ABC News has only released one brief clip of Obama’s conversation about gay marriage today, but it seems fairly clear from the network’s coverage that his announcement amounts to much less than meets the eye. He now believes that gay couples should be able to marry. He doesn’t believe they have a right to do so. This is like saying that black children and white children ought to attend the same schools, but if the people of Alabama reject that notion—what are you gonna do?

The key language in the ABC News write-up is this:

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states deciding the issue on their own.

On this afternoon’s special broadcast, Jake Tapper echoed that point: “The president said he thought this was a state-by-state issue.”

Well, before Roe v. Wade, abortion was a state-by-state issue, too. So was slavery. There are 44 states in which gay men and women are currently barred from marrying one another. Obama’s position is that, while he would have voted the other way, those 44 states are perfectly within their rights to arbitrarily restrict the access of certain individuals to marriage rights based solely on their sexual orientation.

That is a half-assed, cowardly cop-out. There are currently at least three cases winding their way toward federal courts that address the issue of whether (among other things) the equal protection clause of the constitution guarantees gay men and women the same access to marriage rights as heterosexual men and women—the Proposition 8 case, in which David Boies and Ted Olson challenged California’s ban on gay marriage, and several challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars gay men and woman from receiving federal marriage benefits and allows states to refuse to recognize valid gay marriages. Obama’s Justice Department has admirably declined to defend the constitutionality of DOMA. But the position he enunciated today is in opposition to Boies and Olson: Obama is saying that if he were a judge, he would have rejected Boies and Olson’s constitutional arguments and affirmed the right of Californians to enshrine bigotry in their state constitution.

Equality is not a state-by-state issue. There is no reason other than ignorance and hatred that two men can get married in New York and not North Carolina. At a time when vindictive hucksters are rolling out anti-gay marriage amendments across the nation, and when conflicting state and federal laws portend an insoluble morass of divorce, custody, and estate issues, and when gay Americans are turning to the U.S. Constitution and the courts to seek an affirmation of their humanity, “it’s a state-by-state issue” is a shameful dodge.

Is it a politically wise dodge? Maybe. This was obviously a hastily arranged interview—we’re told that ABC News’ Robin Roberts, who is close to Michelle Obama, was only tapped in the last 48 hours by the White House to come down—designed to clean up the mess left by Biden’s pro-gay marriage comments in as advantageous way as possible. And for Obama to declare that he considers North Carolina and other states’ bans on gay marriage to be unconstitutional would probably energize the GOP base. But those bans are unconstitutional. And anyone who supports their legitimacy—as Obama just did, in no uncertain terms—even if they oppose the policy, is adopting the retrograde position in the contemporary gay marriage debate. Obama is moving backward, not forward.

Source: Gawker. Written by John Cook.

Social networking giant maintains ‘Kill Zimmerman’ page despite massive condemnation.

Twitter has refused to delete a profile page advocating the violent murder of George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin, even after a massive media backlash and despite the social network’s regular practice of deleting accounts for the comparatively minor offense of spamming celebrities or discussing certain political issues.

The profile page features an image of Zimmerman in crosshairs and includes tweets such as “Fuck the government. & #KILLZIMMERMAN,” “Rt if you think Zimmerman should Be Shot Instead Of Goon To Jail #KILLZIMMERMAN,” “Since I don’t have a date or escort I’m thinking about running away and killing Zimmerman,” “we should just all get up and #killzimmerman ourselves; fuck the system,” and “I ain’t no hater but I hate that cracka.”

One of the Tweets also expresses support for the fact that Obama has publicly involved himself in the Trayvon Martin controversy.

The page has been active for around a week and despite widespread media attention, Twitter has refused to remove the profile.

Is Twitter taking a political stance amidst one of the most racially charged public debates America has ever seen by keeping the ‘Kill Zimmerman’ page active? A brief summary of pages that weredeleted by the company in the recent past suggests the answer is yes.

Blogger David Seaman had his Twitter account temporarily suspended after sending out numerous tweets trying to get celebrities with large numbers of followers to draw attention to issues such as the NDAA and Occupy Wall Street. The fact that Seaman was sending so many messages to celebrities was characterized as spamming by Twitter.

Apparently, according to Twitter spamming celebrities is not OK, but advocating murder is perfectly acceptable.

CONTINUED at Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

Kony 2012, hyped on the backs of celebrities and do-gooders, is revealed for what it is– a propaganda salvo for a continent wide invasion of Africa. Yes, the mantra War is Peace is once again drumming U.S. soldiers into further conflict.

Research makes clear that KONY is a sophisticated psy-op to muster popular support for what is, in reality, nothing more than a geostrategic positioning vis-a-vis China for oil and mineral resources, as well as an effort to legitimize the U.S. military’s AFRICOM unit in the region through newly-branded “humanitarian” interventions.

It is not only War in the name of “Peace,” but an attempt to empower the International Criminal Courtunder the influence of NGOs and other related globalist corporate interests.

Nobel Peace Prize “winner” Barack Obama has already deployed 100 special forces troops to the central African region back in October 2011, and a resolution in Congress– on the heels of KONY 2012′s viral views of at lest 80 million– seeks to send more forces there for an all out invasion on the pretext of hunting down a shadowy warlord with less blood on his hands than an average African despot.

Top celebrities vying for greater power including CFR member and UN goodwill ambassadorAngelina Jolie, actor George Clooney, media baroness Oprah Winfrey, as well as Africa-obsessed Bill Gates and Bono, have all come out in front of this issue.

CONTINUED at Prison Planet.

The overnight viral sensation KONY 2012 brought worldwide awareness to the African war criminal Joseph Kony. Beneath this commendable cause, lies however an elaborate agenda that is presented in the video in a very manipulative way. We’ll look at the agenda behind KONY 2012 and how it uses reverse psychology to not only justify a military operation in Africa, but to actually have people demand it.

KONY 2012 is a viral sensation that swept the entire world in less than 24 hours. Its main subject is the African rebel leader Joseph Kony, his war crimes and the clearly defined “movement” to stop him.  Countless celebrities have endorsed the movement, news sources have reported it and social media is buzzing with it. While the problem of guerrilla warfare and child soldiers has plagued Africa for decades, and several documentaries have already been produced regarding the issue, this particular 29-minute video made managed to obtain mass exposure and support.

KONY 2012 is less of a documentary than it is a highly efficient infomercial that is tailor-made for the Facebook generation, using state-of-the-art marketing techniques to make its point. Young people like “underground movements” and want to feel like they are changing the world. KONY 2012 taps into these needs to bring about something that is not “hip” or “underground” at all: A military operation in Uganda. Not only that, it urges the participants of the movement to order stuff, to wear bracelets that are associated with an online profile and to record their actions in social media. This makes KONY 2012 the first artificially created movement that is fully track-able, monitor-able and quantifiable by those who engendered it. In other words, what appears to be a movement “from the people” is actually a new way for the elite to advance its agenda.

CONTINUED at The Vigilant Citizen.

According to Jason Russell’s appearance on the Today show several days ago, over 500,000 action kits have been ordered at $30 a piece, meaning this campaign has brought in a minimum of $15M in revenue this week. This is great news: at least 500,000 people are “advocate[s] of awesome” according to the group’s webstore! So where’s that money going? I’ll leave it to Jedidiah Jenkins, Invisible Children’s Director of Ideology:

“Thirty-seven percent of our budget goes directly to central African-related programs, about 20 percent goes to salaries and overhead, and the remaining 43 percent goes to our awareness programs. […] But aside from that, the truth about Invisible Children is that we are not an aid organization, and we don’t intend to be. I think people think we’re over there delivering shoes or food. But we are an advocacy and awareness organization.”

Yes, you heard it from Invisible Children: more money goes to awareness than to Africa.

More detailed breakdown from the Guardian’s Julian Borger, John Vidal, and Rosebell Kagumire in Kampala, Uganda:

“Invisible Children’s accounts show it is a cash rich operation, which more than tripled its income to $9m (£5.68m) in 2011, mainly from personal donations. Of this, nearly 25% was spent on travel and film-making. Most of the money raised has been spent in the US. The accounts show $1.7m went on US employee salaries, $850,000 in film production costs, $244,000 in “professional services” – thought to be Washington lobbyists – and $1.07m in travel expenses. Nearly $400,000 was spent on offices in San Diego.”

Information about how they intend to spend their windfall 2012 revenue of a bare minimum of $15M has not been released, but as I wrote earlier, at least $3000 would’ve gone to flying me to both San Diego and Africa had I allowed them to do so. (Story behind that at the bottom of this post.) If I were Invisible Children, I’d start talking about where this new money’s going. I’m emailing Jason and Ben a link to this post to see if they’re willing to post a financial plan for the year ahead – is there yet another film in store?

RELATED: Kony 2012 charity to release new video addressing criticism of viral campaign

————————————————

Kony 2012 Group Supports Uganda’s Brutal Military Dictatorship

The Daily What
Monday, March 12, 2012

On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far away as possible from KONY 2012, the latest fauxtivist fad sweeping the web (remember “change your Facebook profile pic to stop child abuse”?), but you clearly won’t stop sending me that damn video until I say something about it, so here goes:

Stop sending me that video.

The organization behind Kony 2012 — Invisible Children Inc. — is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called ”misleading,” “naive,” and “dangerous” by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of “manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes.” They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureau’s standards.

Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their financials be independently audited. That’s not a good thing. In fact, it’s a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money you’re sending them is going.

By IC’s own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone[pdf]. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) — which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many can’t seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone they’ve ever known.

And as far as what they do with that money:

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.

Let’s not get our lines crossed: The Lord’s Resistance Army is bad news. And Joseph Kony is a very bad man, and needs to be stopped. But propping up Uganda’s decades-old dictatorship and its military arm, which has been accused by the UN ofcommitting unspeakable atrocities and itself facilitated the recruitment of child soldiers, is not the way to go about it.

The United States is already plenty involved in helping rout Kony and his band of psycho sycophants. Kony is on the run, having been pushed out of Uganda, and it’s likely he will soon be caught, if he isn’t already dead. But killing Kony won’t fix anything, just as killing Osama bin Laden didn’t end terrorism. The LRA might collapse, but, as Foreign Affairs points out, it is “a relatively small player in all of this — as much a symptom as a cause of the endemic violence.”

Myopically placing the blame for all of central Africa’s woes on Kony — even as a starting point — will only imperil many more people than are already in danger.

Sending money to a nonprofit that wants to muck things up by dousing the flames with fuel is not helping. Want to help? Really want to help? Send your money to nonprofits that are putting more than 31% toward rebuilding the region’s medical and educational infrastructure, so that former child soldiers have something worth coming home to.

Here are just a few of those charities. They all have a sparkling four-star rating from Charity Navigator, and, more importantly, no interest in airdropping American troops armed to the teeth into the middle of a multi-nation tribal war to help one madman catch another.

The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Don’t just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old “sad.” Learn a little bit about the complexities of the region’s ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention.

There is no black and white in the world. And going about solving important problems like there is just serves to make all those equally troubling shades of gray invisible.

All stories linked on Prison Planet.

Napolitano signs off from Freedom Watch with promise to keep “defending freedom whenever I can”.

Judge Andrew Napolitano signed off onFreedom Watch this week with a salute and a promise to keep “defending freedom– everyone’s freedom, whenever I can,”, following the announcement that the show has been axed by Fox Business News.

The Judge closed the last edition ofFreedom Watch in the same way he normally does, with a message regarding adherence to the vision of the founding fathers and the hard fought liberties protected by the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.

Napolitano flagged up the fact that only a third of Americans supported the revolution and another third expressed no interest in the matter. In a clear message to his critics, the Judge noted “The founding fathers risked their lives, their fortunes, and their honor, [but] they were not saints, and originally their cause was not popular.”

As of now, Freedom Watch will be replaced by reruns of The Willis Report.

Watch the last ever segment of Freedom Watch below:

CONTINUED at Prison Planet. Written by Paul Joseph Watson.

Bad news, freedom fighters! Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Freedom Watch, the best damned daily libertarian news & argument show in the history of television (name a better one!), has gotten the axe from Fox Business Network. From the press release:

FOX Business Network (FBN) will debut a new primetime schedule featuring encore presentations of the channel’s top post-market programs, announced Kevin Magee, Executive Vice President of the network. Starting February 20th at 8 PM/ET, viewers will find additional airings of The Willis Report (5PM & 8PM/ET), Cavuto (6PM & 9PM/ET) and Lou Dobbs Tonight (7PM & 10PM/ET). The new lineup will replace FreedomWatch with Judge Andrew Napolitano, Power & Money with David Asman and Follow the Money with Eric Bolling. [...]

In making the announcement Magee said, “Neil Cavuto, Lou Dobbs and Gerri Willis are the most trusted names in business news and this new lineup affords FOX Business viewers additional access to their no-nonsense take on the day’s financial events. We look forward to Judge Napolitano, David and Eric continuing to make significant contributions to both FOX Business and FOX News. In addition to daily branded segments, each of them will be showcased throughout future programming on both networks.”

Currently one of the leading judicial analysts on television, Judge Napolitano will continue his role on both FOX Business and FOX News, providing key legal insights surrounding the growing intersection between Washington and Wall Street. [...] Stossel, hosted by John Stossel, will continue Thursdays at 10PM/ET.

Well, boo (except for that last sentence).

Freedom Watch was a great friend to Reason, of course, but more importantly to anyone worried about the size and growth of government in all aspects of our lives. And despite (or maybe because of?) the show’s stronger-than-usual ideological/philosophical content, the judge knew (and knows!) how to run a perfectly respectful debate with people who disagree strongly with him, which is a rarity in the cable world. Television needs more spaces like that.

Read Judge Napolitano’s cover story in the January 2012 issue of Reason. Here’s Nick Gillespieinterviewing the judge in November:

Source: Reason. Written by Matt Welch. Other videos at link.

UPDATE: RAND PAUL IS ATTENDING. STORY HERE.

Romney, Gingrich, Santorum to be keynote speakers but Paul absent.

Despite winning the event’s annual straw poll for the last two years running, Ron Paul has seemingly been excluded from this year’s CPAC conference, with Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich announced as keynote speakers but Paul appearing nowhere on the roster.

The exclusion of Paul is likely a maneuver by GOP insiders to re-align CPAC, the biggest annual conservative confab, with the Republican establishment and prevent an embarrassing straw poll defeat for likely presidential pick Mitt Romney, who Paul beat in 2010 and 2011.

According to the CPAC website, fellow presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum will all address the event scheduled to take place Feb. 8-11 in Washington, but Ron Paul will be absent.

“Although a combination of factors might be at play, including Paul’s focus on the Maine caucuses, a changing of the guard at the top of CPAC’s management team is likely behind Paul’s exclusion,” notes Stephen Woodward.

Indeed, the selection of former chairman of the Florida Republican Party Al Cardenas to lead CPAC has brought with it a decidedly neoconservative flavor to the 2012 event.

Besides Romney and Gingrich, the likes of Ann Coulter, John Bolton, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Herman Cain and Rick Perry will all speak at the conference.

During a post CPAC 2011 interview, American Conservative Union (ACU) chief Cardenas put Ron Paul supporters on notice by warning them that they would not be invited to the 2012 event if they failed to act with “civility” after previous speakers Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were booed by Paul activists.

The change in direction seemingly stems from a revolt, characterized by Politico as a “conservative civil war,” that preceded last year’s conference fueled by concerns expressed by establishment Republicans that the conference was turning “libertarian”.

Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who boycotted the 2010 and 2011 conferences because of the attendance of Ron Paul and his supporters, is set to return to speak at the 2012 event.

CPAC’s move to marginalize true conservatives like Ron Paul also stems from concerns that the rival Values Voter Summit is gaining more prominence within establishment Republican circles.

Paul has won the CPAC straw poll for the past two years running and has spoke at the last three conferences.

Following his victory last year, Fox News erroneously reported that Paul had been booed by the audience when his win was announced. In reality, Fox played footage from the previous year’s event when Mitt Romney supporters had loudly booed the result and Paul supporters had been absent due to a Campaign for Liberty meeting running late.

Although Ron Paul supporters have presumably been uninvited because they booed Cheney and Rumsfeld, Romney fans who booed Paul will be in attendance at CPAC 2012, highlighting the hypocrisy behind Paul’s exclusion.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

Source: Prison Planet.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Recently, in a memoir he published, a former Navy SEAL came forward claiming that he decked and knocked down former Navy SEAL, former professional wrestler, former Governor of Minnesota and television host Jesse Ventura. Chris Kyle, the SEAL who claims he did this, is a decorated sniper who has been awarded an almost uncountable number of medals. Now while I would hate to discredit someone of that stature, certain things about his story don’t add up and since Fox News is just about the only mainstream media source that is even talking about the issue, one can’t not question this situation. Plus, the incident took place over five years ago and it is just now being brought public? Sorry but that is incredibly fishy.

Another thing worth noting is that the book that Kyle wrote ‘American Sniper’ has been published by Harper Collins which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, who also own Fox News. Now also taking into account that Bill O’Reilly has been vehemently opposed to Jesse Ventura for years and the former Governor has had plenty of spats with O’Reilly and his Fox News colleagues makes him a prime target for Fox News’ top ratings getter. It also probably doesn’t help Ventura that O’Reilly has never really been objective or fair and balanced, as he claims that he is. Hell, the O’Reilly Factor’s slogan “The spin stops here” is a blatant lie. O’Reilly often times refers to himself as a “journalist” even though he is a commentator. O’Reilly is either a horrible liar, as anyone with a single brain cell can see through this charade, or he just doesn’t know the difference between a journalist or a commentator. Another reason why O’Reilly may be coming at Ventura with guns blazing is because the former Governor has been very vocal about his support for Ron Paul, which is someone else that Fox News is trying to smear and brush under the rug, as if he were non-existant. In any event, this whole situation smells about as rotten as sack full of sweaty yeast infected orangutan vaginas, so I had to do some investigating of my own, since Bill O’Reilly the “journalist” apparently doesn’t have that magical ability.

Before I get into my investigating, let’s get into O’Reilly’s lackluster attempt. Now while taking Chris Kyle’s story at face value, O’Reilly and almost every other Fox News show promoted this guy and his book and pushed his tale as factual without actually checking on the story for themselves. This obviously outraged Ventura, who went on the Alex Jones Radio Show and said that this event never happened. Ventura said that he never disrespected a deceased Navy SEAL as Kyle claimed and that he never even met Kyle and therefore was never punched by the guy. Ventura went on to name the restaurant where the incident supposedly took place and said that the owner was a friend of his and people were free to call the guy and ask him if the story was indeed true. So what did O’Reilly do after Ventura brought all this up?

Well, O’Reilly didn’t call the bar owner. In fact what he did do was quote two eye-witnesses, who weren’t even actually interviewed, who claimed they saw the whole thing. The catch was that both of these witnesses were buddies of Chris Kyle and therefore, obviously had some biased input, as they don’t want to tarnish their homeboy’s credibility while he’s trying to pimp his book. O’Reilly before the show where he quoted these eye-witnesses was promoting the segment like he had the smoking gun and was going to expose Ventura. Billy O claimed that he had evidence to support his made up conclusion and when all was said and done, this evidence was placed at the very end of his show in the “Dumbest Things of the Week” segment. Okay, so is he admitting his evidence is dumb? Or is he trying to make a joke out of all this to absolve himself of any backlash after carelessly opening a can of bullshit worms? Also in this segment was a story about a Colorado high school senior who wanted to use a topless photo for her yearbook picture. As you can see, O’Reilly was now filing this story, that he made such a big serious deal about the week prior, into the trash bin.

So why did O’Reilly waste his audience’s time with these bullshit witnesses that he promoted heavily leading up to the show? Then again, anyone who watches this douchenugget is wasting their time regardless. Anyway, why didn’t O’Reilly take Ventura’s advice and call the owner of the bar and get him to make an official statement? Maybe Ol’ Billy Boy didn’t want to have someone come in and ruin this story. Maybe if he asked the owner for his account it would’ve ruined this pointless smear of an American hero who deserves the same amount of respect that Chris Kyle is getting from his News Corp. brothers. Well, being the pot-stirring jackass that I am, I couldn’t let justice not be served so I made a couple phone calls.

Last week I called the restaurant in question and asked to speak to the owner. When I called, he wasn’t in but I did get some information from the manager who picked up the phone. The manager said that he didn’t specifically remember if the event happened or not, as it took place over five years ago. The manager told me to try again to see if I could talk to the owner, who he claimed was hard to pin down.

I called the next day and had no luck and then called a third time and was cued in to something noteworthy. I was told by one of the managers that they were getting a lot of calls about the incident from other people. I asked if any major news organizations had contacted them like Fox and they said “no”. Aha! So O’Reilly didn’t even bother! Anyway, the guy on the phone told me that the owner wasn’t there but that he didn’t want to talk about it anyway and I agreed to not call back out of respect for their wishes not to be bothered. I was told however that even if it happened so long ago, an incident like that wouldn’t have been forgotten and that it would still be the talk of the bar, which it isn’t. In his own way, this was the manager’s confirmation that this story was most likely a fabrication. It’s really for you to decide but the point is, journalists, bloggers and concerned citizens working outside of the mainstream media circle have been trying to get to the bottom of this while the media giants didn’t even make a phone call to check and cover their own asses.

In fact, after O’Reilly quoted the bullshit witness testimonies, he brought on Greg Gutfeld and Arthel Neville to talk about it. Gutfeld tried to poke fun at Ventura being a 9/11 Truther because that’s all that he could do to try and discredit someone of Ventura’s stature, which is a much higher stature than Chris Kyle in my book. Neville added, “I tend to believe the Navy SEAL in this story.” She was referring to Kyle of course, as the three amigos didn’t mention or just simply forgot that Ventura too was a Navy SEAL. However, by her reasoning, both Kyle and Ventura would be telling the truth! That’s that good ol’ Fox News journalism for ya! I guess the fact that Ventura is a former SEAL and a former governor means nothing to these establishment cockpuppets. What’s sad is that I always liked and respected Gutfeld but ever since he became a co-host of ‘The Five’ he has been firmly assimilated into the mainstream media’s culture of bullshit. When on the television, Gutfeld always came off as the smartest and wittiest guy in the room but once getting himself out of that 3 a.m. time slot, he’s quickly regressed into being your run-of-the-mill mainstream shamster.

The purpose of this is not to say who is telling the truth or who isn’t, it is to show how the mainstream media takes potential bullshit at face value and disregards evidence in an effort to sell a story, that could be complete fabricated garbage. Fox News, as was confirmed, did nothing to really try and find a resolution to this story. Hell, they couldn’t even get an intern to pick up a phone and make a call? I made three calls and I run several websites with no real staff to speak of and I have a full-time job on top of that! If there is anything to learn from this, it is that you should question the trash that these ass clown talking heads try to shove down your throat. I wish we could trust the news coming from the top but this is just another account of why they are just lying bastards more interested in trash television than truth.