Root, root, root!

In 1984 I became a die-hard, life-long Chicago Cubs fan. It was easy. They were on TV every day when I took my lunch break, they wore all-American red, white and blue uniforms, were storied with an adorable history of mediocrity and they had a marble mouthed old announcer in WGN's Harry Carey. Their product marketing hooked me, I bit down hard and eventually passed the frustration of being a Cubs fan onto my own kids, you know, to make the suffering a family affair.

There was another team on TV every day back in the mid 1980's. The Braves were the other "Super Station" team forcing themselves into our living rooms and they even dubbed themselves "America's Team". I could have just as easily become an Atlanta fan I suppose, but I went the way of the Cubs and have successfully resisted the allure of closer baseball markets like the Mariners.

A few times each season the Cubs and Braves would play each other and of course the games were then available on both super channels. One day I decided to flip over and see what the game looked like on TBS. After all, Harry's son Skip was the announcer for the Braves.

Oh my god! What was this? I was shocked at how one sided the coverage was! The Braves this! The Braves that! The wonderful freaking Braves! And whenever there was a close play or anything that was at all controversial, these idiots always sided with the rotten Braves! It was so unfair, so biased and so blatantly pro-Atlanta I couldn't stand to watch. How could they be so stupid, so blind and never ever give credit to the Cubs? And their fans! Those mindless morons with their ridiculous tomahawk chop and incessant chant -- over and over again! I couldn't take any more and quickly flipped back to channel 9! Ahhh! There. All is right with the world again. Good old Harry. He understood. He saw things the way I did. He made it feel right, even when we were losing, even if we were wrong, Harry could show it to you through the eyes of a Cubs fan. But Harry, how could your own son be such an unreasonable and such an obvious purveyor of pure trash? How could your own flesh and blood see things so wrong?

This bias is worthy of some contemplation I think... but of course it is just baseball.

Medicare costs alone are going to bankrupt our country in less than 20 years and the damned libs want to e x p a n d it and make it bigger not smaller. Worse yet, they want to give it people who sit on their asses all day while I get mine up at 5 am and go to work -- and I still run out of money between pay days -- because these jackasses are better at pulling money out of my wallet than I am. Not only that but most of these lazy freeloaders they want to give my money to weren't even born in this country and probably came here just to hop aboard the run away government gravy train that is Obamacare.

Crack pot ex-lobbyist Tea Baggers were just installed by into the US house of representatives courtesy of an mass investment in huge big lie propaganda techniques funded by corporations with resources in the financial, insurance and oil industries. You see they stand to lose a great deal of that wealth of theirs if the current policies of eliminating their tax breaks, fucking with their insurance scam business practices and switching to alternative energy are allowed to continue. They are business MEN and putting out the big bucks to sway the ignorant masses was a simple investment. After all, that's why they bought up all the radio and TV media over the last many years, to control the message and perfect the delivery. C'mon guys repeat after me: "Laurie Dhue, we love you"! Oh wait, she's not on there anymore. Too bad. She was a good one.

Oh it's all so confusing! Which channel should I watch? It's so much work flipping back and forth and trying to figure out who's lying and who's telling the truth. It's so much easier to just pick one and leave it there. Look! There's breaking new flashing across the screen! My god, what's happened now? Another terrorist attack? Another pregnant woman killed? You know those women, the weaker sex after all, they're either getting pregnant and then come up missing or they're looking hot and reading news stories on TV.

They sure don't remind me of Walter Cronkite. Or Eric Sevareid or Daniel Shore or even Bob Scheiffer. Stuffy old white guys, which is a good thing, but when they reported the news back in the day, they at least tried to be objective. Didn't they? Now don't get me wrong, I don't believe for a second that at any time in our history the press has ever been totally objective. But I do believe that there was a time when reporters prided themselves on at least attempting that purpose. They felt a sense of honor and pride in trying to understand the news in Washington DC, and the rest of the world, and trying to explain it within the limits of a nightly half hour newscast.

Some of these guys even thought of themselves as the "fourth estate". A necessary overseer of the three branches of government. A free press as advocated for us by none other than Thomas Jefferson, to watch closely the doings of our elected representatives and report back. A responsibility to watch over those in power and provide yet another check - an independent check. This was the news our fathers listened to and after a lifetime of reporting, one these old time newsmen was even dubbed "the most trusted man in America". A TV news guy!

Well all those people are gone now and things are quite a bit different. Today the media creates the news and gives no pretense at objectivity and many times concocts the days talking points which are then read by their corresponding politico. The tail wagging the dog. No fourth estate and no trusted men.

So let's find someone to blame for this mess. How about the politicians! We know they all suck and have no real interest in truly representing us. They're going to go right along doing what they have always done and that's the work of those that installed them. Make no mistake, you gotta play the game back there or you're out. Think you can actually get to Washington and go rogue? Absolutely not. You'll never get on a committee and you'll certainly never get any financing unless you play ball with the big boys. You learn that on your first day. And we just keep going along with it because they sometimes call in the cameras and come out and one more time and give us the canned crap that we want to hear: they're for smaller government-- or they're going to stop the ice caps from melting. Whatever feels good to you. Whatever issue you want to adopt and rally around, they have plenty of them to choose from. Pick a side. Choose a team. Adopt a mascot.

We can also blame the so-called media. We all know that MSNBC and Fox News are nothing but 24 hour brainwashing machines funded by those with a lot to win or lose. They know exactly what graphics to put up on the screen, how long to stay on one story before your attention starts to wither, what type of stories to run and how to space them, who looks good reading them and which way they should part their hair, all so you'll keep watching and getting your daily dose of bullshit. It's all very calculated and it works very well.

But I'm not going to blame them either. I'm not going to blame the media-- or the politicians who work for them. I blame all of us. Because we're lazy, because we're too busy to pull out our own old tax returns and look for ourselves to so see if our taxes really do go up under one party or another. Or don't really want to admit to ourselves that we've been duped all these years and maybe our team doesn't really lower the deficit like it claims or produce more jobs or influence the stock market to help my retirement 401k. All that type of real information and more is readily available to us but how many of us take the time to look? How many have the guts to look? In the end all we have time for is watching a our little channel during dinner or maybe before going to bed at night.

But I'm counting on us being smarter than this in the long run. I'm sure that just about everyone, not just me, sees the futility in this pick a side, back and forth every 2 to 4 years, absurd cycle that we're in. I'm simple enough to think we can turn this whole thing around and stop all the wasted motion, while the fat cats sit on top of the fence and watch us fight amongst ourselves down in the alley and become poorer and poorer. Divide and conquer. It doesn't get any simpler than that.

But we have to have the courage. The courage to seek out our own truth, whatever the truth is, even if doesn't fit what we believe now. To become our own fourth estate. The courage to be the type of person that passes along that truth and doesn't take part in the spreading of lies. And if you don't want to know the truth and want to continue to be told what to think, why don't you at least stop spreading the propaganda? Whatever happened to self respect and your own honor? How can you be someones lying little email bitch? How can you stand being their monkey?

The real answers are there. No media outlet needed. No political ad required. Just real information that smart caring people have access to and can ponder and make real decisions. It takes a little effort. Now I'm not smart enough to know where a little truth could lead. Maybe it would just make our broken system better. Maybe it could lead a truly empowered party of the people. Because in the end, despite what we get told every day, we all pretty much want the same things. We just have to have the courage to find that out.

Because politics isn't baseball. Politics matters. But hey, I'm just a simple Cubs fan and as we all know the Sox suck and the Cardinals take it in their Pujols.