Lonelygirl15

Today’s rant is on the subject of skepticism and the scams that are taking place all over in the media world. It dovetails with the Jonah Goldberg column I wrote about yesterday. If you've been following the story about Lonelygirl15, you know what I'm talking about, if not you can read about it here.

Long story short, it's about a girl who was ostensibly pouring out her heart about the trials and tribulations of her life on a video blog on youtube, only she wasn't. What she was was an actress playing a part. The whole thing was an attempt by some kids to create a "new" kind of entertainment. But a lot of people were sucked in, funny enough a lot of other people were not quite as sucked in. A guy named Matt Foremski using the same tools, the Internet, that the scammers were using, blew up the scam. In a story in the Trib this morning matt's dad Tom provided the Money quote:

"There's going to be these kind of minor explosions of information that we don't know if it's real or not. . . . On the one hand, it's a good thing if it gets people to question their media. On the other hand, everything's going to be questioned." (Emphasis added)

In a world where these kinds of small-scale manipulations and distortions seem to be everyday occurrences in just about any medium you care to mention (Jason Blair, Dan Rather, that "Million Little Pieces" guy) it's no wonder the skepticism has reached the point where we don't believe journalists or presidents.

My Dad used to say you can't believe anything you read and only half of what you see. I used to think he was joking. Not now nomore. Now I think he was just a little ahead of his time.

Who Blew Up The World Trade Center?

Here's something that drives me nuts. In the Tribune this morning Jonah Goldberg contributed a piece where he rails against people who are buying into stupid theory’s about how the George Bush and others in his administration are responsible for blowing up the WTC.

Unfortunately, he never once acknowledges why so many believe this crap. The simple fact is Bush has lied about so much; it becomes difficult to believe him about anything. I don't believe for a second that the Bushies had anything to do with leveling those buildings, but when you think of how dishonest they are (WMD, Domestic Spying, selling the country to the Chinese to finance deficit spending, dismissal of science, and on and on), it's not that far of a stretch to think they could take down a couple buildings in order to further their plans.

If Goldberg wants to complain about the cynicism of Americans, he should first start with the current occupant. Maybe if the administration started telling the truth, people would start believing what they say.