TV News LIES

Reality is confused enough these days.  Perhaps if we try to overload it, and blow all its fuses and circuit breakers, we'll pop clear out at the other end, in some sort of sane, prosperous, sensible nirvana.

Let's give it a nudge and try this one:  Yes, someone paid $65,600 for a pair of Marie Antoinette's slippers.  Green and pink silk.

They fetched five times more than auctioneers thought they would get.  They were flooded with bids from around the world -- which should give you some indication of the number of people sitting on oversized piles of cash who are hopelessly clueless about what might be constructively done instead with any of those Scrooge McDuck, dollar-sign-sporting, canvas-bag heaps they're using for sofas.

Round 2 of the Predictably Over-hyped and Inappropriate Over-talking Shouting Match between The Professor and The Spewer is now over.  Now, maybe our national, throbbing-temple meltdown of a migraine will back off a bit.

It is a good time in America to drop to your knees, break out the secular hallelujahs, remember there is only one more of these things left to go, and be thankful for this Second Gasp of Conclusion.  (While you're down there, do you mind checking if that's a stain, or just the lighting in here?)

Once again, candidates were able to shout themselves raw in the peculiarly childish American game of political basketball -- this one spelled HOARSE.

This is a nation that loathes government and always has. Liberals should not be deluded: The Goldwater revolution will ultimately triumph, regardless of what happens in November.

Were the 2012 campaign a Hitchcock movie, Mitt Romney would be the MacGuffin—a device that drives a lot of plot gyrations but proves inconsequential in itself. Then again, Barack Obama could be, too. Our down-to-the-wire presidential contest is arguably just a narrative speed bump in the scenario that has been gathering steam throughout the Obama presidency: the resurgence of the American right, the most determined and coherent political force in America.

Words and language are odd things: They can make us howl in laughter, or, change the arrangements, they can cast us into a pit of despair.  Then, time went by, and we all more or less made it out of third grade psychologically intact -- but it was close for some, right?

If you kept both those extremes conceptually close, you're probably well-armed for everything else that followed.  However, as we are all spiraling in on dementia, sooner or later, maybe some memory-joggers of those old survival skills will prove useful.

The secret to seeing clearly, as anyone who's operated binoculars knows, is not only which end you look through and where you point the thing, but how well you adjust the focus, too.

The same process is helpful when asking questions, sorting information, and attempting to do any meaningful pigeonholing.  It's also helpful to not stuff dragons and griffins into slots better sized for sparrows or starlings.  But, it can be exhilarating to try.

Take a wide-angled view of fascists, for example:  They have a long history in America and abroad -- Germany and Italy, of course.  But, the fascists of today are not like those our fathers and grandfathers fought here and abroad.

At first glance, it's a jaw-dropping shock -- and then, the longer you stare at it, trying to peer into its mysteries, it becomes even less real than that.  Like poking smoke rings with a fork.

And, quite a lot like the wildly erroneous math used in recent years by the GOP to justify pet projects while pretending things really -- wink, nudge -- add up.

It appears some of that same logic is seeping into Europe:  A woman in France received a telephone bill for almost 12 quadrillion euros -- about 9.25 quadrillion U.S. dollars.

Yes, of course, it's a goof -- one of the more spectacular ones, sure to join the ranks of other astonishing math blunders of its type, right up there with the more subtle, but equally eye-popping, misplaced-or-missing decimal point in the contract, or a spot where "or" should have been used versus "and," followed by billions in shaken foundations.