There’s no intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but chowderheads abound there. We can infer this from the cosmologists’ predictions of Earth-like planets, and from the way our elected leaders demonstrate the density of Homo sapiens.
Take, for instance, Sen. Al Franken. In an opinion piece written last week for CNN.com, the gentleman unburdens himself of what may be a record number of non sequiturs per column inch. For those of you who’d like to judge this for yourself, here’s the whole of the thing as written.
For those who haven’t got the patience (and you know who you are), here’s an abridged version with commentary.
“Our free speech rights,” says Al, “are under assault — not from the government but from corporations seeking to control the flow of information in America.”
(And what’s the evidence of that?) “Telecommunications companies want to be able to set up a special high-speed lane just for the corporations that can pay for it.”
(And what has that got to do with our free speech rights?) “Perhaps,” says Al, “those companies will discriminate based on whose political point of view conforms to their bottom line.”
(And what’s the evidence of that?) “In the 1990s, Congress rescinded rules that prevented television networks from owning their own programming,” and afterwards the networks started favoring their own entertainment programs.
(And this is evidence that telecom companies will discriminate on the basis of non-conforming political views?) With all these mergers “we’ll end up with a few megacorporations in control of the flow of information.”
(And so, Senator, what’s the moral here?) “Net neutrality … it’s the most important First Amendment issue of our time.”