*heh* Or, All the “News” That’s Fit to Fake. Or, “How to keep sheeple scared and angry over nothing so the real issues can slide our way.”
Even I get caught up in going apseshit over fake news from time to time. But I do at least try to discern the agendas of the “reports” before jumping on a bandwagon. Read the header on this blog. Currently it reads:
“A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it’s going to get.† Ian Williams Goddard
I got lucky in the recent story about the student who was reported to have attempted taking a “hoax device” (what a weasel worded hoax charge! “Device”? What? A “hoax spork”? *feh*) into Logan Airport.
Of course it was a “reality-based fantasy” hoax, perpetrated by hoax airport security theater, Mass Media Podpeople hoax news mentality and scaremongering. Predictably, folks all over the place, including blogs, went apeshit.
Will the truth that’s emerging get similar play in the “news”? Of course not. Excerpted from an email to Jerry Pournelle (from someone who’s demonstrated clear credibility in the past):
Last week was Career Week at MIT. As usually happens during such events, the students turned out in high numbers to speak with company representatives and examine the “free” items that are handed out to students who visit certain booths. Star Simpson, an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science major who enjoys playing around with electronics, wore a bulky handmade nametag to the event. It consisted of a breadboard, LEDs in the shape of a star (for her name), some wires, and a nine-volt battery. She taped it to her sweatshirt to keep it in place, possibly hoping that the company representatives would better be able to remember a student with a flashing nametag.
She also, as is custom, acquired a number of neat little items from the vendors there. I’ve seen some of what was available – bleach pens for clothing, large foam ‘pills’ that you could squeeze as a method of stress relief, small containers of Play-Doh. She picked up a canister of Play-Doh and placed it in her pocket.
Some time after this – I don’t know how long, sorry – she went to the Logan Airport to meet a friend of hers. I can easily see her losing track of time and being too rushed to put her sweatshirt away before leaving. Or perhaps she forgot the breadboard entirely – just as someone with a bandaged wrist will soon ignore its presence. Or perhaps she thought no one would care – she is from MIT, after all, and the culture here does not regard breadboards as weapons of mass destruction. Or perhaps she thought that it wouldn’t matter, since she knew that she would not be going through the security checkpoint.
For being an all-too-typical space cadet, Star Simpson recieved the scare of her life, was subject to massive false accusations by Mass Media Podpeople and metaphorically pilloried, keelhauled and otherwise villified by folks (including bloggers), near and far. I was lucky, I guess, in that I was immediately suspicious of the reports, simply because ANYYTHING coming from a.) airport security theater is about 90% fantasy and b.) Mass Media Podpeople “reports” approach 100% lies, especially when based on “facts” (that can be twisted into lies) even though c.) anything that sounds too stupid for words IS likely to have been done by the average Joe or Josephine on the street. So I didn’t exactly jump on the villification of Star Simpson Bandwagon. Just luck and cynicism paying off.
Go. Read the whole thing, including Pournelle’s reply. Look into the facts of airpoprt security theater, and think on this: whenever a man (particularly a lowbrow goon employed by the government to suppress the sheeple) does something he knows is wrong, he always claims it is his duty. Yeh, I butchered the centurion’s line from Shaw’s “Antony and Cleopatra” with my paraphrase. Let Shaw sue me.
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