It’s been a roller coaster of emotion for good-standing members of both the Left and the Right during this cabinet nomination process. We’ve had people that liberals can stomach, and we’ve had people that conservatives are not happy with, then this week we had someone that both the left and right really don’t like. Sounds like a good, balanced cabinet to me. Kind of like that extended family reunion everyone dreads attending. Perfect. So American.
We’ve had a lot of talk about “fake” news (no, not the Brian Williams/Dan Rather variety), even having some weirdo go so far as to show up at a local D.C. pizzeria, weapons in hand, to ‘investigate’. Surely, this is proof that we need to turn off the internet, right? I mean, someone (with a gun, no less – and you know how we feel about guns, right?) actually believed drivel on the internet and then acted on it! There needs to be stricter controls on this sort of stuff, right? What about fake books? Fake magazines? I mean the National Enquirer made quite a living blurring the lines between fake and real so someone was buying this stuff, right? Have you watched television lately?
Talk about ‘fake’…..Hillary Clinton showed up at Harry Reid’s farewell party and gave a talk. The first one since losing the election, in fact. Did she capitalize on this opportunity to address some of the outlandish nonsense her supporters have been fomenting – from the CalExit movement (can Californians come up with yet another way to waste their taxpayer dollars?) to the Electors switching their votes away from Trump (and toward Civil War, presumably) to the hysterical overreaction of liberal cities like ‘Frisco (yes, they hate that term, which is why I use it) to snowflakes on college campuses? Nope. She used her pulpit to decry ‘fake’ news and how it’s now ‘dangerous’! Wait, what? This stuff has been around since the beginning of time, people. Nothing new here. There are people that believe the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary never took place – in fact a woman in Florida who believed that was recently arrested for threatening a parent of one of the murdered students. Remember all the loonies that think 9-11 was orchestrated by the U.S. government? That the pentagon was not hit by a hijacked plane, but rather a U.S. fired cruise missile? There has never been, nor ever will be, a shortage of fake news.
What we all have to be wary of is people in the media as well as politicians using the term ‘fake news’ as the new talking point for anything they disagree with. Ones perception of an event or fact does not make it true or false. Which brings me to Elvis Presley.
I recently came across a blog that referenced a 1956 article written by one John Crosby entitled “Performer’s Gyrations May Doom Rock ‘n Roll” and of course, it was referring to Elvis Presley and his scandalous (at that time) stage persona. Looking back, we’re amused because it’s nothing alarming by today’s standards. Does that make it less truthful? Of course not. It was a matter of opinion, not fact, which history has judged to be incorrect. Likewise, much of the information that came out from wikileaks during the election may or may not bear out. It’s the responsibility of the reader to do his or her part in determining the level of veracity that they can assign to a particular story. That’s what the voters did, in my opinion, over the course of the election – to the detriment of Hillary Clinton in particular.
Lets not forget that Elvis Presley went from the bane of conservatives to the Oval Office over the course of the next 14 years. History has a funny way of changing your viewpoint and thereby your conclusions….
Read the blog that I found the story about the 1956 article here: http://einsteinsrefrigerator.com/wordpress/early-criticism-elvis-presley/
The Weaponist 