Do I absolutely love the way that we, as Americans, have managed to butcher the English language over the years, the way we “misremember” certain events and our innate ability to perceive the world only through our very own, self-created blinders? You betcha I do. And I mean that with every ounce of sarcasm I can possibly conjure up.

The various 24-hour “news” stations, pretend politicians and socially-inept commentators – each and every one – have made certain of this. Sometimes I think I’d be better off watching re-runs of old Loony Tunes cartoons – they’re just as informative, in most instances, and definitely more entertaining.

I mean really, where else can people turn these days when they’d like to find out anything and everything possible on the latest from Lindsay Lohan, the fact that Michael Vick wants a dog and the dangers of eating contaminated catfish raw from a landfill in South Dakota? OK, so I made that last one up, I’ll admit it, but sometimes it seems that we’ve become so infatuated with the inane, the insane and the positively pointless that these “news” outlets and garbage-spouting, quasi-celebrities, in reality (a place they’ve obviously never visited), don’t have to work all that hard to draw our attention. And that’s downright depressing.

I often wonder what our founding fathers would think of the ridiculous situation we’ve created for ourselves with our mass media, mega-corporation, profit-induced hysteria. Would they laugh or cry? Or would they simply be angry with the fact that we’ve managed to completely corrupt and misinterpret, in just over two hundred years, the ideals and beliefs they envisioned when they founded our nation? Myself, if I were one of them, let’s just say that yes, I’d be more-than-a-little peeved.

And we have a perfect example of our political representatives continued failure to understand the needs and rights of their constituents right here in Chenango County: The imminent closing of the Rogers Conservation Center.