National ADD, laziness, or plain ol' stupidity?
I know that the news media is in the business to fan flames. Editors will pick the most inflammatory sentence to use in the headline so people will go nuts. What's sad is it works because most people don't bother reading beyond the headline. Have our attention spans grown so small that we can't hang in there beyond the headline? Is it too much bother to read the story? Or are most people so stump stupid that, should they bother to read the article, they cannot suss out the truth behind the inflammatory headline? Whatever the cause, this habit is yet one more reason why the U.S. is going down the toilet . . . fast.
Case in point. A big story trending the Internet today is about a Republican senator from North Carolina. The headlines all blare that this senator says that restaurant employees should not be required to wash their hands after using the bathroom. The comments in the various versions of this article reveal that about 99.9% of the respondents did not read the article. They're all proclaiming what a pig the senator is or how typical this is of the dirty Republicans. Others are calling him stupid (and worse). How ironic since these people are the ones being stupid.
Here is what the senator said in context:
He was relaying a conversation he had over a meal with a colleague. They were discussing how the U.S. is the most highly regulated nation in the world, and how the senator believed a lot of the regulations were unnecessary. At that moment, an employee exited the bathroom and the senator used it as an example. Restaurants are federally mandated to make their employees wash their hands after using the restroom. The senator said that the government could end that regulation and leave it up to the restaurants if they wanted to require hand washing. He said that restaurants who opted NOT to require it would have to display signs stating that employees did not have to wash their hands. The senator's reasoning was that patrons would not go to a restaurant where hand washing wasn't required. Thus restaurants would require hand washing in order to maintain business. His argument was that the government did not need to mandate hand washing because the market would require it. If a restaurant wanted to stay in business, it would require that its employees washed their hands after a bathroom break.
One, his argument is actually flawed because the government would still regulate hand washing because it would require signs be posted by those restaurants that did not require it. Two, no where did he advocate restaurant employees not washing their hands. He was making a point. That is all. He didn't do it well, but I'd trust his intelligence over that of the yahoos that are going crazy because they claim this senator doesn't understand cleanliness!
It's more and more obvious with each passing day that the movie, Idiocracy, actually foretells our future.
Case in point. A big story trending the Internet today is about a Republican senator from North Carolina. The headlines all blare that this senator says that restaurant employees should not be required to wash their hands after using the bathroom. The comments in the various versions of this article reveal that about 99.9% of the respondents did not read the article. They're all proclaiming what a pig the senator is or how typical this is of the dirty Republicans. Others are calling him stupid (and worse). How ironic since these people are the ones being stupid.
Here is what the senator said in context:
He was relaying a conversation he had over a meal with a colleague. They were discussing how the U.S. is the most highly regulated nation in the world, and how the senator believed a lot of the regulations were unnecessary. At that moment, an employee exited the bathroom and the senator used it as an example. Restaurants are federally mandated to make their employees wash their hands after using the restroom. The senator said that the government could end that regulation and leave it up to the restaurants if they wanted to require hand washing. He said that restaurants who opted NOT to require it would have to display signs stating that employees did not have to wash their hands. The senator's reasoning was that patrons would not go to a restaurant where hand washing wasn't required. Thus restaurants would require hand washing in order to maintain business. His argument was that the government did not need to mandate hand washing because the market would require it. If a restaurant wanted to stay in business, it would require that its employees washed their hands after a bathroom break.
One, his argument is actually flawed because the government would still regulate hand washing because it would require signs be posted by those restaurants that did not require it. Two, no where did he advocate restaurant employees not washing their hands. He was making a point. That is all. He didn't do it well, but I'd trust his intelligence over that of the yahoos that are going crazy because they claim this senator doesn't understand cleanliness!
It's more and more obvious with each passing day that the movie, Idiocracy, actually foretells our future.
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