Friday, June 23, 2006

Hyper Active: Today I'm mad at everyone. That's right, every single one of you. It's because all y'all always overuse hyperbole. Constantly.

Every time I read anything in the paper or hear something on the news, everyone is overexaggerating everything they say. Instapundit highlighted a good one today.

The world's least free place for making movies is the US, because it has a fixed model.

So sayeth Ang Lee. Yeah, that guy who just made a controversial multi-million dollar movie that won him an Academy Award. It seems The Man is holding him down.

We hear these exaggerations every single day. The United States is the biggest terrorist threat in the world. America is the least free place in the world. America is the least tolerant place in the world. Nobody believes any of this is true, but it's still offensive to hear.

Republicans are warmongers. Democrats hate America. Hyperbole is everywhere you look.

Apparently nobody can get their views publicized unless they say something so abhorrent that it strains conventional sanity let alone credibility. That's why both conservative Ann Coulter and liberal Ted Rall accused 9/11 widows of enjoying their husbands' deaths. No one would listen to them otherwise. But, in truth, nobody should listen to them because of such nonsense.

Tim Robbins complained of the "chill wind" of censorship that was sweeping the nation. He said it at a public press conference at the National Press Club.

Gitmo is the "Gulag of our time". And everyone is a Nazi, or Al Qaeda.

People are more likely to be quoted if they say something stupid than something rational. And the media savvy are well aware of this. It's time the news media ignored these efforts instead of rewarding them with publicity.