One gal's opinion on oil spill

[jbuck919]

Harry Shearer's radio program Le Show from New Orleans is a bit much even for me, but it happens to be on local public radio when I am making my long drive back from church/work on Sunday afternoon. Yesterday he favored us with this commentary which I thought I'd find and share. Warning: This woman is very angry, and there's a lot of use of the "f" word. If you want to skip the intro, the monologue starts at about 1:50

[MarkC]

Thanks for posting it.

This is one of those kinds of things that I take both seriously and 'with a grain of salt.' I'm assuming there's a lot to what she says, but also wary that it might be at least somewhat exaggerated. What I hope will happen is that it will get enough play that the other side(s) will have to give whatever retorts there are to be given.

And then if the retorts are poor, or if there are none, we'll know she's essentially right.

P.S. I see that this was posted in duplicate. Maybe the threads can be merged.....

[piston]

But then I did not hear you say anything about corporate misinformation, disinformation, and how corporate spokespersons have incredibly minimized the impact of this spill. Is that not an even greater flaw than exaggeration?

[MarkC]

But then I did not hear you say anything about corporate misinformation, disinformation, and how corporate spokespersons have incredibly minimized the impact of this spill. Is that not an even greater flaw than exaggeration?

I think you're mistaking where I'm at.

I AGREE with you.

All I was saying was what I was saying.
I just look at argumentative things critically, in general -- and I think that's a good general practice.

[HoustonDavid]

I usually enjoy your sometimes odd sense of humor Mark, but sometimes you also seem
to be standing on both sides of the same line. But of course, it must be your sense of
humor, not my perception.

[MarkC]

I usually enjoy your sometimes odd sense of humor Mark, but sometimes you also seem
to be standing on both sides of the same line. But of course, it must be your sense of
humor, not my perception.

Where did you see any humor?
Where did you see standing on both sides?

You don't agree that any argumentative thing (especially something expressed emotionally) ought to be viewed critically?

I do that for arguments on any side. In fact, I do that upon my own arguments (really!).

A similar example that I could give would be that I'm completely on Al Gore's side on global warming, climate change, and the environment -- avidly and passionately. Yet, as I watched "An Inconvenient Truth," I was constantly feeling that we had to take the details a bit skeptically. Things like that are often (if not almost always) expressed with hyperbole, or at least selectively, and if we want to be smart and fair (and if we want to try to know "the truth"), we have to watch out for that.

That's all.

It's not humor, and it's not "both sides."
Sometimes it might be humor, but I don't see how you could think that was the case here.