SNOW JOB

Say what you want about the right wing, they're organized. There's a new outrage each week: Katrina, corrupt congress members, our sagging economy, national security so poor that an unarmed migrant farm worker has only to hop a fence, cow-towing to corporate cash at the expense of inivifual rights, election fraud, privacy invasion, underreported lies from the White House, deplorable education and worst of all--Katherine Harris's phony horse face. You really have to stay on your toes to keep up with those republicans' mess. But outside of a few screechy liberals, the country seems to be more interested in American Idol than the air we breathe. No one except the few screechy liberals is holding the White House's feet to the fire. Thank god for Arianna Huffington's newsy site, which I visit daily. I'll admit that it definitely has a liberal bias, so you normally won't see headlines which blast Hillary and other democratic fuck-ups. They also collect fantastic pop culture articles like this one from the UK's TIMESONLINE.COM, about a culture war between China and Japan over disposable wood vs. reusable wood chopsticks. Well, I thought it was interesting...

Huffpo posted an article which debunks a NATIONAL REVIEW cover story: (Scare of the Century (Global Warming!) . The REVIEW scoffs at a recent TIME (that revolutionary 'zine) coverage on global warming and claims that SCIENCE magazine's is "prone to hysteria" on the subject. One quote from the TIME piece is that “Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.” Now this IS truly ridiculous. There's nothing sudden or unexpected about the earth's gradual climate change which we--well, you--humans are causing.

The NATIONAL REVIEW asks "Why are scientists using the wrong numbers? " Well, Huffpo links to an article on www.thinkprogress.com which points out that the NATIONAL REVIEW is omitting key facts and limiting it's research to the eastern coast "for the sake of brevity." The REVIEW concludes with:

"In the meantime, let’s stick with what we know — about melting ice, and about global warming generally. We’re not sure that we have a problem. If we do, we don’t know that we’re the ones causing it. But Time, Al Gore, the Democratic party, the EU, politically correct scientists, and the entire green lobby want us to throw enormous sums of money at solutions that won’t work anyhow."


RIGHT! INSTEAD, LET'S THROW ENORMOUS SUMS AT AN UNWINNABLE, BASELESS WAR! The REVIEW claims that TIME and SCIENCE are attempting "to distort the truth for political ends--which is precisely what has been done with the ice-caps story." What are the politcal ends? Who stands to gain? The box office at cinemas showing Al Gore's movie? Vegan bakeries? Environnmentally friendly toiletry manufacturers' powerful lobbyists? Are these hysteria-prone mainstream magazine articles screaming ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS like the one in TIME commissioned by the pr reps of the zit-faced teen-agers who stand on the street handing out Green Peace literature? Talk an about an issue which crosses party lines--THE CLIMATE? Hi girl! Turn off the AMERICAN IDOL for a sec--IT"S KIND OF, LIKE, THE ONLY CLIMATE WE'VE FUCKING GOT!!! Global warming is an unpopular issue because it's so all-encompassing and complex that no one wants to deal with it. It's not "sexy."

I insist that my news be "sexy", which is the new term meaning "hot." Don't give me any ugly, old trustworthy newscaster like Walter Cronkite--I want my news delivered by anchors who are first and foremost, "sexy." They don't have to be talented--just sexy. I don't care if the drivel they spout on the air is balanced or even honest. Hell, let the government continue to buy propaganda segments on it, but just make sure that the White House infomercial remains "sexy", with lots of distracting graphics zooming onto the screen, or I can't be bothered to care about it. Paula Zahn even peppers her entire prime time broadcast with a countdown of the 10 "sexiest" stories that websurfers select on CNN.com. Great. So let the same people who'd dictate that the asking price for a photo of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt be sold for a rumored 4 million dictate what the news gives airtime to. The birth of one celebrity brat birth is much "sexier" than the 5,000 who perished so tragically in Indonesia last week. But I think the notion of the earth's future populations choking to get a breath of clean air is pretty "sexy." Not as "sexy" as choking on a horse-hung hispanic's dong, but I think you could still get a TV movie out of it, like the recent ABC Movie of the Week Bird Flu disaster film brought to you by Tamiflu.

THAT'S WHAT I CALL "SEXY"! JUST IN TIME FOR PUERTO RICAN PRIDE DAY, WHICH I ASSUME GOT RAINED OUT



Besides, global warming is a very slow-moving, non-buzzworthy type of doldrum-laden trend. Hey, I'm a world class procrastinator myself--which is why I'm on a chair typing this instead of on a treadmill. But the only people who stand to benefit from halting global warming is everyone. The only political ends being advanced are an agenda which dares to...gulp...concern itself with our atmosphere. What politician or leader SHOULD NOT be concern themselves with every bit of scientific data on the subject? For that matter, what religious leader wouldn't decry the desecration of God's own earth? The Bush administration has been caught paying for slanted news segments which favorably depict the war. You think they wouldn't kiss corporate ass and purposefully omit key facts in this research? Yeah, let's dismiss global warming as a theory and ignore/omit evidence supporting the environmental time bomb so that factories owned by those big corps won't have to reduce greenhouse emissions and we can ride in our SUV's with the windows open with the a/c on.

Who stands to gain from dummying up or falsifying research on the environment? Procrastinators, people who don't want to face the fact that their country's lifestyle must be overhauled for the common good, and black-hearted hearted, money-grubbing republicans who seem to be working towards the common bad.

I'm no scientist. I've never picked up one issue of SCIENCE magazine. Maybe the rag does sensationalize global warming to sell issues. I just wish there were some elected officials who cared about combing through the science data so I didn't have to. But for the most part, there aren't. Those same corporations are crossing democratic congresspeople's palms with hush money, too. The whole system is corrupt. I'm fat and it'll be too crowded at the gym to go now. Good thing I TIVO'ed the AMERICAN IDOL finale. Signing off, Bitterness Central.