I thought I had little to do this morning after a cup of tea. There are a few articles to give last glances to, a to-do list to update, and some notes to make on a cited resource. I watched another silent Ozu that I'd never seen while working out. All around, I was ready to attack the day. Then I found out that the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has apparently gone into competition with The Onion for satirical "news" reporting.

The fact that this reporter refers to Alex Jones as a "conservative radio host" is a dead giveaway. It classes him as not terribly different from what most of the right wing considers "mainstream" for their viewpoints. Jones is a conspiracy theorist who broadly purports there to be a shadow organization that controls many world governments. He has gone on a crusade to build a memorial to the Branch Davidians who he outright claims to have been murdered by the U.S. government.

Jones professionally traffics in the invention of controversy, and he used the "Cinco de Mayo trailer" publicity surrounding Machete to promote the notion of an impending Race War. This is something that arch-conservatives have been scare-mongering for decades. "If we pass the Civil Rights Act, there'll be a Race War! Get your guns now, the brown people will have machetes and rape your children! Then they'll eat their flesh!"

The same thing happened in South Africa following the end of Apartheid and the election of Mandela. As I said previously, holding a movie about a true event involving real people and an over-the-top exploitation movie to the same standards is patently ridiculous. That Fort Worth's newspaper is perpetuating these ideas and endorsing them by reporting this as news rather than an editorial is yet more absurd. I never read the Star-Telegram, now I outright disdain and look down on them.