Kathleen Parker
This is really, really scary. With all that's been coming out lately about news organizations presenting White House political commercials to us as straight news stories, now we find out that 32% of high school kids think the press has too much freedom. How can you have too much freedom?!?
This all ties in with my theory that the bulk of Americans are too uninterested/too stupd to try to understand the world. And like most animals, they're scared of what they don't understand, and they want Big Daddy to tell them what to do. Big Daddy has multiple forms, one of them being God, as represented to them by the ultra-conservative fundamentalist Christian Right, and the other is the Daddy whose family and friends bought him the White House for a second term.
Five year olds want to run to Daddy to make everything all right. Adults should be able to take care of themselves. How about we have a new eligibility requirement for voting in this country - In order to be considered mature enough to vote, you have to be dropped by helicopter all by yourself into the outskirts of a city you've never been to before, with no information at all and only $20 in your wallet, and your challenges are to find a public bathroom; feed yourself; find a place to sleep for the night; and find city hall to register to vote. No cell phones allowed. If you can do all that without falling apart or calling for help, then you're allowed to vote. Oh, and you should also, in separate events, have to rewire a lamp and assemble some IKEA furniture. All without calling daddy.
Anyway, here's an excerpt, this is terrifying:
"In a recent study, the largest ever of its kind, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation attempted to measure high school students' understanding of the First Amendment and the free press. Among the more depressing results:
More than a third (35%) said the First Amendment goes 'too far' in the rights it guarantees.
Close to a third (32%) think the press has too much freedom.
Only half of students surveyed (51%) said newspapers should be allowed to publish stories without prior government approval.
Loosely extrapolating, we might conclude that close to half of America's teens would be just as happy living in North Korea, Cuba, Iran or some other totalitarian state. No, they didn't say so outright and probably would be aghast at the suggestion. 'Dude, are you crazy? Give up MTV?'
This all ties in with my theory that the bulk of Americans are too uninterested/too stupd to try to understand the world. And like most animals, they're scared of what they don't understand, and they want Big Daddy to tell them what to do. Big Daddy has multiple forms, one of them being God, as represented to them by the ultra-conservative fundamentalist Christian Right, and the other is the Daddy whose family and friends bought him the White House for a second term.
Five year olds want to run to Daddy to make everything all right. Adults should be able to take care of themselves. How about we have a new eligibility requirement for voting in this country - In order to be considered mature enough to vote, you have to be dropped by helicopter all by yourself into the outskirts of a city you've never been to before, with no information at all and only $20 in your wallet, and your challenges are to find a public bathroom; feed yourself; find a place to sleep for the night; and find city hall to register to vote. No cell phones allowed. If you can do all that without falling apart or calling for help, then you're allowed to vote. Oh, and you should also, in separate events, have to rewire a lamp and assemble some IKEA furniture. All without calling daddy.
Anyway, here's an excerpt, this is terrifying:
"In a recent study, the largest ever of its kind, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation attempted to measure high school students' understanding of the First Amendment and the free press. Among the more depressing results:
More than a third (35%) said the First Amendment goes 'too far' in the rights it guarantees.
Close to a third (32%) think the press has too much freedom.
Only half of students surveyed (51%) said newspapers should be allowed to publish stories without prior government approval.
Loosely extrapolating, we might conclude that close to half of America's teens would be just as happy living in North Korea, Cuba, Iran or some other totalitarian state. No, they didn't say so outright and probably would be aghast at the suggestion. 'Dude, are you crazy? Give up MTV?'
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