Experimenting with emblazoning my feelings, my first responses, on semi-regular basis; barraging innocent, unsuspecting readers of my blog with a fusillade of opinions fired from the rusty artillery emplacement of my point of view.
“FRAUGHT!” The word, an old one, is suddenly everywhere; it crops up, early in, in nearly every piece of journalism I read. Someone used it a year or two ago and suddenly every journalist decided it made them seem more educated, more eye-brow archingly astute, to be able to use it. And now FRAUGHT is maddeningly, stupidly over-used. Stop with the FRAUGHT all the time!
Speaking of contemporary reportage, am I the only one disturbed by the sudden installation of advertisements in the form of news articles, across internet journalism? Sections that have hints that they are paid endorsements pretending to be articles–the small print, somewhere, sheepishly mentions it. It’s everywhere now. CNN was an early offender. They’re being imitated by every formerly-legit news site.
Boy Scouts of America settles for $850 million with more than 84,000 sexual abuse victims. 84,000 is a lot–it must have been epidemic and endemic to the Scouts. Did it happen when I was a kid? I was in the Scouts for a minute. Not to me, no. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening. Or …did it start to happen later? How could an epidemic of institutional child molestation just start one day? I do accept the reality of it, yes. But what brought it about in the BSA? I’m glad the Scouts administration, who were obviously careless of the safety of the boys are paying the price. If it destroys the BSA then it’s a deserved destruction. But how did the phenomenon of 84,000 (known!) molestations arise? And how, at the same time, are we allowing ourselves to release the egregious Bill Cosby from prison? Cosby– a serial molester of another sort.
The decision by the conservative block in the Supreme Court to allow voter suppression in Arizona is a horrifying precedent and it will have corrosive repercussions on our democracy. It may be the straw that broke the camel’s back of American democracy. Apparently–from what I’m reading–Congress can’t undo this ethical error. What they’ve done is empower the Big Lie. It can only get worse from here.
And what about people too stupid to see the simple connection between NOT getting sick and having had the vaccine? Local officials are sounding the alarm over an increase in Covid-19 infections just as the nation prepares to celebrate a Fourth of July holiday… In Arkansas, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation, cases are surging… “We are now going in the wrong direction yet again with Covid-19 infections here in the state of Arkansas,” said Dr. Cam Patterson, chancellor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. “With July 4th holiday coming up and eventually kids going back to school, we have to be concerned that this would be a trend that could continue. And if it does, it would appear that we may be in the beginning of the third surge of Covid-19 here in the state of Arkansas”….The Delta variant has now been detected in all 50 states and Washington, DC…More than 98% of those hospitalized with Covid-19 were not vaccinated!….THE VACCINES WORK, PEOPLE. THEY’RE EVEN FREE! Don’t believe the misinformation. The vaccines are safe. More than 600,000 thousand people in the USA have died from covid and hundreds of thousands others who survived have been crippled by its spread to lungs, heart, kidneys and the brain…Don’t be stupid. GET VACCINATED.