Dust or Magic, Sunday, April 1 2007
Reading George Roberts's blog entry on "orthodoxy" that ain't - http://georgeroberts.livejournal.com/31508.html - last night. "The Moral Maze" (Radio 4) describes global warming as "an orthodoxy that cannot be challenged" - whereas, as GR points out, the orthodoxy is buying big cars, making lots of air journeys, and so on.
This is such a common phenomenon. Privileged people hear mutterings against them and instantly start screaming blue murder: "all our liberties are being attacked by an intolerant, authoritarian clique who presume to know better than the rest of us; nobody is allowed to say anything against this new orthodoxy; it is totalitarian and frightening, etc etc..." My question is: do the modern mass media lend themselves especially well to this kind of heist; perfect vehicles for this kind of pre-emptive hysteria?
Posted by Bob Hughes on Sunday, April 1 2007