What's Wrong With Fox News, Vol. 3, Part 6,822

Media Matters has the complete rundown on this.

We Are Number Six

“Recent statistics … indicate that approximately 1 in 7 or 42 million Americans cannot read a newspaper or even the instructions on a pill bottle. 

"If people cannot read, or if they simply will not, the safeguard of a democracy—an educated and informed citizenry—is in peril. 

"The importance of an educated citizenry, as envisioned by the architects of the American scheme of government, is that they have the analytical and intellectual wherewithal to recognize and challenge the inevitable corruption of government.”

“Huxley clearly saw that people would come to love entertainment and trivia, and that those would destroy their capacity to think and eventually annihilate any freedom we may possess. Humanity’s bent toward distractions—that is, the bread and circuses of entertainment — leads them to sell their collective souls for one more voyeuristic peek into a celebrity’s life.”

—   John W. Whitehead, in a Gadfly article on Patrick McGoohan’s TV series “The Prisoner.” Superficially a spy melodrama, its social and existential commentary has only become more relevant as the decades have passed.

Strangers Are Strange, Friends Are Stranger

By Dan Hagen

The older I become, the more I recognize how really strange people are, myself included. 

People can be ordinary, yes, but none of them seem to be “normal” when you examine them closely.

“Normal people” turns out to be one of those myths adults peddle to children, like Santa — with the twist that this is one of those myths that the adults themselves nervously try to believe even as they’re conning the kids into it.

Some people do strive, in a jaw-clenching way, for a TV sitcom brand of “normalcy,” and in so doing they become a good deal stranger than they were before. They should turn and face the strange.

The Best Hour

By Dan Hagen

Between 4 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., well before dawn in the silence of the solarium with blanketed beagle and book, is one of the best hours of each day.

Right now, I’m reading bios of Cheever and Chayefsky, driven and intense men whose scalpel-sharp wits worked to keep people at a safe distance from their insecurities. They were men tortured by their own sensitivity who had penetrating insight into the human and social condition.

“A page of good prose remains invincible,” Cheever said. Yes. Unlike the person who created it.

Sensitive intelligence can be an expensive gift, but it’s not a luxury. It’s necessary for the advancement and defense of civilization.

I realized that this same situation applies to a number of people I know, several friends and students. What they sometimes experience as a flaw and a burden in their personalities is a powerful gift, but the connection may not be readily apparent.

Love Surreal

Jake Cole and Leah David in "Almost, Maine." Daily Eastern News photo by Zachary White.

Last night, Matt and I took in the EIU Theatre Department’s Almost, Maine, a romantic comedy written by John Cariani and directed by Jenni Passig. It’s a series of variety show-like vignettes about love, but smarter than a sitcom with interesting surreal aspects — love can be a physical object, people can literally fall in love, and so forth.

A solid cast — especially with accomplished performances from Jake Cole and Benjamin Kennedy — made for an evening of brisk fun.
Matt Mattingly chimes in: "Almost, Maine" performed by EIU students at Doudna was quite the show. Funny and moving, the segmented production looked at love from damn near every fathomable angle: from struggling to tell a friend one's true romantic feelings, waffling on the "Big Question" for too long only to find the questioner has moved on, finding out the ex you still love is engaged, to the painful mutual realization your relationship is loveless...it was hard not to find something to which you could relate. 
That couldn't be done effectively if that cast didn't perform effectively but by and large, those kids were brilliant. 
Bravo.

Fall Into the Sky

If I could fall into the sky, do you think time would pass me by?

Fox News Fights for the Right to Lie

Fox News fought for the right to lie to the American public, and exercises that right vigorously. Full details here.