This week, I've been making a few skirts I cut out and boxed last year in a frenzy of efficiency. This is actually very typical of my work style--cut out a stack of projects, then stitch a stack of projects. It works well for me, as standing at the cutting table and sitting at the machine are two very different actions. All the skirts are plaid. Plaids have to be carefully pinned so the lines continue across seams, so it's slow going.
It doesn't help that the book I have been playing as I work is The Grapes of Wrath. It's slow going, too. I have committed myself to reading and listening to more classic literature, but between this and My Antonia, I'm feeling pretty cynical about human nature. Any suggestions of classic novels in which no one starves? I need some faith in humanity. And some vertical stripes--I can feel myself aging.
I followed a link on Facebook for a human interest type story today. The story itself wasn't biased, but every link around it was, complete with inflammatory language. No one needed to actually read the article to know what the website wanted you to believe, and I doubted the article would shed much light via reliable news sources. No wonder we have so much divisiveness right now.
I have a lot of wonderful people in my life, and I have spent a lot of time learning how to interpret their style of revealing news. With one couple, we would wait to hear the update on his illness from both him and his wife. He would mention things casually, not wanting us to worry. His wife, a highly informed worrier, would lay out the scarier version of the situation. Fuzzy and I would then lay out both views, knowing the truth was about 35% worse than the husband's version and 45% better than the wife's. I have been doing the same with national news lately.
I do my best to avoid pulling all my news from the same sources, and if I find that a website is confirming every one of my beliefs, I back up and start seeking additional views. Nothing in politics right now is perfect, and no one should be blindly following one person's opinions.
For example, I read an article yesterday that claimed that Marriott had cancelled all of Ted Cruz's reward points and banned him and his wife from the entire chain of hotels for life. It was a very appealing story to those who are frustrated by his actions and by his reelection. The article was gleeful in tone, so I started wondering. A search of "Ted Cruz Marriott Points" yielded only this article reporting this tidbit. There wasn't even a statement from Marriott concerning its own apparent actions. That tells me what I need to know about this one.
At this point, I am doing things like reading the transcripts of White House press briefings. The information is different when no one is telling you what to think about it. It's also nice to see how the questions are crafted to create the soundbite the reporter wants. It's also interesting to see how each outlet chooses to use the same bit of information to appeal to their own audience. For me, I look at the ads around the story to get a sense of the politics represented by a news website. A conservative website today attempted to sell me Hawaiian shirts, while the same advertiser offered sheath dresses on a neutral site and novelty leggings on a progressive site. Early in the election season, I looked up Donald Trump's campaign site to confirm that he was calling his admirers an army, which had disturbing connotations for me. If you think Facebook is not watching what you're doing, look up a couple websites very outside your norm, and watch the ads change. It was like night and day. I had a similar alteration in content the day I innocently clicked on Ben Shapiro's comment on something. Social media is indeed an echo chamber, and advertisers like it that way.
There's no easy way out of this. We all are wrong at least some of the time, and our world is being manipulated to encourage us to blame others in order to make money for someone. I guess the best I can do is keep looking further into what is being said and who profits from the view being offered.
Until then, I have one more hour of sad migrant farmers on starvation wages. I worked on a version in college, so I know what's ahead for me. It might be time for Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm or All Creatures Great and Small or something.
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