"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."
--------T.S. EliotI came across this quote when reading a column written by Mary Riddell for the Guardian (U.K.). I tried to find the source of the quote, but didn't have much luck. I tried Googling it, but it seems that a million people used it without any idea of what piece of writing from T.S. Eliot it comes from (or if it was actually spoken by him somewhere). I'm sure I could find it if I looked hard enough, but I'm just too lazy at the moment, so there. (If anyone reading this knows, please tell me).
At any rate, one of the points Riddell was making is that people have become desensitized to the violence in our world, and it is reflected in the media. Riddell says, "All tragedies have a fulcrum on which horror tilts over to indifference. " The news focuses on trivial things like Scott Peterson or Desperate Housewives while there are truly horrible things happening every day.
I'm not saying that it's a conspiracy to keep the public uninformed, though certain news sources -- read: Fox News -- are just blatant propaganda. People have a threshold for dealing with their fears and their natural revulsion to the horrors of war. At a certain point, the public starts tuning out all of the bad news. For this reason, the media has a tendency to stick with stories that will keep people's attention.
One story which people here in America have stopped paying attention to is the whole issue of torture. I'm not trying to make this my pet issue, but I said in a post a month ago that I thought Rumsfeld should have resigned for instituting policies of torture which resulted in the prisoner absuse scandal (see how the media turned the word torture into a euphimism: prisoner abuse??). Now many people are calling for his resignation because he didn't make sure that the troops have enough armor. I would have preferred to see someone held accountable for the torture thing, but as long as someone in this administration is held accountable for something, I guess I would be happy.
Why have I not heard any mainstream media sources reporting on this press release from the ACLU? The headline is "FBI E-Mail Refers to Presidential Order Authorizing Inhumane Interrogation Techniques". According to this report, the order for toture came from the top, the president himself. How are we supposed to have credibility in the world as we go about spreading freedom and democracy? Where is the outrage? Anyone???
posted by Skrambled Egghead Reborn @ 11:26 PM
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