Sheeple Rousing

Writing that last post has reminded me of a couple other shining moments in recent sheeple history, both provided by the CBC.

Sheeple Date – unfortunately, I can’t remember when exactly these “news”casts incited my rage, but they did, and it was recent. I’d say within the last two weeks for sure.

Thing One
A delectable little story the CBC presented which stated that 50% of the youth currently being held in a dentention centre type of scenario are the “product” of social services (ie children’s aid, etc) This little gem led them to air such concerns as “Is our system of social services failing these kids?“ Now, at first listen, this seems like a valid point – it is unfair if these detained youth are being detained due to their involvement with a social service – after all, kids at the mercy of these social services are obviously at a huge disadvantage to begin with, and to think that they make up half the kids in a detention centre… hey, wait… half, yes, they said 50% didn’t they. Hmm… let’s stop and think about that one… Half - - which means that kids who are the “product” of the social services system have EXACTLY the same chance of ending up in a detention centre as kids raised in a traditional family system…. Sooo… what they are saying here is that they have no story at all to report, and they should stop worrying about the failure of our social services, maybe they should be lauding the social services – after all, they are doing just as good a job as the old mom and pop shops of the “traditional family!” How do you like them bad apples?

Thing Two
This one is totally insipid.
The CBC did an investigation at arenas in seven cities across the country to determine what the air quality was like in these arenas. Their main concern was that the ice-cleaning machines were chugging out too much pollution for the air filtration systems of these arenas to handle. So, they tested the air quality, and determined that 24% of the arenas had air that was fairly sketchy, and 14% of these arenas had air quality that had pollutions levels higher than where they’d like to see them. This was a very targeted piece of “news,” by the way. Think of the people who use an arena. Okay, are they all in your head? You’ve got people of all ages playing hockey, figure skating, and all their associated people who come to watch, coach, etc. The on air personality of the hour was interviewing a science type, who was informing her of the details of the research, and the science type was reporting this fairly calmly, after all, only 14% had certifiably polluted air. I don’t think he was exuding the type of panic she was looking for, because she blurted out, “But these are our kids playing hockey, what about the children?” Wow, yup, she actually asked “…what about the children?!” OH THE HUMANITY!
It seems they were trying to get all those hockey moms and dads to drag out their legendary rage, and get them all excited to jump all over this issue.
The report also included an interview with a concerned parent – and I’m sure they had a hard time finding one of those – who stated that they were worried for their kids’ health, about them breathing in fumes, and stated that there is really nothing they could do about it, short of buying a new electric ice cleaning machine, and those cost like, $80K, unlike the good old gas chuggin’ air pollutin’ bargain of $40K. Hey sheeple – raise some money, aren’t the precious little ones worth a bit of time on a fundraising bingo, bake sale or rummage sale?