Old Dogs

 The other day I came across a YouTube video which appeared to have been made by George Will.  I found the message inspiring and immediately forwarded the link to friends.

No sooner did that link make the rounds when the smell of a rat reached the nose of my friend Bill, who for the nth time pointed out to me that I had been suckered.  I'd like to say that I've learned my lesson, but the sheer number of times I've been taken in by these faux reports indicates that that remains to be seen.  Meanwhile, all I can do is hope my friends have a greater capacity for checking for veracity than I do and a greater inclination to do so.  To my chagrin, I have to conclude that my e-mail messages should carry the warning: DO NOT TAKE THIS POST SERIOUSLY UNTIL YOU HAVE VERIFIED THIS INFORMATION.  With that, of course, I need to accept responsibility to be less quick at the draw when it comes to passing on "information."

In my naiveté, I wondered aloud to Bill why anyone would want to milk the progressive left like that. Why make the effort to provide hope and encouragement for your opponents?  Bill wrote back immediately that it must be that YouTube financially rewards those who get the most viewers, and they know that we on the side of resistance to the trump phenomenon are easy pickins.

Which raises a number of questions. I'm a huge fan of YouTube, I've watched hundreds of hours of entertainment videos, piano concertos and the like, and can't imagine life without this great source of information and enrichment coming into my life. I've sung YouTube's praises any number of times. Now it appears even monkeys fall from trees, even YouTube is part of the great American willingness to sell out for big bucks.

That's all I want to say here. Tread softly.  Never mind the big stick; just tread cautiously.  Tomorrow may be another day, hopefully a better one (here you'll pardon me if I talk to myself for a minute).

But keep the lights on.

And this old dog will work harder at learning new tricks.