Friday, May 28, 2010

A Henny Penny for your Thoughts

We have all heard the tale about chicken little or the boy who cried wolf.  They are stories read to all children in the hopes they will understand the importance of telling the truth.
The sad thing is that for the most part nobody seems to heed the morals of those tales once they grow up.
However crying wolf does not have to be about the sky falling.  It can be as simple as saying "No" every time someone asks a question, no matter what it is or even if you want to say yes!
Two negatives produce a positive in math but in real life two wrongs don't make a right.  And being consistently wrong is never right, unless you are a broken clock.
But the important thing to understand is that once you have been labeled a "Wolf Crier" nothing you say will nor should be heeded; nothing you say will be considered important and no one will act upon your plaintive plea.
Case in point is the relationship between the entire group of elected officials in the Republican party along with their shills in the media vis a vie President Obama.
Pick one person from the group of nay-sayers and follow their words for a while.  Many times they may actually say something truthful and, dare I say factual.  But the problem is you cannot pick those fair bon mots out of the tremendous volume of vile filth they normally spew without getting sick in the process.
The most obvious buffoon in this camp is Rush Limbaugh but at least he is consistent and will never give credit to anyone outside the "far right."  That, and his girth makes him easy to spot and avoid like the plague he is.
But the ones we have to worry about more than the Oxy loving Rush are the subtle nay-sayers.  These are the good-looking; well-groomed; even-toned mellifluously glib purveyors of party talking points such as Joe Scarborough.
If you ever watch the MSNBC show, "Morning Joe" you will be hit with two undeniable facts;
1 - Joe does not like anything Obama &
2 - His sidekick Mika is useless.
Today Joe harped on the fact that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has not been completely taken care of yet.  He also claimed that the main reason for this failing of the President was Obama's lack of emotion in dealing with this terrible crisis.
In many ways one must agree with the facts as laid forth by this former Republican Senator with aspirations of getting back into Congress.  But since he also takes issue with anything the President does his points of view must be taken with a touch of simple sodium chloride.
If we can agree that the President must show more concern about the Gulf Coast and the clean-up thereof fine.  Some people will not be happy until they see a tear drop on Mr. Obama's cheek like the Indian Chief of commercial fame.  But that does not mean that everything else Joe and his group have said about the President is therefore correct as well.
And of course Mika sits by his side with her inimitable, "Uh-huh, Yeah, Oh yes, Right, I agree.  Well my daddy would say..."
But Joe and his friends cannot hold a candle to some of the unbelievably brain dead wastes of a beating heart on Fox News!?!  Even the name of the network is an oxymoron - News?
If you listen the 'sky is falling' rhetoric of that channel you would think that the current resident of the White House who was born in Kenya is out to get this country attacked by terrorists and ruin our economy for the rest of time.  If Obama were to outlaw all stations other than Fox they would probably accuse him of attempting another Government take-over plot.
Perhaps some of the policies put forward under the current administration will not work perfectly as planned or hoped for but at least they are being tried.  And the feasibility of these plans are being discussed without the assistance of an entire opposing party in Congress.
Whose fault is that?
If the ship of state is sinking don't we need all  hands on deck to help avert disaster?
When Chicken Little ran around like Sue Lowden with her head cut off warning everyone of impending doom nobody listened because, well that's just what the Chicken always did!  So what else is new?
In order to be taken seriously if the Republican party and their lap dogs in the media ever wish to point out a problem on the horizon they have to start admitting there is a horizon over which the sun does occasionally come up.

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