We have come to a very sinister place in our United States culture. For many of us, in our busy days either in our own local cities or on the road as we travel on business or pleasure . . . we turn on the radio to catch the weather or time or the news . . . or we turn on the TV to see what the latest news is locally or nationally. Very seldom is it international news that we care about in the US. Most of us want to jingoistically brag that we may be in a downturn or difficult economic time, but we are still the best in the world.
And what do we find on more and more local stations, either radio or TV? We see and hear one of the biggest media empires of all time, the Fox News subsidiaries of News Corporation. And it is becoming the cause of more polarization, disrespect, disdain for science and for honesty and for fairness and for balance . . . of simply more evil in our culture than we have had since the days of the Ku Klux Klan and the McCarthy hearings. And very few people seem to mind. More and more have joined the “ditto-heads” as the Rush Limbaugh crowd likes to call themselves. More and more of the hosts / self-proclaimed entertainers of the so-called Fox “NEWS” outlets are writing books and seeing them become best sellers. Some of these hosts brag about being good Catholics . . . but allow that the pope is simply too soft on some issues like war and the death penalty. More and more of them are publishing books full of distortions, ridicule of others, lots of outright untruths, made-up history, but a heavy dose of confidence and entertainment . . . and millions flock to buy them.
Can you guess what is now one of the bestselling books in the US?? It is Bill O’Reilly’s Pinheads and Patriots. It is the same name as one of the popular segments of his most-watched prime time TV show on weekdays in the US. If even a kindergartner called another a “pinhead”, they would be chastised and taught some civility and proper behavior in a church-attending culture. Just a few decades back, someone using this kind of epithet would be booed off the stage. But now we use the measuring stick of book sales and TV and radio audience listener numbers. And since no one is protesting, no one is screaming “Boo! Get your distortions and polarizations out of here!” . . . they keep selling their books. Even more outrageous to people of faith, they flaunt on the air, every day, that their “News” show is on God’s side. Their time in fact is “on loan from God.” How blasphemous can one get !!
Are we so busy and confused and deaf to our values and our virtues, that we have let such perverted measures of “success” allow us to tolerate such evil and trash in our media? You polarize the listening public. You exaggerate and distort and invent a high percentage of the news. You claim that God is on your side, and the New York “Slimes” (NY Times), and the Washington “Compost” (Post), and even everyone who believes in social justice are the evil ones, the communists, who seek to destroy the fabric of society in the US. And people are buying it?? Best sellers? You stir up a rabble, and you get people ridiculing others because they simply belong to one of the political parties, and you now ask the public to vote on examples of them daily as one or the other polar opposite, Pinhead or Patriot. This is put now to a vote by a rabble-roused media audience on these shows? . . . by an audience of millions of people who often use this media outlet as their only source of ‘’News”.
Not only for the media management and sponsors and hosts who present this trash on the airwaves, but to the millions of viewers who listen . . . and tacitly support this evil . . . I wonder what St. Peter will say at the Pearly Gates when they all arrive. I can’t help but wonder . . . if Woe Betides Them.
Bill Hirt
Dayton, OH
December, 2010
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