kristina bigdeli

Gabriela Anastasio shared this link from slate.com, and I love it!

The site is owned by the Washington Post, so it has a liberal skew. The experience I have with this newspaper is limited but an important milestone:

When I was a junior in high school (a very, very ignorant one), I bought a Washington Post to read during the breaks between my dance classes. In it, I found a full page ad against the Patriot Act and got very confused. Was Congress making a bad decision? Did it really nullify our precious Bill of Rights? I remember my eyes getting bigger as they read down the page. I got scared and went to interrogate the woman in the office.

"Hey, have you heard about this? What are we going to do? Why are they passing the Patriot Act? Are there really this many terrorists? Why is Bush doing this? This really goes against everything I learned about our country in my AP history class!"

She soothed, "Kristina, don't worry. The Washington Post is really liberal, and sometimes they publish things that ain't true. The Patriot Act really will protect us against the Muslim terrorists and all the people in our own country that support them. Relax. It's okay! Pick one of the other newspapers next time you want to read something."

At that instant, I finally understood that the media was manipulating us. I was a little slow in becoming aware of politics and even my general surroundings (I still have that problem sometimes), so at the time I sided with the conservatives. Afterall, I only knew one Democrat, everyone else was a Republican.

Now that I've come to my senses (I doubt this would have happened had I not moved away from Great Bridge), I still find it hard to get the best of both sides in order to make a sound judgement. It's not that I can't pick one source from each side, I just don't have the patience/tolerance to read the side I disagree with so much! I'll get better at this.

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