But...It's TRUE!!

When Bill O'Reilly, responding to a stated fact, exclaimed,

"But it's TRUE!" to Frank Luntz, on last night's show, Luntz replied,

"Yes it is, but it doesn't MATTER that it's true; what MATTERS is PERCEPTION."

And that should end today's post. Purely and simply, like it or not, the truth has long been cast aside, thrown under the bus and disregarded as little more than an occasional annoyance by political strategists and main stream media. The evidence is overwhelmingly clear and incontrovertible. Today as I trolled cable news [kicking and screaming--it is painful to watch and fruitless for information gathering purposes unless the info I want concerns which network's telling which lies and for whom] for Bailout info, I was, as usual, appalled as I saw channel after channel give voice to some of the biggest whoppers I have seen--and that's saying something!

For example, I SAW John McCain and even, god help me, George Bush stating that Fannie and Freddie needed oversight to prevent an economic disaster in 2005; youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM , youtube.com/watch?v=_ROOriYvJM4 I SAW Barney Frank, Democrat par excellence, at the same time, state unequivocably that NOTHING should be done about it, youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH I SAW the Democratic Black Caucus speaking strongly against any kind of oversight or preventive measures youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs . And I SAW Bill Clinton saying that these Democrats refused all Republican attempts to reel these agencies in. And yet, today, I heard main stream media taking every opportunity to blame it all on the Republicans. Now, let me be the first to remind you that I am a life long Democrat of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt persuasion. Never mind "Reagan Democrat"--for the life of me I still cannot begin to fathom just exactly what that is; having survived the Reagan era [just barely], I can tell you that I never knew a Democrat who supported him or his cockamamy ideas. But I do know what FDR stood for, and what, as the head of the Democratic Party, he tried in instill in that party, and the miracles he accomplished getting our country back on track after the crash of '29. He was supremely unpopular with conservatives, beloved by many and served an incredible three terms as POTUS. And he accomplished all of it without, Joe Biden's assertions notwithstanding, television. Print media in the 1930s, and even the '40's, '50s and '60s still pretty much respected and adhered to journalism's Professional Standards, and TV was too nascient in its early years to have gone astray. It has only been over the last twenty years that main stream media has followed itself down the darkest path there is: that of self delusion about its importance and its obligation to report the truth objectively. The saddest part about this decline was twofold. The technology itself held the potential to inform an electorate as never before, but instead devolved into the basest of tools for those with the most money to assert their influence, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week by having paid, self proclaimed pundits and pollsters supplant news casters.

Instead of Ed Murrow, we have an actor named Keith reading a script, trying to sound as he thought Murrow might have sounded when he read the news. Instead of Walter Cronkite, we have Frank Luntz telling us that the truth matters no more: it's all about PERCEPTION. And that is the most devastating aspect of all. Luntz is right, and he's about the only one telling the truth now.