for golf, though I really can't say that tennis, hockey and soccer have grabbed me yet.  However, I realize that watching athletes who have mastered their sport, surgeons who have mastered their operations, even cooks who have become skilled at food preparation and many blue collar pros doing their electrical work, plumbing, carpentry or whatever, is far more entertaining and educational than the 'balanced' panels that have people like  and too many others who make me cringe and channel surf.

If I believed that most published polls are accurate, I would try to find out the changes others have made in their video viewing.  Even the sitcoms have gone so commercial and politically correct.  I long for the energy that was raised when Normal Lear tackled sensitive subjects in the most tasteful ways.with shows like Maude or Archie Bunker (was that All in the Family?) 

ODDS AND TIDBITS: MORE ON ABUSE OF FREE SPEECH

Bill O'Reilly, Sexist and Proud of It Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Films at 3:00 PM on May 7, 2009. It will always puzzle me how so many people are unable to see through the lies and nastiness that people like Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, among others, get rich on while poor people stay poor and misinformed by listening to them. Limbaugh can enjoy his 24,000 sq foot house while he makes the common man's life more of a problem, having done so much to support the terrible choices the past Administration made in the last eight years.

Another One Bites the Dust: Joe the Plumber Is Quitting the GOP Posted by Staff, Huffington Post at 11:12 AM on May 7, 2009. Time Magazine is reporting - burying rather - the news that Joe the Plumber, also known as Samuel Wurzelbacher, is quitting the GOP.

The Secret Right-Wing Strategy on Health Care—Exposed! Posted by Bernie Horn at 10:13 AM on May 7, 2009. If conservatives make the debate about what is good and bad in the Obama plan - they will win.

While Cheney goes around bragging that we have not had a terrorist attack since he and Bush used torture and kept us all safe. Well, I for onr, do not consider us safe at all. We may have not been attacked from the outside, but the dangers within the country still persist. When a sports announcer talks about about shooting Nancy Pelosi twice and strangling Harry Reid and Osama ben Laden, Olbermann's term 'abuse of free speech' says it all for me.

ONE SIZE FITS ALL DOES NOT DEFINE PEOPLE

There are many things in life to distress me. Among the worst are the pessimists, the paranoid, the slippery-slopers, those who can only see black and white, blamers but not responsibility takers, and people who think if one apple is rotten, it follows that all apples are rotten. When the Legislators and Media hot shots keep talking about all the people at AIG caused the destruction of the behemoth company, so none of them should get a promised bonus (even those who had nothing to do with trading and for whom the bonus serves in lieu of adequate salary). It should then follow that all Representatives and Senators are immoral, crooks, liars, greedy self-serving unconscionable people and worse, because the House and Senate have at times had some of all the above.

Why then does the media stir the pot of mob rage and fail to try to find out that the one-size-fits-all judgment is inaccurate? Even those in Media whom I trust the most, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have disappointed me because they have allowed themselves to be swept up by the angry, ill-informed mob. Should we then equate them, as Media people, and say they are ultra-conservatives like Fox News staff? Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are all entertainers who make comment on the news. Does anyone consider them all alike? I would hardly think an intelligent person could do this. Why then has the media been able to whip up a feeding frenzy that is endangering the careers, reputation, and safety of the many loyal employees within AIG, Bank of America, and some of the other places currently where guilty, as well as innocent, are being thrown under the bus?

The Media, as well as the Legislators have the power to search out the truth, analyze the total situation before presenting it to the people. Instead, they are revving up the populace for repeat acts like the massacre at Columbine, the Spanish Inquisition, or the French Revolution with its guillotines. The media ought to hire people who can work on curing the hopelessness that exists in so many who are eager to displace their anger onto innocents; too ready to believe if you work with bad executives you must also be evil. President Obama, in my opinion, did the right thing to go on the Tonight Show and reach 200,000 million people rather than the pitiful few he might reach being on the often-biased political shows, when they are attempting to be fair and balanced but end up giving credence to ridiculous, near-thought0-disordered zealots. The Chariot of Hope on which Obama rode into office is fast being eroded by the Media and others. People are too impatient. The time it will take to fix the mess we are in from the Bush Administration should be very clear to anyone whose eyes and mind are open.

Wikipedia: "Patience (pā-shəns) is the state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset; or exhibiting forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties. It is also used to refer to the character trait of being steadfast."

What happened to the patience of the American people who were able to wait out the Cheney/Bush tenure to be able to vote for some people who might make a difference and begin to put into place a cure for our ailing country? Where are the voices of ideas and hope which are not to be found in Media circles?

WHY DO THEY ALL TOPPLE OFF THEIR PEDESTALS?

Christopher Hitchens has a mind I have admired for a long time, primarily after reading his book, God is Not Great. He is a brilliant historian and writes well (since he agrees with me) on God. However, after seeing him on TV panels I have to confess his personality is as fetching as Ann Coulter's. When I heard that he is a neocon/warmonger, he immediately toppled off the pedestal.

He is not, by far, the first to take a dive. Some people talk well and make interesting points. This is wonderful to help the rest of us think out of our box. He is provocative and his expressed thoughts really push the envelope. However, it was surprising to hear that this pro-Iraq war supporter has taken this length of time to change a view that the majority of Americans have held for a long time. It took him only 11 seconds to realize that waterboarding is torture. Perhaps he should experience more directly before he forms such authoritative opinions about which he so pedantically lectures on panels.

An article by Alexander Linklater, having interviewed him, writes more accurately than anything I could write. Now I understand why I unconsciously related him to Ann Coulter. Both of them like to stir up controversy and shock. While Coulter is petty, nasty, and even more insulting than he...it seems he is taking lessons from her by such comments (to quote Linklater) as: "His aptitude for the iconoclastic flourish—describing Princess Diana and Mother Teresa at their deaths, for example, as, respectively, "a simpering Bambi narcissist and a thieving fanatical Albanian dwarf"—sustained his currency as an intellectual shock troop of the left."