Improbably possible

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Sherlock Holmes as written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, born on this day in 1859 (died 1930).

If you’ve been reading here a while or, he said vainly, if you’re following my acting career, you know that one of my most favorite roles was that of Dr. John Watson, in Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure at CAT Theatre.

I loved the show, loved the role, loved the cast. And I developed a long term friendship and sometimes production partnership with the actor who portrayed the title role. He’s not likely to see this. And that’s okay.

There’s a lot of talk about #fakenews these days. Snark or not, a good percentage of what you see on Facebook is baloney.

And if you don’t believe that the mainstream media has a leftist bias, just consider what my friend Brian wrote the other day at The Jeffersoniad.

For the press today, every day is Watergate, so long as the President is Republican.

And that’s where the high and mighty defense of reporting leaks, grudges, half-truths, opinions and lies all under the cloak of anonymity falls apart. At the basis of stories based totally on anonymous sources is an implicit trust that the press is an unbiased arbiter of information. The press’ role as watchdog only commands respect if they equally bark at both sides. They can’t call flagrant fouls on one team while putting the whistle away for another. They can’t call a wide strike zone for the away team, and a different one for the home team.

Some days, when I read brilliant pieces like this I almost want to write about politics again.

Almost.

[Editor’s note: My original version this morning misidentified the author of the post at The Jeffersoniad. It was not written by Shaun Kenney (who also writes brilliantly, but by Brian Kirwin.  Sorry, Brian.]

Look, you know I’m no fan of Donald Trump. But he’s not quite the demon he’s being portrayed to be by the media and the political left.

I mean The Washington Post has been out and out calling Trump a liar since before the Inauguration. With all due respect, that’s pretty rich coming from The Washington Post.

Oops…sorry…was that political?

I grow weary of the news, real and otherwise. We’re all a little tense, and I think it’s in part because we don’t know exactly who we can believe. I shared this on Facebook the other day.

It’s pretty accurate. We could all benefit from following this advice.

Here’s the thing. We can’t depend on the media for the truth. We can’t depend on the politicians for the truth.

Mug Shots
(click the pic)

And we sure as heck can’t depend on Facebook.

Our new motto should be “Don’t trust, but verify.”

I’ve come to the point where I am skeptical of almost every “news” post that shows up on Social Media.

I almost always look for a second (or third, fourth, and fifth) source to verify.

True, I’ll occasionally get stung by the celebrity death news.

For the record, Bob Denver, bless his heart, is still dead.

The point is that we have to figure this out for ourselves.

I honestly don’t know what to think about what is going on in the White House, or Congress, or Washington in general.

About the only thing I’m convinced of is that we’re not getting the whole story, or even the true story, from anyone.

It’s Monday.

Read, and share, responsibly.


__________________________________________

Follow The Write Side of My Brain on Google+, Facebook and Pinterest.
sharethispoe

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.