Americans

When my brother came back from Japan, he told a story which has stuck with me, as it neatly summarizes one of the differences between Americans and the rest of the world.

He was visiting a zoo, and at one point the visitors can go right up to the bars in the back of an enclosure which held a lion. He asked the zookeeper how, since there's no barrier between the people and the bars, how they can keep people from reaching through the bars to where the lion is. The zookeeper looked at him incredulously and replied "There's a lion in the cage."

Apparently, such stupidity is so uncommon in Japan that he didn't understand why anyone would reach their hand into a cage with a lion in it.

I was reminded of this story when I read this article in the Register-Guard, about a drunk US soldier who had broken into a zoo in Baghdad and got bit by a tiger, after reaching into the cage.

Bush

Both roommates are downstairs watching Bush being "interviewed" by some tame reporter on fox news. I could only stand to watch for a few minutes. His constant smirk, intensifying every time he seems to think he's made a good point "their slogan is 'vote for me, I don't like George Bush' phmpht." in response to the question about "what do you think about the democrats scramble to unseat you" or whatever the fuck the reporter actually said. The whole thing is so obviously scripted, it's an insult to the intelligence of everyone watching. I could only stand to be insulted so much. It's not even good writing. What's he gonna ask next "what's your favorite color"?
Fuck.
Guess I should watch this. Is it news? Is it important? A crony of the same people who own the smirking bastard is feeding him lines so he can justify his positions on Iraq. Bush goes off on how what the opponents to the Iraq war want is really to just leave terrorists alone to plot among themselves peacefully (because, no doubt, they hate our freedom, but I didn't see the part where he said that), and the "reporter" just goes along with it, calmly and politely. Oh, yeah, that's why I oppose the war on Iraq, it's because I like terrorists. I'm so glad there's a white house script-writer to tell me that.

Many years ago, I set a role-playing game in a "dark future" where Pat Robertson was about to become President, and on the verge of a stupid war, and wrote a bunch of scripts satirizing TV news reporters who just sqawk out the official lines they are fed rather than make any attempt to do any actual journalism. I meant for it to be over-the-top satire, and have been unpleasantly surprised to see how quickly my county is actually falling down the same path I described in jest. (Although the phantom bad guys in my story were Satanists rather than "terrorists", faux news is sounding a lot like my fake "Jack and Dianne of CBS Evening News" these days.

Maybe I should sue them for copyright infringement.

But then, again, what else can you expect from a group who recently sued a writer, trying to get his book banned, on the premise that, "our viewers really are so stupid they won't be able to figure out that "Lies and the Lying Liars" might not be how we describe ourselves."