Stephen King recommends waterboarding for Jenna Bush

Gilbert Cruz of Time Magazine interviewed Stephen King recently. In it, King suggests that Time should name Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan "person(s) of the year". His point, of course, being that most/all of the mainstream media appear more inclined to follow Spears' underwear choices (or the lack thereof) than, you know, all those annoying serious and dreary "actual news" events happening about the country and world.

I am inclined to agree with him about the decline of our focus and arguable forfeiture of cultural legacy:

We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics — trying to play a serious part in the world — to a culture that's really entertainment-based. I mean, I know people who can tell you who won the last four seasons on American Idol and they don't know who their f------ Representatives are.

He also had some reasonably clear thoughts about how GWB might most easily get his head around the issue of waterboarding:

So I said something to the Nightline guy about waterboarding, and if the Bush administration didn't think it was torture, they ought to do some personal investigation. Someone in the Bush family should actually be waterboarded so they could report on it to George. I said, I didn't think he would do it, but I suggested Jenna be waterboarded and then she could talk about whether or not she thought it was torture.

It's not every day that a reasonably mainstream literary figure suggests waterboarding the president's daughter. Personally, I tend to believe one should not advocate a practice that one has not (or can not) personally experienced. I'll avoid the obvious issues, but I've always found it interesting that after the Maine legislature passed the "Maine Law" requiring that no Maine prisoner could be executed without the personal order of the governor, not a signal execution took place for 27 years. Apparently talking about the merits of the death penalty differed from the responsibility of actually ordering another's death.

More and more, we seem to have a great number of people who hold opinions/positions passionately and/or dogmatically with little or no...you know...thought/study/facts/contemplation supporting those positions. Mainstream media feeds into this in a significant way. There was a time, until relatively recently, when the "news", in its various forms, strived to educate on major issues and events. In recent years, if it is not prurient and/or sensational, it is not worth reporting...hell, one of the owners of one of the major news networks testified before congress that his network was not required to tell the truth, that it was, effectively, an entertainment network.

Personally, I'm with Stephen King, I'd like to see some high level discussions about the balance between real news and fake news. Then again, any coverage of such an undertaking would undoubtedly be preempted by another Spears' panty event. I'm going back to cataloguing...annoyes me much less...too much ranting makes me restless...