23 February 2010

When doublethink is the norm

Orchestrated partisan campaigns of venom are genuine outpourings of sincere, spontaneous feeling.

A person who rarely smiles cannot be surrounded by sycophants and worshippers in a cult of personality despite the historical evidence to the contrary (let alone the fact the guy in question smiles a lot).

And a former editor/producer who offers the opinion that a simple matter of fact ought to be reported as a simple matter of fact?

Well…

His live-to-air remarks were off-track and contemptible, but he doesn't represent the "media." He represented one person's ill-timed opinion.

Something is going on with public discourse in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Some of us have been raising alarm bells about it for some time, about seven years or so if memory serves.

But it doesn’t need to be evaluated as if it were a great mystery.

After all, how much thought does it take to to see that when a simple opinion can be viewed as both “ill-timed” and “contemptible” then we are already up to our necks in a “miasma of poison and hatred” that is so pervasive it can seem to be normal.

The only thing missing these past few weeks have been the shouts of “Goldstein”.

It’s amazing anyone could have missed it, especially when one referred to that editor  - essentially – as just one, misguided soul, not all souls.

A Goldstein, if you will.

Doublethink is the new normal in Oceania.

-srbp-