Content by Bitsko
Posted at 5:30pm on Sep. 9, 2006 Comparisons of 9-11, Pearl Harbor Fall Apart in Light of National Division
By Bitsko
Nearly everyone who was sentient on September 11, 2001 has a clear memory of the events of that day. I remember that it was night in Camp Casey, Korea, and that my platoon was up late getting the barracks ready for an inspection the next day.
I was in the hallway with the Platoon Sergeant when we heard yelling from one of the rooms. Rushing in to see what was happening, we found four of our soldiers transfixed in front of the TV. The rest of the platoon piled in behind us and we watched Tower Two burning from a half a world away.
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Posted at 4:05pm on Sep. 1, 2006 Forecast: Continued Partly Clowny with a One-Hundred Percent Chance of Heavy Drivel
By Bitsko
Last October in the wake of Katrina, I wrote a piece that lampooned weather coverage in the 24/7 news age. In it, I imagined a scenario in which every weather event, no matter how minor, would be treated like the aftermath of nuclear war.
I thought I was being funny.
I thought I was writing satire.
I thought it would take years of eroding journalistic standards to achieve the level of buffoonery I envisioned as the future of news in America. But no, it didn’t take years.
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Posted at 10:30pm on Aug. 25, 2006 Stupidity is often a better explanation than conspiracy
By Bitsko
I thought it might be worth a minute to address an aspect of modern American culture that simply mystifies me. In fact, with the five-year anniversary of September 11, 2001 coming up, this is about as good a time to address it as any.
A few weeks ago I was confronted with a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll that indicated something like a third of America believes 9-11 was a government conspiracy. If you are among this number then please forgive me for thinking a) you need a remedial course in logic, b) you probably spend way too much time on internet sites where the “Caps Lock” function is used to simulate screaming, c) you are probably given to using more exclamation points in a paragraph than most good writers use in a career and, d) you may even possibly be unconsciously racist or culturally-biased since you apparently believe that only white people are capable of executing complex plots.
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Posted at 9:20am on Aug. 18, 2006 Misplaced Sympathies – Then and Now
By Bitsko
In 1866 the Ku Klux Klan began a campaign of terror that threatened to escalate into open insurrection. In 1871 the Grant Administration responded by ramming through a series of “Force Acts” and the United States Army was employed to destroy what was plainly a terrorist organization.
Today most historians agree on the necessity of President Grant’s war against the Klan. However, at the time, many northern newspapers bought into the Klan’s romantic “freedom fighter” fiction and openly castigated what they saw as a draconian misuse of federal power.