Skip to content
The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen
Menu
  • Home
  • News
  • Community
  • Schools
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Obituaries
  • Sports
  • Mill
  • Flora
  • Print Archive
  • About
Menu

Ginning up the anger

Posted on August 14, 2009 by Staff

Good people are going hungry tonight all over this land, and right here in neighborhoods scattered around these little towns.

Jobs have dried up. Hiring is on hold. Hours are down.

Benefits are going away. More and more people are joining the ranks of the uninsured, while the ranks of the underinsured are discovering the consequences of being so, one serious illness at a time.

Perhaps we’ve heard so many ugly, damnable lies of late about health care and the fix we’re in because the truth is a good bit uglier.

It is much easier to debate a “what if” — as in, “What if paying for a living will consultation really means a death panel for grandma?” — than it is to confront grandma’s impending bankruptcy and, eventually, our own at the hands of a system that has enriched a few at the expense of the many.

Discourse is all about lies these days, open and boldfaced and retold and replayed online and on cable ad nauseum (then run, days later, on the pages of this nation’s metro dailies). They repeat the “what ifs” of the president’s birth because it is far easier and entertaining a subject than, say, veterans sleeping under overpasses.

You might chalk up this meltdown to a kind of realty-show entertainment we’re partaking of to deal with the malaise of the Great Recession.

But when Nazi is the flavor of the month and gun-toting “patriots” talking about tyrants feel comfortable packing heat at town halls, all bets are off. The media, even those printed on old trees, have a responsibility not to feed the fires of hate.

Actual hardship is taking place in this country, while the cameras are pointed at those trying to gin up more anger and channel the vast amount already out there for their cause.

Web Archive

© 2025 The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme