A.M. ANNOYANCE - The Age of Hyperbole
Hyperbole hyperbola: graph of how rhetoric approaches infinity on both sides of an issue as it receive more media attention.
We are living in the Age of Hyperbole. We don’t have problems anymore; we have crises, calamities, disasters and issues that are rapidly approaching a “tipping point.”
And, OMFG, there’s another one on the horizon.
I know because I read about it in Parade Magazine. According to “scientists,” the next global crisis is … (cue ominous music) … obese kids.
Yes, from the same group of people who brought you global warming, er, … global cooling, I mean no, we had it right the first time … global warming, comes the latest catastrophe that threatens the planet: Attack of the Fat Kids.
Wait until scientists find out that, because of their increased body mass, fat kids are actually causing global warming.
There’ll be panic in the streets that day, my friend.
Childhood obesity isn’t some Third World scourge like malaria or AIDS that we can all ignore. Childhood obesity is a G-7 problem, baby. We’re talking industrialized nations and NATO members. This means the concert to rock for fat kids won’t be in Africa.
As any good fund raiser knows, you can’t raise money if all you have is a quandary. Nobody’s going to donate money if your house scientist says, “I believe childhood weight gain is problematical.”
No, no, no. What you need is a scientist who’ll swear on a stack of intelligently-designed bibles that, “The looming disaster of childhood obesity is an imminent hazard to the very existence of life on this planet.”
See the difference? In the second case, you’re practically diving for your checkbook to do your part to avert the looming Armageddon that is facing you, your children and, perhaps most importantly, your children’s children.
Let’s be honest, here. Nobody really cares about their children’s children. By the time your kids have kids the world will be so screwed up it’ll be every man for himself. Get used to it.
I don’t think it’s going out on a limb to say that the whole “obese children crisis” could be the perfect junk science storm.
Think about it. The issue combines all the essential elements to make it a charitable goldmine…
First, it involves health and kids. That’s crucial. People love charities that involve kids. People fall all over themselves to get children’s hospital wings named after them. On the other hand, you don’t really see a lot of Ira and Hilda Silverman memorial colostomy bags.
Of course, every good cause needs a villain. In this case, you’ve got two of the biggest and easiest targets to pick on: fast food corporations and insurance companies.
Somebody get Michael Moore on the phone … NOW!
I can hardly wait until next year’s Oscars when Hollywood celebrities fall all over themselves talking about how courageous directors made films that boldly addressed the topic of childhood obesity. There’s a Gilbert Grape sequel coming, I just know it.
In the end, if everything’s a crisis … then nothing is.
Then we’re back to just having problems. And we can solve problems.
Global warming? Childhood obesity? Turn up your air conditioner and have a fruit salad.
Crises solved.
childhood obesity, global warming, climate change, Gilbert Grape, rock concert, Africa, science, hyperbole, hyperbola
March 10th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Yabo….
One could say this for the entire crisis of environmentalism. All based upon the very alarm factor that pulls the research dollars in for people who wish to spend the rest of their lives in an air-conditioned office…
Academics are like legeal people…SOCIAL PARASITES, though not to the same degree of intensity. As a species, we have only been collecting weather data since the turn of the century, and only in a serious manner since World War 2. This means that the “word” on Global Warming, it’s status etc. could change at any moment, according to the dictates of some “new” research group.
When we scratch the surface of all this, we find something that makes your own participation in the entire process pointless in the extreme…
BIG BUSINESS doesn’t want to know…
Thats right…the industrial conglomerate just ignores this “crisis” and carries on in a fashion that presupposes it doesn’t exist.
If their was even a slight profit in global warming, industry would be on to it in a “flash”. But, not only are their no profits to be had, the cutting edge of this “crisis” changes every time one of these state/publicly funded research groups has a new idea as to the causes/consequences..
In other words, the fallout is not as bad as first thought; if it were, industry would have been FORCED to act a long time ago.
It hasn’t, so there isn’t, in other words “WHO CARES”.
Just to give you a look at another “crisis” eengineered by profit seekers…..REMEMBER the “energy crisis” of the seventies?….If you don’t, thats ok; you are probably not long in the tooth enough to remember…..most kids don’t realise that KFC is NOT Kentuckey Fried Chicken. So you can’t be blamed….but I digress…
The “Energy Crisis” told us all that “the oil is running out.” This was repeated over and again, until it became a regular feature…..but it gradually disappeared into the mists of time, until it has become totally unusual for anyone to mention an absense of oil ANYWHERE……
The reason is a secret……A secret I’m actually aware of, but won’t tell you…Suffice to say, why should we all pay a LOW cost for something that we can and do sell for an EXTREME PROFIT…get the picture?
I’m not revealing the full story, because I’m about to start making my living from the oil/gas industry, and now, seeing it from their point of view….I don’t want to compromise my own job…..
If an ozone hole existed over Antarctica to the extent that is described, the last piece of ice would have floated by your local beach many moons ago….