No One Asked Me But… (January 24, 2024)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… I must admit that I am a news junkie. For the most part my television viewing is the news. I watch the morning news while I have breakfast and the six o’clock news in the evening.

I use Jeopardy to see if I am still cognizant. While I shout out the answers I am usually wrong. My wife likes Wheel of Fortune but that is shower time for me.

How does this old man spend the rest of his day? Mostly reading. However, I must admit that by nine o’clock in the evening, being nearly brain dead, I indulge in a show called House Hunters and a crime of the night program prior to the ten o’clock news.

House Hunters presents me with the challenge of seeing if I can pick the house the couple on the show will select. I am usually wrong. The key seems to be to choose the house the wife wants.

The program seems to select couples who have little in common…other than marriage. I like to speculate on how long the two will remain married considering their differences.

The problem a news junkie runs into today is that one must move from channel to channel as the news is overridden by a continual barrage of commercials that have attempted to turn Americans into a bunch of drug addicts.

Someone needs to tell the young lady dancer that she probably wouldn’t need “the little pill with a big story to tell” if she dropped about 200 pounds. These drug ads encourage the viewer to tell their doctor about the magic pill that will make them well. I would worry about a doctor I had to tell how to medicate me. This is not to mention the list of side-effects that seem much worse than the illness the miracle drugs is designed to cure.

My favorite drug ad features an ex-governor of Arkansas. He states that he has taken a certain pill every evening for seven years so he can sleep. He assures us that it is not a drug nor is it habit forming. One must ask if having to take it every night for seven years would not suggest to him that it might be habit forming.

Between the pharmaceutical ads is more often than not an ad for an injury attorney. I especially like the ad that states this attorney guarantees “to not take more than your settlement.” This says to me that he may not take more than your settlement, but he may take all of it.

However, there is an alternative option. There is an attorney who says he will “not take more in settlement than you”. He apparently is willing to share the settlement with you and will make sure you get at least one more dollar than he does.

There are some ads just for us old people. The reverse mortgage ads are interesting. I do know some who have taken this option and are very happy with it. I am not attacking the reverse mortgage idea, but it would be more convincing if multi-millionaire movie stars were not advertising them. I really don’t believe that many of those who champion the cause of a reverse mortgage indulge in the service.
There is a “non-drug” that is advertised to restore or improve an old person’s memory. I can’t recall what they call it.

The ads for selling your life insurance policy are interesting. If you have no one to collect your insurance policy, do you really need that policy?

How about the $9.95 a month life insurance for those who are under 80? That is approximately 120 dollars a year; however, they fail to mention what the death benefits are. I would suspect that you could get the same benefit by putting the 120 dollars for three years under your mattress.

No one asked me but… I long for the days when you turned on your TV and were greeted by a program rather than a commercial.

My son assures me that he can record a program and see an hour program in forty-minutes which would indicate that only twenty minutes of the hour are devoted to commercials. Let me suggest that he does not watch programs that profess to be news programs.

While I must admit that I have never timed commercial verses news, I would suggest that this programming is strongly in favor of commercials.

Not that it really matters since there are no real news programs on American television anymore. These “news” programs have become propaganda machines for either the extreme right or left of America politics.

We have reached the state predicted by George Orwell where “Newspeak” rather than factual news is the order of the day. “Newspeak” is a form of propaganda, or misleading information typically given by a political party. It would be great if you could find a news outlet that had no agenda other than reporting facts.

Latest case in point: A mother and her children attempting to illegally enter the United States drowned in the river outside Eagle Pass, Texas. The left leaning press agencies, under the direction of the federal government, indicated that the Texas National Guardsmen assigned by Gov. Abbot allowed the mother and her children to drown. But worse yet, they blocked the federal border agents from lending life-saving assistance. This was the message presented to the American people as factual news for days.

However, further investigation and a court ruling indicates that the border agents did not arrive until forty-five minutes after the incident. The Mexican government had made a rescue attempt prior to the confrontation of the Texas National Guard and the federal border agents.

This appears to be another politicized border issue along the lines of federal agents on horseback whipping illegal Haitian immigrants in an attempt to drive them back to Mexico.
We are left to choose which news source we wish to believe.

If we cannot rely on our news agencies to remain politically neutral, how are we as American citizen supposed to select the leadership of this country?

Americans have come to the point where we seem to believe that everyone has a right to their own facts as well as their own opinions.

Thought of the week… Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.”
-Joseph Goebbels