Thursday, July 8, 2010

INSIDE OUTSIDE, USA

INSIDE OUTSIDE, USA: Back in the 70’s it was just a funny line from a movie. But as the years go by it’s become an epic inside joke that seems to pertain more and more one of our pet peeves- the “he said she said” nature of what passes for journalism in the 21st century corporate newsroom.

As the Blues Brothers are setting up to play the chicken-wire redneck bar someone proclaims that “we like BOTH kinds of music- country AND western.”

So when reporters go to BOTH sides- Democratic and Republican- it yields no less a bizarrely narrow Hobson’s Choice.

So it comes as no surprise that today’s article on the “compromise” Akaka Bill in the Honolulu Starvetizer neglects to ask any sovereignty much less independence advocates what they think about the fact that the new bill compromises away a measure that would give them the same rights that the rest of the country’s indigenous people have been so benevolently granted by their overlords.

It more or less like offering a turd sandwich and then removing the bread and mayo.

The effort to steal the kanaka maoli land base “one last time fair and square” is bad enough without having to depend on a newspaper- one with a legacy of that very theft- that ignores the rights of those being crushed once again by an occupying armed force hell bent on a final act of genocide and asks only the perpetrators what they think of it.

Now that we’re a one newspaper town we apparently have both kinds of journalism- crappy and none.

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