I scream at my TV again

Last night, as we generally do, we watched the ABC Evening News. I love doing this because, as a less-subtle arm of the Bush Administration, ABC News accomplishes its mission thru less-flagrant innuendo and distortion than its cousin, Fox.

In other words, you have to think about both what they are saying and what they are leaving out, in order to fully appreciate the delusions being perpetrated. For example...

Last night, they did a brief piece on the alarming shrinkage of the Arctic ice-cap. A nice animated graphic showed its shocking reduction, over the past couple of years. They then immediately morphed into a series of quick cuts, showing naval vessels from several countries, all making their presence known to each other to bolster each country's claims on the newly-accessible seabed.

Then, the piece teasingly asked, 'and why is everyone so interested in the newly-accessible seabed?', and ended with the confident statement that it's the new oil fields that are certainly there, just waiting to provide a cash bonanza for the lucky country who establishes the right claims.

And there the story ended, moving quickly on to OJ.

And that's where I screamed at my TV, because the ABC copy-editors incredibly missed the opportunity (or was it intentional - you decide) to nicely close the circle on the entire piece. Here's the sentence they omitted:

"Isn't it ironic that the easing of the global hunger for new sources of oil (i.e. the 'good news' in this story) is directly responsible for the ice-cap disappearing (the 'bad news' in the story)."

In other words, burning oil has opened up the Arctic, to enable us to find more oil to burn.

Again and again, I return to the wise words of Kurt Vonnegut, who, when asked what he would say to the People of the Future, said: 'Forgive us - we were drunk on petroleum.'