I have to be careful. Watching the nightly news can be injurious to my mental health. I usually get the news from the Internet. Somehow, that softens the blow. But tonight, I’d cooked a steak and we had a baked potato, some of those pleasures that we only indulge in every once and a while in the health-conscious 21st century. So I pulled up a t.v. tray and watched…
Tonight, Bush vetoing Stem Cell research was the second thing on the agenda. The first was a report on the Israeli-Hezbollah War with America’s staunch denials that we’re not doing anything in order to give Israel time to wallop Hezbollah good and proper.
I don’t believe either story. I know we are not doing anything in order to give Israel time to wallop Hezbollah good and proper. And I don’t believe George W. Bush even knows what Stem Cell research really is, much less gives a baker’s damn about embryos.
It didn’t make me as angry as it usually does – watching the news. I think I finally get it:
- it’s not true means you can’t prove it
- I believe ____ means I believe whatever it says on the teleprompter
I’m not sure "getting it" is better. Instead of anger, I feel something akin to sadness…
In the words of reader Smoochie:
"A few years ago I designed a tattoo that is the image of ‘Blind Justice’ but she was peeking. Somehow that image becomes more and more appropriate in THIS United States. I want the old one back. You know, the one where the president only lied about his sexual exploits. *sigh*"
To which I would add, "or didn’t lie at all."
Here’s my version of Lady Justice:
I think of all the presidents I can remember the only one I feel that didn’t lie in some way was President Carter. I can’t confirm it, but I’d like to believe it. And that’s not on any teleprompter. 😉
Smoochie, I’m older than you, so I can remember more presidents. I love Jimmy Carter. I’ve heard him at town hall meetings at Emory and in interviews, and he is extremely candid and honest. I didn’t think Gerald Ford should have pardoned Richard Nixon, but I believed him to be an honest man, and I understood why he did it. Also, I think Harry Truman was honest, but I was pretty young when he was president, so I may have missed something.