What Price Knowledge?

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

This morning while reading some lefty blog (probably Huffington Post) I came across a review of a tell-all book on the Bush family. I'm not much into gossip, especially gossip about morons, but the author of this blog post was so enthusiastic on the subject of Family of Secrets by Russ Baker that I decided to investigate further.

He talked about Baker's examination of Senator Prescott Bush's dalliance with Hitler's Nazi Party, a topic of which I already had a rudimentary knowledge, and, of course, the tragic presidency (tragic for the nation) of our current President - Prescott's grandson. But what really caught my interest was an implied link between George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. One of my life goals, you see, is to solve the mystery of the Kennedy assassination. I have a decent library on the topic, and one of these days I will get around to it.

Ten years ago I sat in Jesse Auditorium at the University of Missouri one evening listening to Oliver Stone peddling a book. When he finished his talk, he opened the floor to questions, and one of the first out of the chute was an inquiry about some derogatory remarks that the older President Bush had made about Stone regarding his film, JFK. Stone became livid at the question and went totally off-script in a rabid denunciation of the Bush family in general and Pappy Bush in particular. Okay, I thought, that's interesting. (I've seen the movie, JFK, several times and even have a copy of the script, but I never came across any reference to the Bushes. So what got to Bush Sr. about the movie, and what got to Stone about Bush Sr.?)

Because I want to serve my country by clearing up the assassination mess, and because I believe the Bush family has crippled this great nation to the point that my grandchildren will grow up buried under debt and humiliation lavished upon us by these criminal bozos, I wanted to know more about Family of Secrets.

First stop: Amazon.com. The book was priced at $19.80, with free shipping if my order totaled $25 or more. Amazon had seven customer reviews. Each review was thorough and intelligently written, and each gave the book five stars - the highest rating. My instincts, it appeared, were good.

Second stop: Barnesandnoble.com. The customer ratings averaged 4.5 stars. Barnes and Noble were prouder of their copies than Amazon, with a sale price of $24 each.

But I really wasn't in the mood to wait, so this evening I pulled into the Barnes and Noble that is across the street from where I live. I have their customer card which is good for 10 percent off, and I had a coupon good for an additional 15 percent. Employing my basic math skills, I realized that 25% off of $24 would be a sweet $18, even less than Amazon - and I could take it right home! Imagine my puzzlement when I picked up a copy of the book and found that it was a pricey thirty dollars! I marched right up to the counter, as old farts are prone to do, and told the man that I could get the same book from their company over the Internet for $24. Yeah, he replied, we can't compete with our Internet price.

Say what!

Then I told him that I could get the same book from Amazon for $19.80 - and he told me to have a nice day!

So I guess I will - maybe tomorrow!

Of Fear and Lizard Brains

This past Tuesday, March 4, marked the 75th anniversary of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first inauguration as President. It was at the height of the Great Depression and times were bad. But on that day in Washington D.C. all those many years ago, FDR took the reins of power from Herbert Hoover and assured the country that government would, once again, be the servant of the people. In his inaugural address, he told America that "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!"

What a difference seventy-five years makes! Now we have a President who uses fear as his prime motivator. Fear Iraqis, fear al-Quaida, fear Castro, fear Chavez, fear immigrants, fear your government, fear, fear, fear! Fortunately for the world, and America in particular, George W. Bush is quickly becoming irrelevant.

But fear works - and now Billary has picked up the banner. Seventy-five years to the day after FDR reassured us that fear was all we had to fear, Billary won the Texas primary by using her sleazy red phone commercial stressing the need for us to fear anyone but her answering the President's red phone at 3:00 a.m. Arianna Huffington of "The Huffington Post" referred to this red phone tactic as appealing to our lizard brains, the most primal part of the human brain - the one we employed when we were still in the caves - long before the advent of rational thought.

What's wrong with focusing on ideas? Why can't we be free to judge candidates on their vision for America, instead of on their ability to slime? Bill Clinton said (in 2004 while campaigning for John Kerry) that if one candidate offers you hope and the other offers you fear - go with the one offering hope. He was right. The only thing we have to fear is the politician who is trying to scare us from seeing the world as it could be.

No third term!

The News Marketplace

A friend of mine recently suggested in response to one of my blog entries that my political views were developed from watching the three major networks. I readily admit to being an avid news consumer, but hardly any of the news that I take in comes from ABC, NBC, or CBS.

My primary source of news is NPR – National Public Radio. The radios in my apartment, car, and office are all tuned to the Phoenix NPR Affiliate, KJZZ. I like public radio because their newscasts cover a wide variety of topics that are given an in-depth analysis by the correspondents. The big three networks spend a very limited time on any news story, and those stories are filtered through the interests and prerogatives of corporate America. National Public Radio gives a much clearer perspective on what is happening in the world around us. And I am a good consumer of Public Radio – I donate.

When I do turn to the television for news, I have a strong preference for the newscasts on BBC America. BBC News is also carried on some National Public Radio Stations. Comparing same day news on BBC America with the news of a major American network is somewhat surreal. BBC will do in-depth journalism on stories with a worldwide impact (droughts, famines, and genocide) while their American cousins focus on crime, politics, and human interest pabulum.

My third choice for news is the Internet. No matter what a person’s preferences are in the news marketplace, the Internet has a site for everyone. I like Google News, Yahoo News, The Huffington Post, and the New York Times. And if I want to check out the action back in Missouri where my Dad lives, their newspapers are on-line also. News on the Internet is immediate, and it is easy to track a story from a variety of sources.

While my presidential choice, Barack Obama, may appear to be a bit mainstream to my friend, I didn’t arrive at that selection through listening to the corporate bullhorns of ABC, NBC, and CBS. The big boys in the corporate newsrooms don’t have the captive audiences that they once had. America is moving toward being able to truly choose among candidates, because we can now truly choose how we learn about them. The news monopoly is quickly going the way of the dinosaur and eight-track tapes.