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Republicans Annoyed By "All This International !@#$" On Internet Web's Increasingly Worldly Flavour Threatens Americans' Worldview
The profusion of international news available on the Internet has made it increasingly difficult for the average Republican to ignore the rest of the world, a trend researchers say threatens Americans' long, proud
history of disregarding anything not about them.
"With all the foreign newspapers and multi-cultural sites, the Internet is making it almost impossible for the average Republican to remain uninformed and apathetic," said Samantha Lessborn of Washington State University, which conducted the survey. "Republicans can still do it. But
it now takes effort, whereas before it was as easy as turning off Tom Brokaw whenever he said 'In South Korea today...' "
According to survey participant Danny Grisham, a 22-year-old from Kentucky, it's not just the plethora of international news on the Web that is irritating. "Look, I can get around the news. I just turn off Reuters headlines in My Yahoo," he said. "But even some of the search sites like Yahoo and Alta Vista are available in different
languages. Like everybody in the world doesn't speak English. Yeah, right."
"I can see where it's important if we're, like, beating some country in the Olympics or bombing them or, ideally, both," Grisham added. "But if some Colombian drug lord sinks a ferry full of Israeli soldiers in North
Latvoania or Serbo-Malaysia, or wherever, and Americans aren't involved, what has that got to do with me?"
Other respondents said they were appalled, not just by the availability of non-U.S. news, but by the way important U.S. news is reported by some of these foreign sites. "Yesterday, for instance, the St. Louis Rams
beat the Atlanta Falcons, OK, and I go to the London Times site and it's not even there," said Chip Pernadge of Kentucky "Jesus, no wonder those guys lost the war and had to give Hong Kong back to Canada."
Sensing a market opportunity, NetNanny, makers of NetNanny filtering software, announced this week it will introduce NetNarrow, an English-only product that automatically filters out content that appears to be international. Specifically, the software looks for world
datelines and keywords indicative of irrelevant foreign stories, including "Shi-ite","post-Apartheid", and "Bob Geldof."
Survey-taker George Bush of Texas, said he will be among
the first to get NetNarrow. "On the Web, there are so many ways to get news from so many different places, I could really get some fresh insights into what's going on in other countries if I wanted to," he said.. "But I don't want to".
"You'd think these Internet people would know that," Barker added. "I mean, that's why the Internet is called America Online, right? It's supposed to be about America."
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Cute
Cute but that sounds more like the Democratic party. But i guess not since Al gore was instumental in the creation of the internet.
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Forgot to add
This ain't my own work.....have lost the email it arrived on my desk with....so just take it as stated that this is reprinted from ???????
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So true, Jethro, sadly, so true....
- gaffa
Hey, did you know that there are countries in the little world of ours that don't have McDonalds? I mean, really, think of the nutritional value they are missing out on. And at the rock bottom price of a months wages for a hamburger...
