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Health & Fitness

The Problem With Now

What's black and white and nothing else? Today's political idealism and there doesn't seem to be room for any other colors that might help paint a more complete picture.

This is getting tiresome.

The whole "liberal media" meme. It's exhausting.

Because I'm tired of labels being put in front of everything. We keep lumping people into groups for ... whatever reason. And it's driving me insane.

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These days, everyone labeled liberal is a card-carrying-socialist-Commie who wants to take all your money and give it to the poor people on welfare. And everyone who happens to embrace the Tea Party's ideals is a racist, intolerant, gay hater who wants you all to get off your lazy butts and get a job and take care of yourself.

All black and white. No gray. No chance of people being able to have opinions that cross into both side of the aisle. No chance for one person to be fiscally conservative and socially progressive or vice versa.

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And it's killing us.

Look at our current political environment. You have two sides fighting over how to fix the problems we're facing. And anyone who even gets the idea of compromising to help the process is immediately attacked by the people from their own side (and, of course, the other side just because of their political affiliation), has their job threatened and slinks back into a corner to start spinning his way out of trouble.

Part of it is "our" fault in the media ... not just the "liberal" folks, either. We have 24 hours of programming on multiple networks to fill, and to do so, the networks turned to commentators and interviewers whose job was to push the right (or left) message as loud as possible (and if you can be controverial and bring in ratings, hey, even better).

That's the true point: The "media" is only in this for the ratings ... and the ad money that comes with it. And while the rest of us scratch and claw at each other, the more that Fox and NBC and even CNN will exploit it to their benefit, while the rest of us wallow in the same mudhole that we've been in all this time.

And if you want to say that most of the people who work in the media are liberal ... maybe. I don't know. I don't ask, I don't tell. It's no one's business but their own. And most companies have rules against it. Ask my former co-worker, , how happy he was that after leaving his former employer that he finally got to put a political sign in his yard. And now gets to air his opinions in a forum such as this.

Actually, I do have a hypothesis on why most members of the "media" could be considered liberal. Because they are 1) idealists who want to bring down "the man"; 2) usually woefully underpaid, and now under the constant threat of consolidation, layoff and other compensation reductions; and 3) they are trained to try and tell both sides of the story, no matter how unflattering it may be to someone -- and for that idealistic endeavor, they are villified.

So, please, can we stop the madness and blame games and start working together toward solutions that will help the country?

If we disagree on how to get there, that's fine. But lets at least be willing to give the other side the chance to express their opinion without getting shouted down as ignorant or stupid or worse.

Please?

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