Fair and Balanced?

At the age of 49, I spent the first 32 years of my life watching, hearing and smelling nothing but a left wing biased news media on television, on the radio and in the newspapers. As most people in my age group, I was busy with work and family and didn't have a lot of time to discern between what was suppose to be news and what was being put out there with a political agenda. Save the whales, save the dolphins, hug a tree, were widely accepted as main stream stuff. So many homeless dying in the streets, families living in their cars, huge divides between the haves and have-nots, more stuff we needed to hear about relentlessly. I could go on and on about the things we were bombarded with and how we were all suppose to feel guilty, but I think you get the point. This changed one day in the cellar of my business when I happened upon a talk radio show using the term "fema-nazi". I was aghast and I was hooked.
OK, so now you think I am a mindless zombie who just drinks the kool-aid and spews radical right wing propaganda. How wrong you are my pinko friends. All that radio show did was show that there is another side to what I had been hearing and seeing my entire life. Am
I brainwashed now by the right wing? The definition of brainwashing according to the American Heritage dictionary is as follows; "brainwashing n. Intensive, force-able indoctrination aimed at replacing a person's basic convictions with an alternative set of fixed beliefs." Mindless? I don't think so. I now consider myself fair and balanced.
This is the definition of balance; an influence or force tending to produce equalibrium. Now, if I had been influenced by the left my entire life, 32 years, and for 17 years I have been paying attention to both sides of the news then I am still out of whack with the right and considerably leaning further to the left. I need to listen to right wing propaganda for at least another 15 years with no influence from the left at all to reach a balance. This ain't happening and I will tell you why.
I awake everyday to left wing news. I listen to talk radio and the news comes on every half hour. CNN radio network belches out Democrat talking points endlessly. I hear about war deaths and global warming, corrupt businesses and government saviors. I hear how government spending cuts would ruin our education system and cause our old folks into economic chaos. Grandma and Grandpa are going to have to make a choice; eat dog food or buy medicine and the rest of us are causing it because we don't want to go broke paying taxes. We hear about right wing christian fanatics who want to control our sex lives and make women have abortions in back allies at the hands of leering Doctors with Josef Mengella agendas. Smokers are evil. Drunk drivers are worse than terrorists. We have to be in a constant state of crisis. I don't insulate myself from this so-called news, I absorb it, analyze it, think about what the other side of the story could be, ask why the story is being reported in the first place and wonder if we really need to hear what other people "feel" about the story.
I listen to the endless polls being reported, ask who these pollsters polled and wonder why people's opinions need to be in the news in the first place. Are we all supposed to hear the polls and then follow the crowd so we don't have to actually think about things? I guess. If everyone believes something then it must be right and we don't have to look into it, we don't need to think, we just need to follow.
I have decided to take things into my own hands. From now on, I will post news reports, let you decide if the news is worthy of reporting and let you decide whether or not there is an agenda. As Glenn Beck says," I am not an expert but I am a thinker", all I ask is that you be a thinker too. Be open minded and think about what is being reported and why. I will do this as often as I can and I will not pick and choose, I will simply put it out there.
9:30 local news, school bus accident, power out in some places, shelters open. testimony about an alleged murderer. nationally; melting glaciers, hunger, destruction because of global warming. new jobs created...and golf.
More stuff tomorrow.