{"id":1361,"date":"2014-06-29T10:51:43","date_gmt":"2014-06-29T15:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=1361"},"modified":"2014-06-29T10:51:43","modified_gmt":"2014-06-29T15:51:43","slug":"its-not-the-onion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=1361","title":{"rendered":"It’s Not The Onion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"webeagle\"<\/a>Last week I received an email with an embedded link leading to an article told about a Texas judge who sentenced a person to death row upon convicting the person of his third offense possession of marijuana.\u00a0 The story is here:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/empirenews.net\/texas-judge-sentences-man-to-death-for-marijuana-possession\/#.U6rSLckKd6w.facebook<\/a><\/p>\n

The story comes from the \u201cEmpire News\u201d website.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a true story; the Empire News is a rival of The Onion<\/a>, a satirical news publication.<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t heard of the Empire News, so when I received the email from a friend I began looking around for The Onion trademark.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t there.\u00a0 I checked out The Onion.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t published there. \u00a0\u00a0I had no idea there was another satirical outlet that rivaled The Onion.<\/p>\n

The story, even though it\u2019s fake, led me to think of a couple of things.\u00a0 First, we are fortunate in Iowa to have a system of selecting judges and justices that leaves politics out of the process \u2013 for the most part.\u00a0 In many states, judges and justices are on the ballot and campaign as though they were running for Congress or dogcatcher.\u00a0 Iowa\u2019s procedure requires interviews with a panel of Iowans selected by the Iowa Bar Association and the governor.\u00a0 After that, 3 finalists are submitted to the governor for the appointment of one.\u00a0 Yes, there is a small bit of politics, but it beats the process of judges making decisions based upon whether they may or may not be re-elected.<\/p>\n

The second thing I thought of that came out of this faux article is the reaction.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t just my reaction; comments followed the article, and several of those comments were from people who thought the article was true.\u00a0 The supposed act was from Texas.\u00a0 That made me believe that it \u201cpossibly could\u201d be true.\u00a0 \u00a0Things happen in Texas that no one can understand.\u00a0 However, there were believers that commented in a way that this was acceptable for a judge to do.\u00a0 \u201cI am glad that Texas is finally taking a stand against SATIN’s [sic] LETTUCE.\u201d\u00a0 (He was referring to marijuana when he calls it \u201cSatan\u2019s Lettuce.) \u00a0On the other hand, I imagined that the comment itself could be a fake.<\/p>\n

It all comes down to this:\u00a0 Who can you trust for reliable news nowadays?<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, I heard a woman talk about a bumper sticker that was stolen from her car.\u00a0 It read:\u00a0 \u201cI get my news from Comedy Central; I get my comedy from Fox News.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who can you trust for reliable news nowadays? Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264,17],"tags":[516,515,517,45,514],"class_list":["post-1361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fairness","category-issues","tag-comedy-central","tag-empire-news","tag-fox-news","tag-marijuana","tag-the-onion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1361"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1362,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions\/1362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}