Were you really upset about the Jena 6? Chill out, the whole story is false. Or what you think you know about it at any rate. There was no whites-only tree. There were no nooses threatening black students:
According to the expulsion committee, the crudely constructed nooses were not aimed at black students. Instead, they were understood to be a prank by three white students aimed at their fellow white friends, members of the school rodeo team. (The students apparently got the idea from watching episodes of "Lonesome Dove.") The committee further concluded that the three young teens had no knowledge that nooses symbolize the terrible legacy of the lynchings of countless blacks in American history. When informed of this history by school officials, they became visibly remorseful because they had many black friends.There was no 3-day suspension (it was 9 days, plus 2 weeks of in-school suspension, plus Saturday detentions, plus mental health evaluation). The DA didn't threaten black students, there was no all-whites barn party, etc., etc., etc. RTWT to see all the things you think happened that didn't.
We live in a nation perpetually being roiled by passions based on stories that amount to gossip. He said that his cousin said that his Aunt said...and the reporter runs with it. Let's review the major stories of the last few years, shall we, reprising this post, but with additions to our tally?
- Yesterday Sen. Boxer claimed 50% of National Guard equipment is in Iraq, so they can't fight the fires adequately and reporters just ran with it. Yes, Senator, I'm sure the Guard missess all those tanks, guns & up-armored vehicles while fighting fires.
- The Duke assault on rich white boys case.
- The victory over al-Qaeda in Iraq perpetually reported as loss.
- The decency of our soldiers besmirched in TNR.
- The Haditha reasonable behavior of Marines.
- Photoshopgate.
- The bears on the ice floe.
- NBC trying to invent anti-Muslim prejudice.
- Here's Hugh Hewitt catching the Boston Globe inventing something (relatively minor, but still).
- Then there's the 30 Headless Bodies That Weren't (or as Tim Blair put it, "Headless Bodies Found In Factless Rag")
- And air-brushing Mexican flags out of immigration coverage.
- And shamelessly plagiarizing.
- And the Abu Graib victim who wasn't.
- And the horror of Korans not being flushed at Gitmo.
- Not to mention the Katrina victim who wasn't.
- And the babies in the fridge who weren't.
- And Katrina disasters as a Bush/FEMA failure, rather than a Nagin/Blanco failure.
What are we to say about a nation whose major news organs are no more reliable than the National Enquirer? Perhaps the reason the Weekly World News is folding is that it now has too much competition.
If all you know is what you read in the papers...you don't know a damn thing. And as Reagan noted, it's worse --you know a lot that ain't so.
Update: Brett McS comments pithily:
Trust but verify...and go easy on the trust.
