What we're up against

A couple of weeks ago, a guy I work with forwarded me an email. He's a smart guy, cynical even, but he believed what it said after removal of the zillion-point type:

NBA OR NFL?
VERY SURPRISING ANSWER BELOW

36
Have been accused of spousal abuse

7
Have been arrested for fraud

19
Have been accused of writing bad checks

117
Have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses

3
Have done time for assault

71,
Repeat
71 Cannot get a credit card due to bad credit

14
Have been arrested on drug-related charges

8
Have been arrested for shoplifting

21
Currently
Are defendants in lawsuits, and

84
Have been arrested for drunk driving
In the last year

Can you guess which organization this is?

NBA or NFL? Give up yet? ... Scroll down.


ITS Neither,
it's the 535 members of the United States Congress.

The
Same group of Idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year
Designed to keep the rest of us in line.

You
Gotta pass this one on!


AND THEY JUST VOTED THEMSELVES $15,000 PER MONTH PENSION FOR LIFE AFTER SERVING ONLY ONE TERM IN CONGRESS!

Doesn't that make you enjoy payng taxes?

I looked at this and immediately knew that, at the very least, large parts of it were bullshit. Snopes.com confirms.

It's not that I'm smarter than my correspondent. I'm just confident enough that if I haven't heard through the media of at least a handful of specific cases of, say, spousal abuse, it's impossible for there to have been thirty-six of them.

These scandals are the bread and butter of today's tabloid media. Unless they were all Republicans (say, I wonder...), Fox would be all over them.

Yet, as I think about the parlous state of American news-gathering, I have to wonder: Will my confidence continue to be justifiable? My confidence is threatened from both ends:

• Source validation is a dying practice. After all, this urban bullshit sort of had a source. It's just that Capitol Hill Blue didn't have a real source. We live in the age of Matt Drudge, who as far as I know has only gotten one thing right and early in his whole life - Monica Lewinsky's blue dress.
• The press doesn't much look at the world anymore, when there are catered press conferences to be had.
  

Count me as not looking forward to further idiocracy.

Update: One Congressman arrested for drunk driving, and it's national news.