A small battery powered radio crackles to life...
"...The chair is against the wall ... John has a long mustache..." - Red Dawn (1984)
I was always taken by the "rebel radio" broadcast in Red Dawn. While it had no real bearing on the plot, it formed an image that may well have been seen in Europe during the occupation. It has stayed with me all these years... burned in during my teenage years. I thought it was pretty neat. It almost had a romantic quality to it. Of course, now, if someone were to say that film was an influence... they'd be hauled off to the principals office, psych tests run, parents notified, and law enforcement notified... all in an effort to "protect the community". But I digress.
There are many rebel or freedom broadcasts now. The new media has placed a big fat counterpoint for the main stream media to deal with. Anything to the right has been dismissed as right wing hate speech with those mean nasty conservatives who want to poison the environment, kick out illegals, get rich off corporations...blah blah blah.. ad nauseam. As for our comrades on the left, they now give out "marching orders" to the leadership of the Democratic Party (as seen by Kerry's call for a filibuster on Alito...while in Switzerland no less). Peering in to their corner of the world, we see a party gone mad... or just plain mad. Mad at Bush, mad at our operations in Iraq, mad at Wal-Mart, mad at drug companies.... you get the idea. Point being, the MSM now has to contend with many ideas, not just the ones they intend for consumption.
This brings me back to the Red Dawn reference. There isn't a need to talk in code anymore. The battle of ideas between the right and left is waging. It's not helping matters, either. I used to think that if we, as a nation, were faced with evil in our time; we'd put our differences aside and fight together. Not so much, eh? As a kid, the idea of a desperate battle was spine tingling... gave me goose bumps.
What gives me the same feeling, but not in a good way, is the stark partisanship that is throwing us off course. And so, after much deliberation, I have decided to report "From behind the Tinfoil Curtain". I am operating deep behind enemy lines in the Pacific Northwest... home of the insidious "Tinfoil Hat Brigade"
Why "Tinfoil" you ask? Two words: "Moon" + "Bat".
...The terms was originally rendered as 'Barking Moonbat', suggesting that certain issue seem to trigger a reflexive response from some people much like wolves howl at the moon (i.e. the term evokes the traditional association between the moon and insanity). It now enjoys great currency in the conservative and libertarian blogosphere as an all-purpose insult for modern liberals (in the American sense of the word), war protestors, and other ideological opponents...
...Moonbat was frequently used to describe those of any political persuasion who believe in conspiracy theories. Examples include those who believe that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were engineered by George W. Bush, or that the US invaded Iraq to drive up oil prices or under the directions of Israel.
I was always taken by the "rebel radio" broadcast in Red Dawn. While it had no real bearing on the plot, it formed an image that may well have been seen in Europe during the occupation. It has stayed with me all these years... burned in during my teenage years. I thought it was pretty neat. It almost had a romantic quality to it. Of course, now, if someone were to say that film was an influence... they'd be hauled off to the principals office, psych tests run, parents notified, and law enforcement notified... all in an effort to "protect the community". But I digress.
There are many rebel or freedom broadcasts now. The new media has placed a big fat counterpoint for the main stream media to deal with. Anything to the right has been dismissed as right wing hate speech with those mean nasty conservatives who want to poison the environment, kick out illegals, get rich off corporations...blah blah blah.. ad nauseam. As for our comrades on the left, they now give out "marching orders" to the leadership of the Democratic Party (as seen by Kerry's call for a filibuster on Alito...while in Switzerland no less). Peering in to their corner of the world, we see a party gone mad... or just plain mad. Mad at Bush, mad at our operations in Iraq, mad at Wal-Mart, mad at drug companies.... you get the idea. Point being, the MSM now has to contend with many ideas, not just the ones they intend for consumption.
This brings me back to the Red Dawn reference. There isn't a need to talk in code anymore. The battle of ideas between the right and left is waging. It's not helping matters, either. I used to think that if we, as a nation, were faced with evil in our time; we'd put our differences aside and fight together. Not so much, eh? As a kid, the idea of a desperate battle was spine tingling... gave me goose bumps.
What gives me the same feeling, but not in a good way, is the stark partisanship that is throwing us off course. And so, after much deliberation, I have decided to report "From behind the Tinfoil Curtain". I am operating deep behind enemy lines in the Pacific Northwest... home of the insidious "Tinfoil Hat Brigade"
Why "Tinfoil" you ask? Two words: "Moon" + "Bat".
...The terms was originally rendered as 'Barking Moonbat', suggesting that certain issue seem to trigger a reflexive response from some people much like wolves howl at the moon (i.e. the term evokes the traditional association between the moon and insanity). It now enjoys great currency in the conservative and libertarian blogosphere as an all-purpose insult for modern liberals (in the American sense of the word), war protestors, and other ideological opponents...
...Moonbat was frequently used to describe those of any political persuasion who believe in conspiracy theories. Examples include those who believe that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were engineered by George W. Bush, or that the US invaded Iraq to drive up oil prices or under the directions of Israel.
posted by Vermillion3 at 14:21
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