News from Neptune

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Aug 21

RE: Beyond the plague of manufactured ignorance.  Hamilton Spectator op-ed by Henry A. Giroux 6 Aug 21.

“Shhhhh” hissed the radio.

“Quiet everyone!” shouted the editor.  They all gathered around the radio as the Spectator’s bureau chief from the planet Neptune, One Trick Pony, called in.  Everyone wanted to hear of the bizarre and unworldly happenings on a planet far, far away.

“Manufactured ignorance” the report began.  Static interrupted the transmission and then they heard “interlacing disasters” and then “consuming catastrophes” followed by “conservative media empire.”

“What the hell is going on up there?” asked a frustrated editor.  “Quick, before we lose him, have One Trick send us his report in Morse code.

Soon, the report was streaming in as a series of dots and dashes.  Finally, transmission ceased, and an ancient telegrapher called into to decode the message.

It seems that One Trick transmitted passages of The Communist Manifesto – in the original German!  Manufacturing ignorance was some Hegelian thing.  Ignorance, being a kind of nothing, isn’t manufacturable inasmuch as you can’t ‘create’ nothing.  To manufacture, you start with something and change it into something else.

“One Trick’s losing it,” commented the editor.  “A turgid back and forth between Marx and Hegel isn’t newsworthy on earth,” remarked the publisher.  “But he does fill space, and you can’t beat the price!”

“It’s harmless because nobody reads it.” commented the editor.

-30-