As IF Times

link Jason Gay: A Snap Judgment on Cutler – WSJ.com.

In the last playoff game that the Chicago Bears played this season against the eventual SuperBowl winner Green Bay Packers, the starting quarterback, Jay Cutler was taken out of the game.  He was benched not for poor play, which would be understandable, but because of an injury he suffered to his leg.  Not having a leg to throw against is fairly serious for a quarterback because their mobility is required in every play.

For some reason, fans and players alike were quick to jump on Cutler and accused him of not being tough enough and not wanting the big game enough to play through the pain.  Football is arguably the most macho and gruelling of all professional sports since the odds are great that a body will be hit hard on every play.  Even players from other teams who were not at the game felt entitled to criticise Cutler. Cutler quickly became a despised villain.

As it turns out, after the game was over, doctors confirmed that Cutler had suffered a torn MCL in his knee. This is a serious injury which threatens one’s ability to walk, much less play contact football.  It’s been almost a month since that event, the SuperBowl has been played and the incident may have been forgotten. 

Except for the legend.  Twenty years from now, if Jay Cutler achieves nothing else in his career, people will always remember him as the quarterback who bailed on his teammates during the big game notwithstanding that he sustained a legitimate injury.  The media stories, the chatter and the record is set for life.  Even now, people are using his name as an adjective, as in ‘don’t go Cutler on me’, in reference to bailing out of a situation with a flimsy excuse. 

This kind of unfairness is seen time and time again in many other fields of pursuit, notably politics.  As most informed  people know by now, the predominantly left leaning media can frame an image or position on someone they don’t like and similar to the Cutler illustration, it becomes the truth and is hard to dispel.  In 2003, George Bush was giving a speech from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln about the state of the war in Iraq.  Unbeknownst to him, someone had placed a huge banner behind him which read ‘Mission Accomplished”.  To this day, people will claim that Bush gave a speech claiming preliminary victory in Iraq.  No such thing happened.

Of course the most well known fib about Bush is the weary canard about him lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  If they say it enough, it becomes the truth to those too ignorant, lazy or ideologically partisan to check the facts.

During the famous 2008 federal election, Sarah Palin was tagged with the line in which she claimed to be an expert on Russia because, ‘you can see them from my house’.  In fact those words were uttered in a satirical skit on Saturday Night Live by Tina Fey.  What she actually said was in response to a question by the brilliant Katie Couric about the importance of Alaska’s geographic position to America’s defence.  She responded by saying ‘of course it’s important, you can see Russia from Alaska’, which of course is true.   However, years from now, the line of  ‘you can see Russia from my house’ will be attributed to her as if it actually happened.

In his recently released memoir entitled Known and Unknown, Donald Rumsfeld makes the point of how media can wilfully distort facts to suit their agenda and in doing so, may cause actual harm.  It was widely circulated at the time that prisoners in Guantanamo were treated horrifically and were subject to all kinds of torture, physical and mental.  Newsweek reported an incident in which a copy of the Koran was flushed down a toilet.  Anyone who tries to flush a book down a toilet will know that it’s impossible, so that was one hint already as to the veracity of the story.  In any case, this story was a complete fabrication, it never happened.  But it served to mobilize the crazy left to demonize the practices at the prison camp enough to push for closure of an important military tool.    The moral here is to not believe something  just because it’s in print.  There’s an old saying which can be paraphrased here.  There are lies, damn lies and then there’s the news.

link 630 WMAL: Stimulating Talk – Breaking News.

To say that logic has been stretched by the media in reporting on recent events is like saying a cow has nipples.  In the aftermath of the Arizona shooting, conservatives, specifically Sarah Palin, were linked to the shooter through some gossamer thread of logic despite having no evidence of this at the time or since.  Logic and Reason 101 are not required courses for a journalism degree.  Now, Michelle Obama is being linked to increases in pedestrian fatalities because of her widely advertised “get out and move” campaign.

Reasonable people might find both accusations presposterous in their claims as both are undoubtedly rooted in partisan sentiments.  Certainly in the case of Palin, but doubly so in the case of Mrs. Obama.   The author of the article is may be a bit delusional if they think that a prodding from the wife of the president would encourage people to get out and walk.  However, it is refreshing that someone of influence can motivate the slack jawed masses to action.

Notwithstanding the fitness and green propaganda overwhelming people on a daily basis, in reality, people would drive to the kitchen from their bedrooms if they could.  The likely culprits for the increase in pedestrian strikes are more likely attributable to:

1. Poverty.  After years of declining real estate prices, high  unemployment and upticking gasoline prices, people can’t afford to drive cars.

2. Complacency.  Because of the culture of entitlement, people are not afraid of being harmed by cars, instead they assume that cars wouldn’t dare strike them because of their rights as pedestrians

3. Darwinism.  Related to the above, people don’t know any better than to step out into traffic without regard to tons of metal, glass and rubber bearing down upon them at any given time.

4. Distraction.  People are increasingly absorbed in texting and phoning so that they become oblivious to their surroundings.  A recent you tube video shows a woman walking in a mall, so absorbed in her texting that she headed straight towards and fell into a reflecting pond in her path.  No doubt she will sue for her own carelessness.

Of course, the real answer is probably all the above.  Apart from reason number 1 listed above, all of the other explanations are rooted in modern cultural conditioning.  People have offloaded responsibility for their own actions onto the ever crowded lap of “society”.  Somebody else is always to blame and more importantly may be a source of reparations.  This being the case, the federal government may now be found responsible for the uptick in pedestrian deaths and it’s only a matter of time before a class action suit is filed on their behalf against the federal government.  In legal parlance, they “knew or should have known” that exposing people by walking would contribute to injury or death.  If found culpable, the government, which means the public, will pay out compensation to all those injured.  That’ll be good for the deficit.  More likely, a new tax will be imposed on drivers to pay into the compensation pool.  Some genius will invent pedestrian insurance. 

The worst part will be new propaganda programs instructing people how to be cross streets.  We’ll have the likes of George Clooney and Bono doing Public Service Announcements exhorting people to cross only on green lights as well as urge them to go inside if raining.   It may be determined that being a pedestrian is too dangerous in the presence of cars and we may see cities banning cars all together in favour of pedestrians to ensure a safe environment for them.  Good luck getting to the theater on time. 

That Michelle Obama, like Sarah Palin, such enemies of the state.