Speaking of CNN, they were of course obligated to do a story about these wingnut freakjobs freaking out about freaking nothing, because editorial judgment is for pussies:
The question for many is do Americans need to have their civil liberties protected from involvement by the U.S. military. U.S. military officials tell CNN they welcome the state guard working with them to coordinate the exercise operations in Texas, but that one sentence in the governor’s letter is without foundation.
On Monday, Abbott told reporters the guard simply will gather information, monitor the exercise and report to him about what is going on. Abbott said he has been “provided assurances,” by the Defense Department that “there is nothing for the public to worry about.”
Sen. Ted Cruz said he also has asked the Pentagon what’s going on, and has been told everything is fine. But the Republican presidential candidate also indicated he understands why people may be concerned: persistent mistrust of the federal government.
Many on the Internet are convinced something is about to happen. Several websites are expressing the worries of some residents of Bastrop County, Texas, that the exercise is going to lead to a military takeover, something Pentagon officials adamantly deny.
“Jade Helm is a long planned and coordinated exercise,” Pentagon spokesman, Col. Steve Warren said. “We are not taking over anything.”
But that’s not stopping websites like the Oath Keepers’ which says, “The Internet is abuzz with speculation these exercises are not designed to prepare U.S. troops for overseas operations, but are actually designed to prepare U.S. troops for aggressive operations against American citizenry.”
You got that? Every official source, every spokesman, every single officer of the US Military above latrine duty, and THE FUCKING PENTAGON have all said look, there’s nothing here, but the Oath Keepers web site says differently! There’s a story here! We can’t just ignore the Internet phenomenon thing!
We can’t just say let’s not embarrass ourselves by giving these people the time of day, and go on to report on what we choose to report on since we actually get to decide those things. No, we are powerless to resist the thrill of a bunch of cranks scrawling shit in crayon on the walls.
Besides, who are we to say who’s right, the Joint Chiefs of whatever they’re chiefing, or MANY ON THE INTERNET WHO ARE CONVINCED SOMETHING IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN?
Now every rumor online will apparently merit a full-scale CNN investigation, which should be fun once the Most Trusted Name in News gets to whether those boys who play brothers on Supernatural are secretly screwing.
A.
You know, Snopes does the investigative-journalism thing better than CNN these days. And is almost always more entertaining. Intentionally entertaining, I mean.
It has to be daunting to fill air time for every second of every day. But holy crap on a cracker! Wasn’t there a kitty stuck in a tree somewhere? Someone who had a potato chip that looked like Abraham Lincoln in profile? No, CNN is going to billboard the lunatic rantings of the most gullible, pants-wettingest, scaredy-cat nutjobs without criticism or context. Because news!
Secretly?!?!?
#irresponsiblenottospeculate
Lost in this, of course, is a little history. For years, the military held multi-service exercises every summer across several Southwestern states that went on for two or three weeks. Where I am, the skies were full of aircraft of all kinds, there were troop deployments everywhere, and no one paid any mind (well, they didn’t until some of the Marine pilots started flying F-18As between our buildings at work sideways at about 500 miles an hour).
The exercises were eventually abandoned in the mid-`90s because they cost too much money for what the military gained from it. So what’s different? Now, we have a series of tubes through which a bunch of pants-pissers can see and talk to other groups of pants-pissers. We have a relative lull in the interminable wars this country seems enamored of fighting, so the military has the time and the money and the personnel for such exercises again. We have a lot of people who have been suitably terrorized by 9/11 to believe that anything is possible. And, we have a black President who’s been variously described for nearly a decade as a Muslim or a Muslim sympathizer, a socialist, a communist, a dictator, and whom the NRA has been erroneously categorizing as a gun-grabber for the same amount of time. And we have news media determined to engage in a competition of imitation with Fox News, resulting in a downward spiral of standards that will eventually make The National Enquirer look reputable by comparison.
Last, as most still-sane people understand, if there’s a military coup in this country, it’s going to be led by some right-wing Christian crazy in the military against a sitting government, which is exactly what the pants-pissers have been drooling about ever since Nov. 4, 2008. But, they’ve been told over and over and over that it’s Obama coming to get their guns. (Which would be a public service, because morons with military weapons are a danger to themselves and others. But that’s just not going to happen in these United States, no matter what the NRA tells them.)
“No, we are powerless to resist the thrill of a bunch of cranks scrawling shit in crayon on the walls.”
You’re too kind. More like scrawling with shit on the walls.