Randi Rhodes, one of the 'progressive' talk radio hosts talked about the Malaysian airline issue this week. It's obvious that all the progressive shows like to talk about top news stories and sometimes, although not always, try to mix in something controversial. Cutting to the chase, she proposed that since the CIA may have tapped into the Senate Armed Forces Committee computers, that they tapped into this airplane's computer and shut everything down 'just to test whether they could or not'. So another words, the CIA killed over 200 people 'just to test out their capabilities'. I understand fully that her show is part entertainment, part discussing the issues; I get it. She even joked around and said she probably could write the best movie script basically for this disaster. I actually didn't find that whole diatribe amusing or funny; the diatribe that is, on how good she was in coming up with a twisted story.
If we were to conjecture possibly in the real world on something even vaguely relevant to this event, then maybe we should be serious about it instead of the entertaining aspect. This is potentially and likely, the loss of over 200 lives. Maybe there were terrorists on the plane and it was planned to be crashed somewhere in a high population area in Asia. If the CIA or other government was able to shut down the plane or even turn it off course or both, that might explain what happened. It also could be that all power on the plane somehow failed and caused the plane's demise. The last thing I could conjecture is that the pilots were caught in a terrorist plot and they diverted and shut down the plane's flight capabilities, but there are technical issues with that explanation regarding their ability to shut down certain things like the transponder. Regardless, there is a fine line to cross when doing public radio, t.v. or any public presentation. Seth MacFarlane is one of those people that occasional goes too far, although he is very talented. In fact he recently spoofed Osama Bin Laden on Family Guy and not only was it creepy, it dragged on a bit and might have been one of his amusing 10 second cutaways, but it became more creepy as it dragged on.
I'm not a professional critic obviously, but my opinion is that we need to be cognizant of the fact that tragedy should not always be used for comedic or entertainment filler, and some greater tact could be exercised. Where Randi went south was when her ego got the best of her and she deviated from a hypothesis on a serious tragedy, to the 'see how clever I am, I could be a screenplay writer on this' rant.
I welcome comments, but I will say there are some very childish, even malignant people that sometimes pipe in here, correcting grammar in a sneering way, or attacking a well-meaning discussion on a serious issue.
