On Saturday I had enjoyed a great hike. I was home, feeling wonderful. I had hopped out of the shower, I was staring at myself at the bathroom sink, assessing things before finishing getting ready for the day. “Hey, Siri, play the news”. It actually worked and the typical noises indicating an NPR broadcast starting coming out of the HomePod mini.
The lead story from NPR was about President Biden’s recent State of the Union speech. I hadn’t watched the speech as I’ve been trying to avoid the news since it’s usually very depressing and my mental health is more important than the mental activities coming from the vast majority of elected people. But, I try to listen to the news at least once a week so I know what countries have been blown up and other asshattery going on in the world.
NPR’s lead story wasn’t about the content of Biden’s speech but rather one word uttered during the speech in an off-the-cuff remark. In response to screaming from the audience (how dignified!) apparently President Biden had used the word “Illegals” instead of “Undocumented individuals”.
First of all, President Biden is up there in years. It’s also well known that he has a speech impediment in the way of a stutter, and folks that stutter sometimes have a hard time getting the words in their head to come out their mouth. I’m often in the same predicament and I recognize that Biden does what I do; when he sees himself getting stuck he does a quick word substitution so something comes out and he avoids stuttering. I firmly believe in this case the word “illegals” came to mind and it just came out. It’s not a great word and in this age of thought and language policing from all sides of the aisle, people flip out over these things.
NPR leading the hourly news round up with this, nearly two days after the event, is just throwing gas on a societal dumpster fire. With all the crap going on all over the globe, THIS is what they choose to focus on? One word? I get it, folks don’t like the word “illegals”. Everyone is a human and a border is just a human created barrier anyway. I get it. But focusing on this aspect of the speech, instead of accentuating all the great things he said and has demonstrated during his tenure as President, is just making this election cycle a bleak, dismal, money grab for the media companies. NPR is just as guilty as the corporate owned media conglomerates when it comes to skewing, spewing, and carrying on about “the news”.
Dark times.
