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Mickey Z
Cool Observer
the Department of Homeland Security.
Saturday, October 23, 2004
America is a nation founded on spin…
(By request, this is a version of the “spins” segment on my C-Span Book TV appearance today.)
Amerigo Vespucci was the Florentine merchant-adventurer whose self-generated claims included leading two trips across the Atlantic and being the first European to set foot on what we now call the mainland of America. While it is widely accepted he made at least two voyages to the Americas, he was not the leader of any expedition or the first European of his era to set foot on the mainland. In fact, he never set foot on the mainland of America. In one of those synchronicities that is so perfect it makes my head want to explode, the United States of America is named after a self-hyping fraud.
Amerigo Vespucci:
Then we have the many myths and misconceptions surrounding our Founding Fathers. John Jay was a Founding Father who signed the Declaration of Independence, became the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and is perhaps best known for having the School of Criminal Justice named after him on the island of Manhattan. At the time of the American Revolution, Jay declared, “America should be governed by the people who own it.” I can only imagine if John Jay were alive today, he’d be one happy dude.
Spin doesn’t only serve to whitewash history…it shapes our perception. If I were to ask you: Who gave up millions and turned his back on a life of luxury to head for the caves of Afghanistan and fight for what he believed in...and as a result, is revered as a hero by millions? You’d probably answer: Pat Tillman. Well, an equally accurate answer is: Osama bin Laden. Not a comfortable answer, but an accurate one.
Thanks to spin, we can incarcerate our citizens at the rate of 1200 per week...and still live in the land of the free.
Thanks to spin, we carpet bomb civilians from 15,000 feet in the name of humanitarianism...and still live in the home of the brave.
It’s spin that enables Henry Kissinger to win a Nobel Peace Prize.
It’s spin that makes it possible for us to have an establishment named Popeye’s Fried Chicken...where the world’s most celebrated spinach eater, a chivalrous and muscular vegetarian, is associated with the charred flesh of tortured and cancerous birds pumped full of hormones and antibiotics and mass-marketed to the underprivileged.
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