Best laid plans and all that.

Oh, this post is not turning out at all the way I had intended. I was going to start off with the following, snarky question:

"So...if I were to stand up in front of a bunch of people and say something about terrorism, would that make me a foreign policy expert?"

And follow it up quite conveniently with the following, equally-snarky riposte:

"Just curious. I mean, it's gotten kind of tricky to tell who on television is stating facts and who is merely opining. And I am all for people expressing their opinions. Rock on, I say! Just please-please-please make it clear that this is what you are doing."

Then the whole damned thing just fell apart. I was going to talk about how I'm so great because I make it perfectly clear that I'm just popping off my opinions on this site. A funny comment about how the fact that I majored in English literature means I never have to be right about anything.

Oh, I brought my A-game today, for sure!

But then I started thinking about how sometimes I do a lot of research and that it's important for me to be regarded as knowledgeable about a given topic. And how I just make the assumption that people are going to be able to tell the difference between when I'm being snarky and opinionated and when I'm being serious and wish to be taken as such.

Well, crap. Here I stand with my back in the corner and a brush full of paint in my hand. I should never try to be so clever on a Monday. That'll teach me.

The point of all this is that I suppose a big part of the burden is on the viewer or reader--the consumer of the information. It's buyer beware, even though the only currency that is changing hands is that of information. We have to take the time to find out if what we are reading or watching or hearing is fact or opinion.

They spend a lot of time on this in middle school Language Arts. But I'm not sure it's enough. So let's all try to be more cognizant of the fact that there are agendas attached to pretty much everything. This isn't new; it's just more accessible today than it was when our Founding Fathers were paying "independent" press agents to publish and distribute leaflets.

Okay, I'm off to turn my Brownie pin right-side up for the day.