How lunacy works

TODAY, the headline on TPM read: “Latest Right-Wing Freak-Out: Obama Wants To Give Manhattan Back To Native Americans.” This how some on the right interprets the president’s decision to support a non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Obviously, the idea that Obama desires to give the Big Apple back to the Indians is absurd. But that matters not a whit. The meme will be fruitful and multiply on blogs and cable talk shows. For this is the mindless game the News Media Complex plays for sport. The right makes a false or silly claim. The left mocks the right for doing so. Or visa versa. In any event, both sides keep the volleyball in the air by spit-balling each other for as many news cycles as humanly possible. Watching the spectacle slack-jawed, the reading public gets its mistrust of the media validated yet again. Then another faux outrage or bright shiny object will surface. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. And that, depressingly, is how it works. Let's hope it is just a phase adolescent America is going through.