From the Far West Side

About Snippetes of News

by Penny Peavy, aka Farris West

The writer of Ecclesiastes in the Bible tells us that "there is nothing new under the sun." The news media depends for its livlihood, however, on the existence of fresh news. They pay lots of reporters to "find" news and then pay tons of money for good-looking people to deliver it to us on television and boatloads of it to pay people to comment on the news of the day. But the truth is that there simply is not enough interesting news each day to feed those behemoth news channels enough material for 7/24 broadcasting.

So what do they do? They take some tiny little part of the life of a political figure or famous person and blow it up way out of proportion, magnify it, raise questions about it and spend hours speculating and commenting on it.

There are two examples of this recently that just really seem like a way of harassing the people involved.

The first example involves Sarah Palin. Her hand was photographed while giving a speech a Tea Party Convention. It was noted that she had written a few words on the palm of her hand, apparently some notes to remind her of points she wanted make in her speech. The news media created several hours of "news" around this event, questioning why she might have done such a thing, did it mean anything, was she too stupid to use a note card instead, on and on and on. It seemed as though this act of writing on her hand held some special significance that the American people must be aware of. It was reported every hour for about three days. When it began to grow old, they then dug up some old picture of Rep. Feinstein with writing on her hand during a debate (which was againsts the rules, by the way, in that debate). It was as though the media were fixated on women who write on the palm of their hand. Is there a woman who hasn't? When a woman needs to preserve a bit of information such as a phone number, pen in hand and no paper in sight, the obvious solution is to write on the palm of the hand. Who cares if Sarah Palin wrote four words on her palm? I mean, really, who cares? Furthermore, would they have made such a big issue out of a man writing on the palm of his hand?

The second example is far worse. During the second week of February, Texas gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina was interviewed briefly on Glen Beck 's radio show. He started off the interview in a somewhat combative way. He asked "Who are you?" Most people, when so bluntly, or even rudely, are asked that question, many things run through their minds because we all sort of define who we are in any number of ways, ranging from our interests and beliefs to our family status and occupations. When she began to answer, Beck would interrupt and say, "No, no, tell me who you are." It was as though there was no answer that was going to satisfy him. However, Debra Medina, unruffled, continued to try to answer.

When Beck got tired of that question, he asked her a really strange question that had absolutely nothing to do with government in Texas. He asked her if she was a "911 truther." While she certainly would have been better off simply saying "no," she had not even given the matter any thought during her campaign, being entirely focused on the issues of the State of Texas. She gave an answer that indicated that she thought that all the facts were not available and she didn't have the answer. Boy, oh boy! Beck, the talking heads of Fox and Friends and several other Fox News Channel shows replayed the tape of her answer. Glen Beck actually made fun of her, and so did it seem that Steve Doocey, Gretchen and whoever else was on Fox and Friends that day did the same. This made national news for days. By Sunday, it showed up on one of the round table discussions, and, fortunately, one of the men stood up for Medina and predicted she would be the next Sarah Palin only a lot smarter.

Anyone who has heard Debra Medina speak or has read about her in this publication, met her or been to her website knows she is a serious and bright woman, a conservative, one who is intent on the preservation of our state's sovereignty, preserving our property rights, securing our borders and eliminating property taxes. She is very impressive, yet Glen Beck put her down, and I mean way down. In essence he was saying that because she didn't say "no," she meant "yes." Who's the idiot here? Certainly not Medina. But, then, I strongly suspect Glen Beck has a problem with powerful and charismatic females regardless of who they are. Has anyone noticed he never says anything good about any woman prominent in politics? He's getting tiresome in many ways. Rumor has it that Beck permanently lost at thousands of listeners on his radio show that morning.

The worst part of this whole scenario is that it seems obvious to me that Perry and/or Hutchison, knowing that Medina supporters were likely to be Fox News followers, called up the powers that be at Fox and staged the whole episode because they fear Debra Medina, just like Obama fears Sarah Palin. Medina is rising rapidly in the polls. If enough people get on the bandwagon to support Medina and get out and vote in the primary, Medina could upset Hutchison forcing a run-off between Medina and Perry. If that happens, Perry will fight down and dirty, using his millions of dollars and his big biz contacts to try to hammer her deep into the ground. But, with a concerted effort on the part of the "real people of Texas," he could be defeated.

Glen Beck is obviously a Perry supporter. Beck seems to gravitate toward nice-looking men and is obviously Texas two-stepping with Perry. Here's a quote from a blogger on Medina's website:

"What Medina said is that there are unanswered questions posed to the government about 911. This is 100% true and accurate. The 911 Commission's report stated that the government withheld evidence and therefore the report was incomplete with unanswered questions. Six of the ten 911 Report commissioners have publicly said that the report was a sham and they did not stand behind it. There are unanswered questions posed to the government about 911, which is exactly what she said. Her response was 100% truthful."

Having listened to the Beck broadcast, that is indeed what she said, and I saw it as nothing but the truth. I might have answered such a question that way myself.

The scary aspect of Glen Beck's shenanigans and all this nitpicking "news," taking sound bites and photos and presenting them as news and using them to put someone in an unfavorable light is that rather than giving the public hard unbiased news, the media is using

whatever photos and sound bites they wish to use to influence public opinion. Now, certainly there is nothing new about opinion oriented shows like Glen Beck or Bill O'Reilley attempting to influence public opinion. These shows are no different from the Op Ed sections of papers including this one. What is bad is when they use this material on alleged news programs as "news" and then that gives the opinion guys "news" to opine about without providing the full picture.

On a nationwide basis, all this country knows about Debra Medina is about her being trashed by Glen Beck. They don't know the other 99.99% there is to know about her. This all makes me think about the story of the blind men and the elephant.

Here's the story, in case you don't remember it.

"Three Blind Men and an Elephant"

One day, three blind men happened to meet each other and gossiped a long time about many things. Suddenly one of them recalled, " I heard that an elephant is a queer animal. Too bad we're blind and can't see it."

"Ah, yes, truly too bad we don't have the good fortune to see the strange animal," another one sighed.

The third one, quite annoyed, joined in and said, "See? Forget it! Just to feel it would be great."

"Well, that's true. If only there were some way of touching the elephant, we'd be able to know," they all agreed.

It so happened that a merchant with a herd of elephants was passing, and overheard their conversation. "You fellows, do you really want to feel an elephant? Then follow me; I will show you," he said.

The three men were surprised and happy. Taking one another's hand, they quickly formed a line and followed while the merchant led the way. Each one began to contemplate how he would feel the animal, and tried to figure how he would form an image.

After reaching their destination, the merchant asked them to sit on the ground to wait. In a few minutes he led the first blind man to feel the elephant. With outstretched hand, he touched first the left foreleg and then the right. After that he felt the two legs from the top to the bottom, and with a beaming face, turned to say, "So, the queer animal is just like that." Then he slowly returned to the group.

Thereupon the second blind man was led to the rear of the elephant. He touched the tail which wagged a few times, and he exclaimed with satisfaction, "Ha! Truly a queer animal! Truly odd! I know now. I know." He hurriedly stepped aside.

The third blind man's turn came, and he touched the elephant's trunk which moved back and forth turning and twisting and he thought, "That's it! I've learned."