Scared To Death

Fear is an insidious monster. At its worst it can kill. At its best it is merely crippling. Then why is the media peddling fear? We are currently suffering from swine flu "news" overload. Is it doing us any good? Or will more people become sick because of the stress on their immune systems courtesy of your smiling television anchorperson.

From Effects of Stress and Psychological Disorders on the Immune System by David B. Beaton:

Internal factors such as stress have been implicated in causing a deficient immune system because of the nature of the body's response in dealing with this problem. The capabilities of the immune system are diminished after frequent activation of the autonomic nervous system in the case of chronic stresses. The immune system is downgraded to be able to continuously functioning.

In a large study involving parents of both children with cancer and parents with children who were relatively healthy, the results showed that chronic psychological stress might reduce the immune system's reactions to hormonal secretions that were normally used to fight the inflammatory response (Miller, Cohen, & Ritchey, 2002).

Perceived mood also seems to play a role in immune system effectiveness. Having a positive attitude seems to correlate with an increased ability of the immune system in fighting diseases. In cases where patients have exhibited fear before a surgery, they have had a longer healing time afterwards. Correlations were observed in the number of lymphocyte cells and the person's level of optimism.

Cardiovascular diseases are another area where stress could have a negative effect. The natural response of the fight or flight activation mechanism could have a decidedly negative impact on the cardiovascular system. Since the activation of the fight or flight system involves an increase in the heart rate, a frequent activation could increase the possibility of a heart attack or other negative aspect of the disease. Specifically, a study was done in an industrial work environment in which a much higher frequency of cardiovascular mortality was found to correlate with an environment in which there was very little reward incentive (Kivimaki et al., 2002).

Even in relatively less dangerous health problems, mood can have an effect. A study with the common cold and emotions showed that participants with happy emotions exhibited a greater ability to fight off the cold when given a squirt of the rhinovirus (Jones, 2003).

Remember Y2K? Who was responsible for all that hype? Don’t get me wrong, I think that the swine flu is dangerous. However, there is such a thing as reporting the news, and there is such a thing as creating a panic.

Fascinating

Fascinating, as Mr. Spock so often said on Star Trek. I am fascinated by the fact that two people can look at one thing and come to totally opposite conclusions of what that thing is. I suppose that is why the stock market bounces around so much. But I digress.

Yesterday I wrote about seeing Tom Brokaw on the Today Show. Today I added an update to what I wrote. While googling around the web for information on this subject I found someone who had copied the entire Washington Times article that I linked to in my update. What fascinates me are the comments left at this site.

Here is the first one:

Hell. I never watch any of these Red Star Hammer and Sickle Socialist Propoganda channels and the bubling old left wing incompitents who dispence the Marxist Leninist party mantra to the brain dead masses who beleive this Neocomm vomit!

These people could disembowel each other on the set of the state run nightly News and, other than watching and saying, Sick, Cool, I would say,"Good riddence, to the agents of Communism that have come here to Eff up our great nation and it's proud people!"

Our Revolution needs to be as much against this Ministry of Obama propoganda as the Marxist's and their tratiorous Anti-American pro Socialist poison that they spew on a hourly and minute by minute basis!

First of all, is it at all possible to ignore the many misspelled words? I am the first to admit that I am a rather poor speller, but in this day and age of spell checkers there is no excuse, other than neglect and lack of attention to detail, for poor spelling. Perhaps that neglect and lack of attention carries over into how this commenter processes facts and information. How else does one explain his conclusion that we have a left wing bias in the media, and that Obama is a marxist and a socialist? Has this person been living under a rock for the last eight years? The criticism of the Bush administration has been marginal, at best. If the media had been doing its job, we would not be in Iraq, Bush would never have been reelected, and he (and Cheney) would have been impeached years ago.

One thing that scares me is that this commenter is not alone in how he thinks. A quick surf around the web turns up many others that share his belief that the commies are taking over.

I actually agree with the commenter that most of the media does produce propaganda for “the brain dead masses.” However, I strongly disagree that this propaganda is socialist and/or state controlled. The propaganda is capitalist propaganda, and it is corporate controlled. The corporations control the state through the many lobbyists that they also control. Follow the money. Why is the government bailing out the financial industry and the auto industry? Do a little research and find out how much money these industries have contributed to lobbyists and politicians (of both parties) over the years. The politicians do what the corporations want them to do. If the United States ever falls, it will most likely be because of capitalism run amok. (Believe it or not, I actually have nothing against capitalism. It does however need some regulation. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and all that. Regulation does not equal communism. We have always regulated capitalism, we have never been a communist country.)

Most U.S. politicians (including Obama, and the Clintons) are centrists. They only lean a little bit to the left or right, if at all. George W. Bush is an exception. He is an extreme right-wing radical. Fat lot of good his extreme policies did for us. I would have preferred a true conservative in the White House rather than Bush. Of course my true preference would be for a true progressive/atheist in the White House, but that just ain’t gonna happen. The liberal/progressive agenda is almost invisible on the political landscape. There is Russ Feingold and… Well, nobody else. They wouldn’t let Ralph Nader debate when he was running for president way back when. Hell, they wouldn’t even let him attend the debate as an audience member.

Believe what you will, but there is no way that you can convince me that the liberal/progressive agenda, or the socialists, or communists, or Marxists have actual power in the United States.

I am trying to picture Tim Russert, David Gregory, Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric and Matt Lauer as communists. Kind of hard to do.

Now I am trying to picture Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh as communists. Even harder to do.

None of them share their wealth and property like a good communist/socialist ought to.

Now I’m picturing all of them as capitalists. Hmm, very easy to do.

And just who is it that started spreading the “news” that Obama is a no good commie, socialist, marxist, Anti-American, Non-American? Why, it was the no good commie, socialist, marxist, Anti-American, Non-American media. Now, why would they do that?

Fascinating.

Pigs And Lipstick And Bowling Scores And Lapel Pins And Windsurfing Tights

From The government, the media and Afghanistan by Glenn Greenwald:

Most striking of all is that the "issues" of least significance, of zero import, are the ones which receive the most attention in the "political debates" conducted by our media -- pigs and lipstick and bowling scores and lapel pins and windsurfing tights -- while the ones of greatest significance are virtually ignored. And that is highly unlikely to change between now and November.

Whatever Happened To "If It Bleeds It Leads"?

Selected bits from Reporters Say Networks Put Wars on Back Burner by Brian Stelter:

Five years into the war in Iraq and nearly seven years into the war in Afghanistan, getting news of the conflicts onto television is harder than ever.

“If I were to watch the news that you hear here in the United States, I would just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts,” Ms. Logan said.

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

Ms. Logan said she begged for months to be embedded with a group of Navy Seals, and when she came back with the story, a CBS producer said to her, “One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform.”

Both Ms. Logan and Mr. McCarthy noted that more coalition soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in May than in Iraq. No American television network has a full-time correspondent in Afghanistan, although CNN recently said it would open a bureau in Kabul.

Journalists at all three American television networks with evening newscasts expressed worries that their news organizations would withdraw from the Iraqi capital after the November presidential election. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity in order to avoid offending their employers.

Does this story give you a sense of deja vu? Well, perhaps this is the reason why.

Bad Media, Bad

From Right Is Wrong -- How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America by Arianna Huffington:

A key to understanding the fanatical Right's takeover of the Republican Party and how these ideas spread to the rest of the country is looking at the role of the media -- not the Fox News pseudo-newsmen or the talk radio blowhards -- but the respectable, supposedly liberal media. Without the enabling of the traditional media -- with their obsession with "balance" and their pathological devotion to the idea that truth is always found in the middle -- the radical Right would never have been able to have its ideas taken seriously. If not for the media's appeals to balance, movement conservatism would have been laughed out of the court of public opinion long ago. And when the press does attempt to dig into the ideological underpinnings of debates about policy and current affairs, it becomes trapped by another form of the media's bipolar disorder. Besides seeing two sides to every issue, they insist on seeing most political battles through the lens of right vs. left. By reporting everything that's happening in American politics through this prism, the media missed the big story: the hijacking of America by the lunatic Right.

Read the rest here.

Partners In The Pentagon’s Mission

From Military Propaganda Pushed Me Off TV by Jeff Cohen:

The biggest villain here is not Rumsfeld or the Pentagon. It’s the TV networks. In the land of the First Amendment, it was their choice to shut down debate and journalism.

No government agency forced MSNBC to repeatedly feature the hawkish generals unopposed. Or fire Phil Donahue. Or smear weapons expert Scott Ritter. Or blacklist former attorney general Ramsey Clark. It was top NBC/MSNBC execs, not the Feds, who imposed a quota system on the Donahue staff requiring two pro-war guests if we booked one anti-war advocate — affirmative action for hawks.