The Egg? Really?
It saddens me greatly to have to admit that one of my favorite—indeed, iconic—sources of information has been unmasked as just another hallowed American institution that seems to think that truth is nothing just another bug to be pitilessly squashed on the sidewalk of corporate advancement.
It’s not that this is a rare occurrence anymore. The media, taking their cue from their own main source of fodder, the federal gummint, has for years been playing with, pandering to and outright lying at consumers of their product. But they have now gone too far.
A recent article on CNN’s web site brought this to my attention. Turns out that the egg came before the chicken, which means that Playboy’s cartoon years ago featuring a smug chicken and a dissatisfied egg laying side-by-side in post-coital stupor was poorly researched at best, a deliberate attempt to mislead the public at worst. (The egg is mumbling “guess we answered that question.”)
Rush Limbaugh lying? Okay. The New York Times plagiarizing? Fine. But Playboy?
I suppose—in this era of exemplary researcher and prose craftsman extraordinaire Dan Brown and his brilliant exposés of the Illuminati, Opus Dei and other malevolent organizations—that I shouldn’t be surprised at this sort of finagling with the truth. Still, it’s a little like finding out that not only isn’t Santa Claus real, but he was made up by, say, evil extraterrestrial gremlins (perfectly shaped to slide down chimneys) with the intent of having gullible parents and lobbyists gather booty into easily collectible bundles once per Earthling year.
And it’s been going on for years, is the thing. This is not just Jason Blair making stuff up to justify his expense account or Rush Limbaugh flagrantly misquoting Patrick J. Fitzgerald; this goes way deeper than that, right to the core of American history.
We may never know all the lies, all the half-truth, all the evasions we’ve been spoon fed by the media and the government, but I will say this: At least we have Dan Brown.
It’s not that this is a rare occurrence anymore. The media, taking their cue from their own main source of fodder, the federal gummint, has for years been playing with, pandering to and outright lying at consumers of their product. But they have now gone too far.
A recent article on CNN’s web site brought this to my attention. Turns out that the egg came before the chicken, which means that Playboy’s cartoon years ago featuring a smug chicken and a dissatisfied egg laying side-by-side in post-coital stupor was poorly researched at best, a deliberate attempt to mislead the public at worst. (The egg is mumbling “guess we answered that question.”)
Rush Limbaugh lying? Okay. The New York Times plagiarizing? Fine. But Playboy?
I suppose—in this era of exemplary researcher and prose craftsman extraordinaire Dan Brown and his brilliant exposés of the Illuminati, Opus Dei and other malevolent organizations—that I shouldn’t be surprised at this sort of finagling with the truth. Still, it’s a little like finding out that not only isn’t Santa Claus real, but he was made up by, say, evil extraterrestrial gremlins (perfectly shaped to slide down chimneys) with the intent of having gullible parents and lobbyists gather booty into easily collectible bundles once per Earthling year.
And it’s been going on for years, is the thing. This is not just Jason Blair making stuff up to justify his expense account or Rush Limbaugh flagrantly misquoting Patrick J. Fitzgerald; this goes way deeper than that, right to the core of American history.
We may never know all the lies, all the half-truth, all the evasions we’ve been spoon fed by the media and the government, but I will say this: At least we have Dan Brown.
posted by Ignatius at 6:22 AM
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