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Edited on Fri Nov-05-04 06:15 AM by Lancer
First of all, I am a 44-year old woman living with my retired father because I am on disability. He walks the floor every night wondering how he will pay this month's bills on his fixed income. (Yes, he voted for Kerry.) I woke up at 4:30, beacuse I was thirsty, and he was making breakfast.
Dad asked me, "what do you hear from the Democracy?," knowing I was probably up late reading this board.
I told him, "oh nothing, except it seems more and more obvious that this election was stolen. Hundreds of thousands of votes not counted, lost or tabulated incorrectly."
DAD: Oh, come on.
ME: Including several thousand in Carteret County (NC), in our home state.
DAD: I don't know why in God's name you believe everything you read on that damned internet. I thought you were smarter than that. You're always telling me something you picked up from God-knows-where (yes, something that later turns out to be TRUE, and I often heard it on the DU first!)
(This is where I threw a stadium cup full of chocolate milk against the kitchen floor.)
ME: No. I DO NOT get my information from some goth-wearing teenager named Jason from Minot, ND who spends all his time spreading lies on the internet when he is not looking at porn. (My apologies to kids who dress goth, are named Jason, who look at pictures of naked women and anyone living in Minot, ND.)
ME: (continuing) Karl Rove and the masterminds of this plot to make it appear that GWB received 8 million more votes than in 2000 are Nazis. Pure and simple. My gay friends are terrified, my black friends feel disenfranchised, and those of us on disability with astronomical medical bills are going to have to stop taking our meds or eat even less every month than we do now.
Our friends fortunate enough to have jobs in this country may not have them for long, and cannot feed or clothe their kids on $5.15 an hour. The war in Iraq is phony in every sense except that real young people are dying.
DAD: OK, so where do you get your news if not from these 'blogs'?
ME: (I list major news sources, Reuters, AP, NYT, WP, the Guardian, Christian Science Monitor, Congressional Quarterly, et. al. and remind him that bloggers are often faster at reporting the real news than the mainstream media.)
This wouldn't anger me so much if my father wasn't retired from a 42-year career in newspapers, where he was an editorial page editor. Back in the day when one had to physically pick up hard copies of newspapers to see what was going on in the world, Dad read DOZENS of papers every day from the US and around the world and even <<Le Monde>> in French.
He is computer literate, but no longer cares to be informed as he once was. He listens to NPR drowsily in the a.m., watches Dan and scans our local paper which is really hopelessly inadequate at covering even breaking local stories.
I may not be in the workforce, but I worked like hell for John Kerry. I use my time wisely to stay well-informed and to separate the wheat from the chaff. I know which internet stories are urban legends, which publications are trustworthy and which are crap. I also know the ring of truth when I hear it.
I concluded by saying (after I mopped up the damn chocolate milk) that since I was obviously fantasizing about the Fascists, that perhaps Dad would be delighted at the Supreme Court nominees GWB will soon recommend. Obviously, since GWB is surrounded by folks who are simply engaging in fraternity pranks, but who truly have our best interests at heart, we can expect a new era of heirs and assigns to Felix Frankfurter, Louis Brandeis and Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. The troops will come home, and soon GWB will be eating paté with Jacques Chirac and rubbing chopsticks with Kim Jong Il in a symbol of global unity.
You tell me who's living in a dream world.
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