Representative Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) was raving on the floor of the House yesterday. “We’re talking about Eric Massa 24/7 on the TV. We’re talking about war and peace, $3 billion dollars, a thousand lives and no press? No press?”
Mr. Massa is the recently resigned congressman from New York who may or may not have groped staffers. That question has gotten plenty of new coverage. The debate over the war in Afghanistan – as Mr. Kennedy complained – gets virtually none.
He’s got a point. Our infotainment news culture has lost its way. The mainstream media has forgotten how to edit – that is, to determine what’s important and what’s not. Where Ms. Massa’s hands have been will affect the future of almost no one, while young Americans face – and too often embrace – death half a world away.
A few weeks ago, when Washington, DC was hit by serial snowstorms, much of the yahoo media (I’m looking at you, Fox News and increasingly, at you, CNN) declared – along with the some of our stupidest members of Congress – that it proved global warming was a hoax dreamed up by Al Gore and the environmental groups.
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Oh No, Not Again
One of the unpalatable things about being an environmentalist (there are others) is that no victory ever stays won. An ancient tree cut down stays cut; a species driven to extinction is gone for good. The tree saved, however, has been saved for a day only. A species preserved is preserved for now and the effort to keep it preserved starts early tomorrow morning.
Surely, there must be one battle the greens have won, one cause so clearly right that by the twenty-first century, people across the globe would agree this piece of the planet is worth protecting. You might think that, but you’d be wrong.
The whales are once again in danger.
After a more than decade-long battle, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) voted in 1986 to end commercial whale hunting. While that was a “win” for the environment (see above caveats), the IWC allows “research” whaling. Japan engages in such “research” whaling, on the order of 1,000 dead whales every year. Odd thing is all that “research,” all those dead whales and no published results from the Japanese “researchers.” Kinda makes you think it’s all bogus. Norway and Iceland engage in commercial whaling, essentially giving the finger to the IWC and the rest of the civilized world. (Those Japanese, so polite, wrap the finger they give us in a faux white lab coat.)
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