Let Them Eat Grass

In an age where the mission statement of far too much of our media seems to be Mark Twain's "get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please," I am somewhat at a loss for how our school system failed John Stossel.
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"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history." ~ Cicero

John Stossel, a journalist with Fox News, was recently on Fox & Friends to discuss high-paying government jobs as reported in the Daily Caller. The report stated that the "Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs needs someone to run the Facebook page for the Dept. of Interior and they'll pay up to $115,000 a year." This led Mr. Stossel to question the value of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Mr. Stossel even posed the question as to why there was no Bureau of Puerto Rican Affairs or Black Affairs or Irish Affairs. "And no group in America has been more helped by the government than the American Indians, because we have the treaties, we stole their land. But 200 years later, no group does worse."

In an age where the mission statement of far too much of our media seems to be Mark Twain's "get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please," I am somewhat at a loss for how our school system failed Mr. Stossel. It is even more disheartening and sad to know that Princeton-educated Mr. Stossel once hosted an ABC new special "Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids." Knowing the mind-numbing vacuous value of television reality shows and the metastasized sequels, perhaps Mr. Stossel could reprise his starring role in a reality series titled "Ignorant in America."

The foregoing, if it were not so sad, would be comical because it provides a dark commentary on the systemic cancer within our media and more importantly within ourselves, for the fault lies within. That cancer is systemic ignorance and narcissism. In a March 20, 2011 Newsweek article "How Ignorant Are We?" the stark facts are laid bare for all to see. It is a very sobering story that leaves me wondering whether we are to become soulless Frank Hacketts or visionary Howard Beales. We are all now entitled not only to our own ignorance, but also our own twitter accounts that scream in life-reducing split seconds "can everybody see me?"

Like Mr. Stossel's referencing Native Americans as freeloaders, we have become freeloaders in learning and empathy. We are children with no historical contextual knowledge, adolescents engaged in a narcissism epidemic indifferent to suffering, insensitive to everyone's joy but our own. Knowledge should serve to inform and not imprison but life should not be measured in a 30 share and a 20 rating (see Network above).

Where is the knowledge that informs? Where is the knowledge that we Native Americans were never parties to the Treaty of Paris that signed away the eastern third of North America -- was this our payment for feeding George Washington's troops at Valley Forge? Where is the knowledge that the stated republican values of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal" were at war with a more divine cost-effective version of genocidal Manifest Destiny? The knowledge that the Constitution speaks to us in Article 1 Section 8 -- perhaps unknown to the senior congressional aide who once asked of me "well, Tom, aren't you Indians just like Elks Clubs?"

The knowledge that on December 26, 1862, the largest mass execution in United States history took place in Mankato, Minnesota when 38 Dakota warriors shouted out at the last minute "I'm here! I'm here!" before they were uniformly hung -- their crime was starvation and seeking retribution towards those who told them by deed and word "If they are hungry then let them eat grass"? The knowledge that a suicide epidemic is currently visiting the Dakota children of the Fort Peck Indian reservation?

Oh yes -- you should know by now that you get a higher rating share if you cover children of European descent lost in a shopping mall.

And it's a happy ending. Music up with a swell; final commercial. And here are a few scenes from next week's show...

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