I want my OTV

Here's a flash for you: politicians like to spin the news.

This is the lesson of a recent report that when President Obama shot hoops with the national champion UConn Women's B-ball team that pool reporters were not permitted to film it and, instead, the White House produced a video on the event themselves and gave it to the news outlets. The White House press corps cried foul. "They're not letting us play" seemed to be the refrain. They whined about how they weren't being allowed to do their jobs and fretted that if all news was filtered through the White House there's be no actual news anymore. Well, maybe they have a point, but the White House Press Corps already gets filtered news from the White House. That's what the press secretary does: filter the news and spin it for the press corps. They can accept it or challenge it but they are not getting unadulterated news by any stretch of the imagination. Nonetheless I understand their frustration. They are supposed to be the ones taking the photos of these events--at least that's how its always been. I'm not too upset about this because it was just a basket ball game, and all of this stuff is carefully staged and choreographed to put the president in a good light. My suspicion is that they just didn't want any camera's around to see him get beat by a bunch of girls.

But here is what strikes me of the coverage on ABC's web site: every time I read one of these stories and then read the comments from people on them I despair for the future of America. These people are insane. I know they are not a random sampling, that the people who read these stories are usually biased, and the people who b other to write about them are ignorant morons and conspiracy freaks. But still it amazes me that people beleive this shit:

This is the first step of Obama's dictatorial take over of America.

It's a little trick he learned from his comrade Hugo Chavez.

How can the White House want to spin the news when they've already got a love fest from every news source but Fox?

Next stop concentration camps for Christians.

And on and on and on. My God! How can people believe this drivel? I suppose it's the same as the nuts (my apologies to Mr. Hicks) who believe that Bush and Cheney were responsible for 9/11.

I get it, I guess. The right is panicking because it is suddenly irrelevant. The American people have left them and they, firm in their belief that they are patriots and they are right, have to point out to every body what is REALLY GOING ON!!! Like many on the left, who have been in the wilderness since 1980, they have to believe that their is some sinister cabal of forces deceiving the world that is behind all of this because the alternative--that the American People have moved on and left them behind--is just too unfathomable. But the polls show that all this so called socialism is what the people want, and history as shown that Reganomics was a failure and is a failure. But they can't deal with that, so they have to say that Obama is in league with either the communists or Al Queda. In fact, most of them believe he is in league with both, demonstrating their complete ignorance (one is fundamentally atheist, the other religiously fundamentalist, they cannot be allied). I felt this way most of my life. I came of voting age two years after Regan was elected, and America had definitely left me and mine behind.

But they are hypocrites. The right, I mean. They chastised the left for not supporting President Bush and called us traitors for protesting against him, and now they are being far worse. I know there are good people on the right, but the voices I hear are a bunch of hypocritical, bigoted, loud mouthed bullies who don't care a damn about America, just about being in power. And now they are out of power.

I've got a message for them: get used to it.