Oh Substance, where have you been?

I can see your talking heads

On the television set

On the internet they said

The fact is fiction

Suspicion is the new religion

Substance, oh substance- where have you been?

You've been replaced by the masters of spin

Who make good looking books and write history in

We're selling the news

Twilight Movie Picture

In the tenth and eleventh stanzas of Switchfoot's insightful song "Selling the News,"  the corruption of the media and Internet "news sources" is discussed even further.  Due to extensive treatment of these issues in earlier posts within this series, I'm not going to write too much about this.  Basically, in this part of the song Jon Foreman (the lead singer) is trying to point out that the people on the news stations are simply pretty faces being paid to report bogus stories to please the liberal public.  These heads never stop talking, just like they never stop lying.  The Internet is even worse, because anyone can claim to be an "eyewitness" or an "expert" on a subject, write up an impressive paper with out-of-context quotes and politically correct ideas to fool anyone who doesn't take time to do additional research.  Our trusted resources are becoming less and less honest as money becomes more important than integrity. 

The second stanza posted above addresses a scary topic: the corruption of our world's literature.  How long has it been since a book of substance was sold on the store-front shelves?  This is incredibly obvious when one looks at the "teenage literature" section.  Thanks to the Twilight craze, the shelves are filled with lustful tales of gorgeous, blood-sucking bad guys engaging in impure (not to mention down-right wrong) relationships with scantily clad, lovely women.  The books are bound in enticing covers, and the stories are filled with the kind of junk that used to only be purchasable in sketchy, back-alley adult video stores.  And our history books, oh Lord help us!  They're filled with lies, and any Catholic familiar with the ways of the world can surely guess what the books are lying about.  That's right, Catholics.  Last year in one of my history classes, the textbook said that Queen Elizabeth I was the great peace-maker, pacifying the tortured English people and making all religions happy.  Do you know what Queen Elizabeth I really did?  She persecuted Catholics; she had them violently executed. 

Nothing is trustworthy anymore, because now "the fact is fiction."

Part 5 of the series "We're Selling the News"