{"id":7269,"date":"2011-08-22T08:47:38","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T15:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=7269"},"modified":"2011-08-22T13:32:59","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T20:32:59","slug":"i-should-know-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=7269","title":{"rendered":"I Should Know Better"},"content":{"rendered":"

What should I find on Facebook early today but this?\u00a0 Ah, the smell of troll in the morning!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I know, that’s some tiny print.\u00a0 Here’s what it says:<\/p>\n

The Republican Party have sent me their 2011 Congressional District Census.\u00a0 It’s a checkbox response format, thankfully with an <Other> option, since a lot of my choices have not been included. For example — ‘what is your primary news source’, and NPR is not listed. I shall have to add it!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The guy who posted this is a friend, so I asked him to send me a copy of the census question about primary news sources.\u00a0 And here it is:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That one, I trust, you can read.\u00a0 I don’t interpret it quite the way my friend does — all forms of radio are grouped into one entity, which I suppose is legit — but I do see his point.\u00a0 The GOP census doesn’t group all forms of TV into one, does it?\u00a0 No, it separates out the major networks (NBC\/CBS\/ABC), the cable news channels the right always labels as “leftist” (CNN\/MSNBC), and then singles out their own GOP propaganda cable channel, Fox News.\u00a0 So why not a similar specificity with regard to radio?\u00a0 And why did they leave out the Comedy Channel?\u00a0 Don’t the hipsters get all their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert?<\/p>\n

NPR is, like it or not, a major news source in the USA.\u00a0 I have no idea how many people get all their news from NPR, but it is at least a very significant percentage of the adult population.\u00a0 Perhaps the GOP doesn’t want to know — or worse, they automatically interpret a check in the “radio” box as meaning right wing AM hate radio, and don’t even consider the possibility that a Republican respondent might listen to NPR.<\/p>\n

I remember a guy climbing into my VA hospital van for a ride to Phoenix one morning and immediately asking me to change the radio from NPR to Rush Limbaugh.\u00a0 I said no, I wasn’t going to listen to any Ku Klux Klanner in my<\/em> van, and left NPR on.\u00a0 The guy grumbled all the way to Phoenix, complaining about NPR’s “leftist agenda.”\u00a0 This in spite of the fact that we were listening to Morning Edition, a straight news show with no apparent political bias.\u00a0 And if NPR does have a political bias these days, it is to the right, not the left.\u00a0 We lefties say that NPR stands for Nice Polite Republicans.<\/p>\n

But let’s get to the comment below my friend’s Facebook entry.\u00a0 This one’s even harder to read.\u00a0 Here’s what it says:<\/p>\n

At least you can listen to both extremes if you want … Rush and NPR. \ud83d\ude09<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I admit it, I bit on the troll bait.\u00a0 Talk about a false equivalency, Rush and NPR.\u00a0 NPR is a one-man show put on by a bloated hippie drug addict with a deep-seated hatred of white people?\u00a0 What?<\/p>\n

This is why you don’t get into arguments with right wingers.\u00a0 They are stupid.\u00a0 They don’t recognize reality.\u00a0 Rules of logic do not apply.\u00a0 They try to color everything black or white.\u00a0 Anyone who disagrees with them, not matter how slightly, is the enemy.\u00a0 I knew all this when I responded, but I did it anyway.\u00a0 It went like this:<\/p>\n

Me: What’s with this false equivalency between Limbaugh and NPR? why do right wingers do that?<\/p>\n

Him: Hahahaha! Calling me a “right winger” is pretty darned funny.<\/p>\n

Me: It was the more polite of two choices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The thread went on and on, but with no more input from me.\u00a0 Like I said, I should know better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What should I find on Facebook early today but this?\u00a0 Ah, the smell of troll in the morning! I know, that’s some tiny print.\u00a0 Here’s what it says: The Republican Party have sent me their 2011 Congressional District Census.\u00a0 It’s a checkbox response format, thankfully with an <Other> option, since a lot of my choices […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,8,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-a-series-of-tubes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7269"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7281,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269\/revisions\/7281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}