It’s For a Good Cause…
Recently I discovered this great public radio station. (It’s 98.9 FM in the Nashville area; I don’t know the call letters.) The first time I stopped on it, there was a guy who didn’t sound insane, talking about how all the Osama bin Laden videos after a certain date were obvious fabrications.
Then a few days later I heard some woman reading a lengthy treatise on why the charging of interest was a harmful social practice. This isn’t “Go Obama!” programming like NPR; this is seriously hardcore stuff.
Anyway, today I was on the way to my office and I was listening to some activist fighting rhino hunting in Africa. She explained to the radio show host that the hunters sell the ivory horns to be used for dagger handles and to be ground into aphrodesiacs in China. The host was horrified.
Then the activist said, “Yes, we actually started a rumor that it would give you AIDS.”
The host immediately approved: “Oh that’s a good idea.”
Isn’t that rather shocking? I thought two, fairly important, official progressive goals were to (1) tell the truth and (2) dispel rumors about how you can catch AIDS. But I guess they were trumped by (3) save the rhinos.
