Bad Media--No White House Sleepover for You!

News of the Weird (link to the right) occasionally comes up with some tale of the absurd so odd that you think it can't be real. But then, the story invariably turns out to be about a Republican, and you reconsider your first impression. The one I'm about to relay offers a nice window into the workings of state governments when they're controlled by one party with close ties to the White House, and the deed described is even more believable because of which state and which official are involved.

Anyway, here it is:

"For a six-month period four years ago, government scientists in Florida studied a "miracle" liquid called "Celestial Drops" as a cure for the canker menace that ravages the state's citrus crops. According to a July report by the Orlando Sentinel, the research was recommended by then-secretary of state Katherine Harris, who later said she had learned of Celestial Drops from New York rabbi Abe Hardoon, who is associated with the popularized version of Kabbalah, whose organizers sell its followers ordinary water that is supposedly "blessed" by being stored in a room with sacred texts. Celestial Drops, which was promoted as having "improved fractal design," "infinite levels of order" and "high energy and low entropy," was ultimately revealed by the scientists to also be water."

But, on top of its plain asininity, this story represents a great missed chance. The reporter who broke it in the Orlando Sentinel (7/5/05)--on the front page, no less--could have used it as an interpretive lens for the dystopia we have come to inhabit in the last 5 years. You know, like this: "Katherine Harris, continuing to prove she's the dumbest and most venal state official in Florida history, has wasted thousands of public dollars on phony holy water recommended to her by a charlatan rabbi who helped popularize Kabbalah. Both Harris and the rabbi blame Florida state scientists for the failure of "celestial drops" (or, tap water) to cure the canker worm blight. Both these people, Republicans and friends of the President, clearly represent a political movement that has gone so far towards complete psychotic denial that one wonders how they came to hold the reigns of power in the first place. Perhaps the media and the public share in the blame?" But, instead, the reporter just did a straight, "balanced" article, thus relegating the story to just another low-end " aw' shucks! gub'mint done misbehaved ag'in" story. Fag.