Your Opinion, Please (H2O Man Survey #24)

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54. LOVE IT!!! Adolf Hitler quotes are simply stunning in their relevance. Creepy. Horrifying. But

STUNNING. Reminds me of that bit in the first Harry Potter movie - John Hurt as Mr. Ollivander, the wand shop proprietor. Produced a wand for Harry to examine, because Harry needed one for his first year at Hogwarts. The wand had a connection to the evil Lord Voldemort. And Mr. Ollivander said something about how the Dark Lord was capable of doing "great things. Terrible. But great things." ("Great" as in large and tremendously overpowering, like a "great earthquake" of 8 or more on the scale, not necessarily "great" as in wonderful.) My favorite quote attributed to Hitler was "what luck for the leaders that men do not think." That one stopped me cold.

I told my kids about it. My daughter was in 4th grade at the time. At one point everyone in her class was assigned to come up with a memorable quote. She chose THAT one! Everyone presented their quote, in turn, and the rest of the class was charged with guessing who said it. Nobody got hers. When she told them, she later told me, everybody gasped.

It's one of my favorite quotes - EVER. That monster sure knew how to manipulate people. That quote should be on the Pox Noise coat of arms, if they have one.

And I'm torn over your question, H2O Man. Not sure how to answer. I think if at least some of them DIDN'T believe everything they said and "reported," they might have a problem getting up and going into work there every morning. Unless they're very skilled at putting the ol' blinders on and collecting that paycheck every other week. That's what makes me wonder why the hell Shepard Smith is still working there. How can he countenance that, with the grip on reality that he often seems to have (or at least display)?

Then again, I've been in the network news world and people are able to separate it. Some of the stuff you cover - you kinda have to. Clinton critics obsessing on the whole Monica mess used to refer to it as "situational ethics." Like being a "Cafeteria Catholic" I suppose (guilty as charged, here, btw!) - you pick and choose what you can live with and what you can and can't stomach. Many of 'em, I'd suspect, are just in it for the money, because - as I have heard many of them confess "hey, I've got kids in private school..." or "a wife/family to support" or "alimony/house payments" or some such. Hell, I used to work with a guy who - we teased - was working on his fourth set of alimony payments, due to his having to move cross-country for jobs and uproot more than one wife, and eventually those wives got tired of being uprooted again and again to accommodate his changing job locations.

I also wonder if a modified form of the Stockholm Syndrome starts to set in with people like those who work at Pox Noise. Most media buildings have the audio of whatever programming is on at any given moment - piped in everywhere. It's in the lobby, the receptionist's entrance, the hallways, even the bathrooms. I worked at one big station where the programming was coming out of the guard shack by the security gate to the parking lot. When you're surrounded by that, and inundated by that, and literally steeped in that shit all day, no matter WHERE you go in the building, I'll bet it starts to have an impact. You steep in it til it almost literally turns you into a teabagger. And if one doesn't have strong convictions or isn't paying attention, pretty soon it's likely that they will start accepting and internalizing what they're exposed to, nonstop, ALL THE OL' LIVE-LONG DAY. It can easily begin to override and drown out any possibility of critical thinking. It can easily start to modify one's thinking.

Consider - how many people in this country are lock-step Pox-bots or limbots - they take on these ideas and embrace them fully and become one with them. They do because that's all they hear. That's all they see. That's all they're exposed to. If all you listen to all day is limbaugh, where is the rebuttal? Where is the push-back? Where is the other side of the argument or the issue or whatever? Answer: NOWHERE. No such thing. No opposing views need apply. So what can you expect them to think, with that carefully-programmed and targeted avalanche of misinformation, distortion, and outright lies? They never hear anything other than this shit. So they can't be expected to know or believe anything else. Garbage in, garbage out.