Our Media, Sanitized for Your Ignorance

So the Radical Bohemian is home, safe, if not quite sound. She had to leave her new bike, Spirit the Unicorn, chained up on G Street. She's worried, because her last bike, Trigger, got stolen when she left it chained at the metro station once last spring.

She said when they passed the anti-protesters earlier in the day, it was really something. The pro-war camp threw cups, food, and trash at the protesters, hurled obscenities at them, screamed that the traitorous protesters should be deported. One of the protesters ended up with a broken jaw at the hands of the red crowd. I never understand the rationale with that, as a goodly portion of that crowd are at the extreme end of the Christian scale. I can't really see Jesus pulling that crap on some folks who are trying to end a war, but hey, that's just me.
(Not saying that crowd represents all Christians, or even mainstream Christians, but as a former Follower, it upsets me to see that faith used as a way to spread that kind of hatefulness in any way -- that's not what it's supposed to be about.)

Last night I flipped and flipped through channels and found NOTHING on the 11pm news. I was in a meeting yesterday from about 3, and didn't get home until after 10, so I'm sure there was some form of coverage over the afternoon, but I was looking before and after my meeting/dinner, and there wasn't much.

The Radical Bohemian told me last night that they were to be the front page story in the NY Times this morning. I was in the grocery store this morning, and it was nowhere on that front page. She got interviewed by some newspaper out of Rhode Island, but can't remember which one.


So I'm really disappointed in what our media chooses to show and not show.

I think it's part of the reason for the perceived apathy in this country. We're lacking that sense of shared purpose, it seems like no one is doing anything. People were doing something in a big way in DC this weekend, but the media controlled how much and what we know about it. My daughter read on the internet last night, before she finally hit the bed, that "at least 2 people were sprayed with a chemical spray". She was outraged.

"What? 'At least two'? There were at least 20, and those were just the ones who got it directly in the face!"

From what my daughter said about how the ANSWER Coalition folks were treated just over hanging the signs -- huge fines, arrests, harassment, their signs being torn down while ads for concerts and other events stayed up -- I can't help but think that our right to freedom of speech is being purposely and methodically squashed here.

And the conservatives have the nerve to bitch about the liberal media.

Whatever.