O'Donnell complains that she keeps hearing "gobbledy gook" from Senators on health care overhaul
June 10, 2009 11:08 am ET
From the 10 a.m. ET hour of MSNBC Live on June 10:
Expand All
Expand 1st Level
Collapse All
Palin's book and Obama's bow: a media week to forget
Media Matters: The Palin chronicles
The Friday Rush: A series of conflicts
I think I also remember that anyone who asked how much the Iraq War was going to cost was accused of "aiding the terrorists" or "hating our troops".
You bet, it's a question that regular folks can and should ask themselves...
What do I get and what can I do with, for a trillion dollars in federal spending...
What do shiny fabulously expensive hi-tech gadgets that don't work but are made and sold by George W. Bush's and Dick Cheney's supporters and end up crashed or wrecked or broken down in IRAQ, what do I get for them and what do they do for me?
As opposed to health insurance.
You get health insurance, you walk into the doctor's office or the clinic or the emergency room, and you're covered, you have health insurance...
This is really a no-brainer, which is why it's being presented in the media in such a confused and brainless manner.
It's true, if there was ever a Public Policy issue that cannot be fully understood in just ten seconds or even ten minutes, it's this one... and I'll credit Sen. Casey for managing to walk that tightrope, without saying something in just those ten or 45 seconds that could have been twisted and misconstrued any which way, something that would then require ten minutes to untwist and explain correctly... but long before that could be done, we'd have moved on to two other idiotically brief stories that illuminate nothing and no one.
Still, the matter is nowhere near incomprehensible, it just takes mostly a little patience and an open mind (check your preconceptions at the door) and common sense, and yet somehow it seems like these cable television commentary and news story shows, it seems that patience and sense and objectivity are things they're trying to destroy, not cultivate or otherwise employ.
The Internet Wire is a better place for information in this matter.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/
I don't know how to hyperlink a URL into these comments, but you can of course copy and paste that address into your address window... it's the PBS Frontline documentary "Sick Around The World", subtitled "Can the U.S. learn anything from the rest of the world about how to run a health care system?"
You can watch the whole thing online, if you haven't already seen it... it's extraordinary, for the calm and patient and objective easy manner the information is presented, mostly due I think to T.R. Reid, the report's host and narrator.
It takes an hour to watch the whole thing, but it's worth every minute... and as far as these ten and 45 second interviews, like the one in the clip above, that go nowhere and ultimately explain nothing, and just trade in misconceptions and preconceptions and sound bites, and in what amounts to just wasted time and wasted air and wasted words, as for those many little interviews on this issue?
You know if you fused all those wastes of 45 second and minute long chunks of nothing together, the what must be thousands of such little chunks that cable television has aired so far and will continue to air, on this particular Public Policy issue, that fusion of time and air and words, would add up to hours, many hours, maybe a hundred and maybe a thousand...
PBS's Frontline and T.R. Reid, they patiently sat down, and calmly put together an objective one hour documentary on the issue, because that's the way to do it, that's how much time it takes to understand the matter...
Cable television prattles on and on and on in thousands and even millions of little 45 second chunks of nothing, that when those hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of little nothings are added up, you have untold wasted hours, of a big fat nothing said at all worth while.