Fight the spread of fear mongering

Pam Price, Henderson

Monday, Nov. 12, 2012 | 2:02 a.m.

President Barack Obama’s acceptance speech called once again for bipartisan unity. I think declaring a war on dishonesty would lead to finding common ground.

An inspirational example of Americans acting apolitically was the national dialogue that resulted from radio host Rush Limbaugh’s arguing that Sandra Fluke (a college student who advocated for a contraception mandate for insurers) was a “slut.” Limbaugh incited anti-Obama, “anti-47 percent moochers” bias among his Republican “dittohead” base. However, his hateful badgering evoked so much outrage from dittoheads, too, that sponsors left him. Then he apologized. Fox News has also built an anti-Obama, anti-liberal base by lying, scapegoating and fear mongering.

It is mostly legal to lie in a democracy, but I prefer not to condone it. I was shocked that few people defended President Obama when Republicans politicized “you didn’t build that,” an out-of-context piece of an off-the-cuff Obama speech. Republicans lied that it meant that he was anti-small business. Yet the other, easily verifiable statements in his speech exposed the lie against him.

Lies are more befitting a dictatorship than a democracy. U.S. citizens have the enviable freedom to voice themselves in their media of choice. We can join our trustworthy sources in exposing all of the imposters. There’s an opportunity to stop the cancerous fear mongering from spreading for another four years.