Thursday, April 24, 2008

What's That Go to Do with the Price of Rice in Sioux Falls?

In one of the more baffling abdications of journalistic responsibility in at least, I don't know, a month, the mainstream media continues to by and large ignore the fact that our planet is experiencing an increasingly serious food shortage. But it might get harder for the likes of Chris Matthews and Larry King to keep their heads buried in the mineral-depleted soil as the soaring costs of basic foodstuffs begin to impinge upon the U.S. marketplace. Already in the past week, multiple reports of rice and grain rationing are coming out of cities as disparate as San Francisco and Sioux Falls.

Ironically, this is partially a robbing Peter problem — diversion of edible crops to the manufacture of biofuels has helped to shape the situation. Another component is the incessant plundering of grain fields to feed the nation's millions of dead cows walking.

But really, can our busy journalists be blamed for getting distracted by things like Miley Cyrus' green bra? I mean, it is Green Week or whatever, right?

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