VILLAINS AND THE MEDIA

I was watching the news the other night.

Now if you don't know you should. By the time a story makes the six o'clock or late night news it's older than an issue of last year's People magazine. And usually about as boring.

As is routine for MSM the local station had the requisite young, attractive, ethnically correct, late-twenty something male and female anchors. Well attired, fairly polished and energetic. Like most slicker-than-slick food packages these days, they were gluten-free.

The story centered on how much sugar, that is, grams of the sweet stuff, is in food and how fat we Americans have all become. In case you don't realize it, villains are a prerequisite. Without them who needs heroes?

The trouble with villains is they come in all sizes and shapes and sport their own packaging. So a good part of media time is about those dastardly villains we all love to dislike and sometimes hate.  

When the stock market takes a swoon for the worse, it's those nasty short sellers. If a currency gets debased in the back alleys of some forex trading den, it's those greedy hedge funds. And don't bring up bankers and corporate chieftains with their gluttonous bonuses.

The term gluten in Latin means glue. Who the hell dared put that vile stuff in our sustenance?  So what if it pumps up bread and increases shelf-life, two features usually the private reserve of politicians.

Keeping your money locked up in anemic-yielding saving and checking accounts in the face of economic slowdowns in the eyes of many is a villainous act.

Forget Oklahoma, villains are the reason God made legislators. And if you are not diligent the next villain they turn up could be you.

The sugar story is an old one That it's just now making it to your local media proves the point. People like Adele Davis and William Dufty railed against its harmful effects in the 1970s. Dufty in 1975 published his now classic, "Sugar Blues."

Critics of Davis, and she had many, what most of us get when we step on establishment toes, will cite her court cases involving the deaths of some children whose parents followed some of her homeopathic prescriptions.

Let's set the record straight. One person in the US dies everyday from penicillin reactions. That's over 300 per year and it's only one of hundreds of patented medicines people ingest every day. Penicillin was discovered in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming and came on the market after World War II. At one time the number of annual deaths was much higher.

Davis also spoke out against saturated and hydrogenated fats long before it became acceptable to do so by the establishment. If those fats are not important today why is nearly half the US adult population over 45 on statins? 

If it isn't science, then it must be profits. For the record the diabetic problem the media and social do-gooders like Mayor Bloomberg rage about, mostly Type 2, the acquired kind, is a $35 billion industry.  It's common today to see Type 2 diabetics on two or even three oral hypoglycemics. There is even a pill for so-called pre-diabetics.

The unspoken mantra of big pharmaceuticals is: You got a problem, we got a pill. This isn't a ban or taxing over-sized portions issue. It's an individual responsibility issue, clear and simple, two basic concepts politicians and MSM have an extremely difficult time comprehending.

After all villains are much easier prey.