For many years there was a trophy in Starmount High School’s
gym lobby with my name on it. I don’t
know if it’s still there. I might be the
only basketball player in Starmount’s history to have ever shot 100% the entire
season, including an end-of-game buzzer shot about midway between half court
and the foul line. We were an undefeated
team, usually winning by 50 or more points.
I still have my jacket.
True. Every word of
it.
But it’s FOX News kind of true. A recent study found that those who get their
news mainly from FOX are less informed on national and international news than
those who follow no news source at all!
Here’s why. FOX is a tool of
extremist politics. Not interested in
balance, it chooses and creates stories that push extremist Republican ideology
and hide any bits of truth that might support the opposite political side. For example, it would be detrimental to let
FOX viewers see President Obama as the Christian he claims he is, so if he
makes a trip to the Holy Land and other news networks cover his travels and his
reflections of walking where Jesus walked, FOX might instead choose to do a
story on repealing Obamacare with a break-in story about how Obama keeps
screwing over Israel. Did I mention that
during that trip, Israel awarded our President its highest civilian honor, the
Presidential Distinction Award, and a large Israeli audience gave him a
standing ovation? One blogger noted that
the Israeli people apparently are not watching FOX News.
OK, so what are FOX’s deceptive tactics? 1. It
chooses to air only the stories that support its political extremism, and 2. it creates its own stories, aired by no other
networks (when they say you’ll only see this on FOX, they are telling the truth),
to support its own extremist agenda. 3. It runs religiously and emotionally
captivating stories to deceive the large segment of the Republican audience
that comes to confuse the network with Christianity. This is a political ploy, successful especially
with those of the older generations who remember watching Walter Cronkite and Dan
Rather in a time when the evening news really could be trusted. And finally, 4. it tells half truths. Whatever words it chooses to air are probably
true, although it might air only 5 true words out of a hundred word story, and
fluff the rest with FOXisms.
There are levels of truth, and most of us have used them at
some time. There’s the “how close can I
come to lying without actually telling a lie” truth. This is one we learn to use as children. “I didn’t actually lie.
My exact words were . . .” Familiar? Unfortunately we carry this deceptive tactic with
us into adulthood, and so does FOX News.
Then there’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth; the quest for real meaning and deep understanding of issues and
events. No politically affiliated
entity, right or left, should be our most trusted source for this kind of
truth. If we see it on FOX (or MSNBC), just like
hearing it from a politician, we can be sure there is far more to the story
than what we are getting.
My basketball story was the first kind of truth. It included no lies, but I conveniently “forgot” to share some
of the facts. Here’s the rest of the story: I only made the team my freshman
year, the freshmen team, and then only because no one was cut. Being one of two players on the team who had
not even made my jr. high team, I never even grasped the concepts of screening
or running plays. Indeed we were an
undefeated team, complete with jackets to celebrate it, but none of that credit
goes to me, because I spent the season on the bench. Most games, when we were over fifty points
ahead, the coach would put me into the game for the final 3 seconds. (I must have been really bad, because I’m not
exaggerating when I say 3 seconds!) I
did shoot twice during my 3-second play times.
Once was a foul shot, and once was a long buzzer shot. Both went in, thus my 100% shooting record. And the trophy story is true also. I just forgot to mention that it had nothing
to do with basketball.
Which kind of truth would you rather hear? I prefer as unbiased a source as I can find,
unaffiliated with either political party.
Just give me the facts, all of them that are available, and allow me to
process them for myself without being fed political interpretations.
Why am I so adamant against a news network that I don’t even
watch? Because it’s deceiving people I
love, not because they are unintelligent, but because they are too trusting to
realize they are being politically used and brain-washed. Less informed than those who follow no news
at all? Think about what that means.
It used to be that if it was in newsprint or aired on the
evening news, it could be trusted. Those
days are gone, and I too lament it, but there are other networks that are trying
harder to give us truth.
OK, enough about news. Let's get back to me! Want to hear the story about when I played on an all
women’s volleyball team in a league of all men? Or about the season I ran track?
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