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Tugging the Media’s Beard
There have been various occasions where I have received e-mails from listeners who tell me that when I report a UFO story or a paranormal story, that I am reporting distractions. I am always told that there are more pressing issues in the world and that they wish I would get on track and talk about anything from the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate to the Federal Reserve.
While I am not disparaging those topics in any way, I must tell you that while some people may think that paranormal stories are distractions, I look at them as diversions from stories that become stale and overwhelming.
If you talk about one topic too much it becomes an agenda instead of a topic.
I have always wanted to find an example of what a true distraction story is and this year I believe I hit pay dirt with the various stories that the mainstream news manufactured or created in order to distract you from what is important dialogue in the zeitgeist.
This Christmas has been one for the record books. I have mentioned many times on this show that this year was probably the first year in the long history of my show that I had to address Christmas and the many stories that have been spun by the media as distractions from the more serious issues that face us in the new year.
From addressing the alleged war on Christmas, to the defense of a western cultural icon like Santa Claus, to the Jesus and Hollywood’s decision to milk the Christian coffer’s with new movies taken right out of the Bible.
Well now another bearded, Christian icon is hogging all of the press right now and that is Duck Commander Phil Robertson. Now I have never watched ‘Duck Dynasty’ and even though I haven’t, I have realized that reality TV is staged. I have a personal friend that is an actor and he has shown up on a well-known reality TV show as Bob one week and Bill the next.
The truth is that the whole ‘Duck Dynasty‘, Phil Robertson free speech debate is obviously the most manufactured news story to date and gives me reason to question just how far the media will go to distract us from the real issues that face us in the United States.
The generated opinion that A&E’s decision to suspend Phil Robertson for some misinterpreted remarks he made in GQ about homosexuals is that it is a free speech issue when it most certainly is not.
While I am against policing thought or speech, it needs to be said that the uproar is unwarranted because – if A&E decides to suspend Robertson or cancel the show – it’s a business decision. I am sure that Robertson and his ‘Duck Dynasty’ clan signed a contract and in that contract it probably says something about how the show can be cancelled at anytime and you can be fired at any time for actions that may not be good for the business.
This is an A&E issue, not a country-wide news story that deserves as much attention as it is getting.
We can debate what he said till the cows come home and it won’t make a difference because I really don’t understand why uncomfortable speech or comments become a reason to banish people from their jobs.
It seems that the new American strategy is that – if we find someone who says anything that we are uncomfortable with, the best thing for them is to beat them, exploit them and then silence them.
I have had this happen to me. It happens all the time, something is taken out of context or a programmer feels I am too liberal or too conservative or really can’t pin me down and so their decision is to shut me down and take me off the air.
I always get letters telling me I have been taken off of a network or station they love and ask me why that I should do something about it. I always reply to them by saying ask your local programmer or ask the network why a popular show is taken off the air and put their feet to the fire. I can’t put in a good word for myself to the program director – after my show has been cancelled.
Was it something I said? Was the material uncomfortable? Do they believe that it is better to banish someone with different views than to listen to them and engage them?
It is far easier for people to dismiss someone than to engage them and challenge their position.
Wouldn’t be equally more bigoted to punish Phil Robertson and manufacture this distraction than to engage him and try to speak with him about what his limited understanding might be about sexual desires?
He has his views bigoted or hateful is a matter of opinion. We know that his words and ideas are rooted in his religious view points. He often complained that the network would bleep his references to Jesus for fear it might offend Muslims. The question is—how many Muslims do they think watched the show and was the Muslim demographic that much of determining factor in silencing him and his Christian demeanor?
I mean it is obvious that his fans share his views and support them and that Twitter feeds are slash dotting websites and Facebook pages that are behind him. The sheer bigotry of the issue falls in the area of who has the incapacity to listen to an alternative viewpoint and demands a public banishment.
At last check, a “Boycott A&E” Facebook page was set up and right out of the gate it generated 1.5 million likes. Facebook had to ask the administrator of the site to suspend it for 12 hours because of the surge of likes.
His statement was offensive, not homophobic – and most certainly not worthy of all of the commotion and distraction.
We can all stop for a minute and realize that people that have religious or political support of traditional marriage are not bigots; however, if they are militant in condemning homosexuals for wanting to marry those they love and do everything necessary to harm or destroy their opportunity and banish them, I take issue with that and I am curious about their character.
In the case of Phil Robertson, we can all stop the nonsense by stating the obvious, the Constitution guarantees free speech. It does not guarantee a renewed television contract or a paycheck.
So the question is: why the distraction?
Because, as news organizations are creating their list of stories to remember for the year, they are hoping that this distraction will help people forget about all of the fiascoes that plagued government this year.
Obama has sent 40 troops to South Sudan. NSA spying has been judged unconstitutional and now is being challenged. NSA is creating an enemies list. The United States is over $17 trillion in debt, social security has become financially unsustainable, young people do not want Obamacare and Obama’s Approval rating has reached Nixon levels.
Legal experts – both conservative and liberal – have now concluded that Miriam Carey, the woman that drove up to a White House barricade on October 3rd and then left a restricted area while being chased down by police was publicly executed.
While we are screaming over the foul of the ‘Duck Dynasty’ commander, police have still not issued a report on exactly what happened but legal experts – again from the left and right – are now calling Carey’s death at the hands of police “murder.”
The unfortunate thing is that, since we are all tangled up in Phil Robertson’s beard, many Americans will only maybe remember that a mentally unstable and dangerous woman rammed a gate at the White House, sped away and was eventually shot by police because she could have posed a security threat to the nation’s capital. The facts are that she never rammed the White House gate, she did nothing illegal until she fled the scene while police were shooting at her, that the story of her being an unhinged, mental patient was based on a past diagnosis of post-partum depression and that police had no real reason to shoot as she surrendered and was killed anyway.
This, once again, falls suspiciously under the category of extrajudiciary assassinations as outlined in the National Defense Authorization Act‘s plan for a cloaked martial law, where law enforcement can act as judge and jury in situations of speculation and all probable cause this thrown out for what can be called “future crime.”
I have said before that everything we are seeing now is all based on potentiality – and not on what really is happening.
Last week, an appeals court in Texas ruled that police may obtain a search warrant based on the prediction of a future crime, heightening public fears that we may be heading toward a ‘predictive policing’ era in which we see police powers rapidly growing at the cost of our constitutional rights.
The decision also raises major civil rights concerns, particularly in light of law enforcement agencies increasingly turning to pre-crime policing tools in recent times, directly infringing on our constitutional protections.
And as Examiner.com writes: “The second version of the NDAA is said to be going through Congress with lightning speed.
When enacted, the new NDAA puts into law the dangerous provisions for indefinite detention without trial or even a lawyer for any person even suspected of being some type of threat to the US government.
“It also stipulated that members of our military could be used against its citizens in facilitating such arrests and that the accused could be held in military or foreign prisons off of our shores. It also went a step further and granted tremendously dangerous authority to a President of the United States to “legally” assassinate such individuals merely accused of supposedly being a threat to the US.”
Can anyone see why it is important to talk about ‘Duck Dynasty’ rather than pay attention to the fact that that Congress is attempting to fast-track this latest bill before the American people catch wind of it?
We can all play our little political party games and Fox News can parade out Sarah Palin in camo to promote free speech and blow on a long duck call for publicity and Christian values but it is sad when we can’t even finger both Democrats and Republicans that want so badly to see a bill become enacted that will literally turn our nation into a huge prison.
The media has not only been hiding behind the beards of Santa and Jesus to distract us, but they have also hidden behind the beard of Phil Robertson. If you crack open a dictionary you realize that beards are not just whiskers that hang from a man’s face, but it can also be defined as a “front” or “fence” to hide the truth about one’s identity or task.
When we were kids, tugging on the beard of Santa gave us the startling truth… maybe the same should be said for the media.
Source: http://www.groundzeromedia.org/tugging-the-medias-beard/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tugging-the-medias-beard
