It should come as no surprise to any sentient individual that the entire "Pink Slime" uproar is complete and utter BS. However, it would appear that there are many out there who aren't sentient, after all.
My latest HND piece compares this travesty with William Randolph Hearst's horrific trashing of silent move star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, solely to sell newspapers. If public opinion could be force-fed by unscrupulous media barons back in 1921, you'd think that it would be much harder to do this in 2012—given the instant availability of unlimited amounts of information via the Internet. But you would be wrong.
H.L. Mencken got it right when he said, in his column in the September 19, 1926 edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune, entitled “Notes on Journalism”:
“No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
His topic was a recent trend in the American newspaper business: Tabloid newspapers that were geared toward uneducated readers, including those Mencken described as “near-illiterates.” Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Read the complete article.
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