All the News that's Fit to Print...
Recently came across something very telling, and justa little too funny, in the Staten Island Advance last week. For those of you who do not know it, the Advance is the local Newhouse Fishwrap for us, the woebegotten residents of Staten Island, NY. It's a local paper full of stuff like wedding announcements, feel-good pap from the local neighborhoods and advertisements for local businesses. If it wasn't for the comics, it would not be worth reading at all.

Anyway, the Advance does try, at least, to look like a real newspaper. It carries AP reports on just about everything, or occasionally, has a reporter of it's own write something. One of these reporters recently was detailed to cover a story in which a local couple's home was raided by police and federal agents (April 29th edition). The authorities found a virtual arsenal inside the home, weapons, ammunition, and even some minor explosives.

Somewhere in this story, however, the reporter (Jeff Hemmel) somehow decided that this little tidbit of information was relevant to the story. I quote:

"Politically, Boschi (one of the suspects) is a registered member of the Conservative Party."

Why is that in there? How did that get through the editorial process? The answers, of course, have nothing to do with the press and their first duty to humanity, which is to disseminate information, but has everything to do with the media's belief that they have a sacred duty to shape public opinion the right way. They're way.

The message from this one line is, simply: All conservatives are gun-wielding, ammo hoarding fanatics, secretly stockpiling arms and explosives to begin a counter-revolution that will send us back to the ghastly days before Jimmy Carter. Conservative are evil mental cases that have no regard for anyone but themselves and who would endanger an entire neighborhood by having a houseful of guns and ammo.

Mr. Hemmel is probably just trying to advance (no pun intended) his career; perhaps you must prove your liberal credentials to the New York Times or something like that. What better way than to make sure that your work includes irrelevant information, but irrelevant information that makes a political statement?

I myself never read the Staten Island Advance because it's a piece of crap with political pretense on every page, and never would have seen this story if I didn't have to take a dump at my sister's house and grabbed the first newspaper that came into view. Just my luck it was a week old, I guess.

The media is clueless. They continue to be obvious with their insanity and then wonder why no one buys newspapers or watches network news anymore.