Jonathan+P’s+2018+OpEd+Article

=Muckraking the Muckrakers= ====Most of you have probably been to Disneyland before, I have (about seven hundred times so far, but never been to six flags god dammit. Still, I admit that it’s pretty fun). Last time I was there, my friend, who will remain nameless, and I got into a heated debate over these “scent tubes” that supposedly pump smells into the air – they screw with your brain, make you want to blow $20 on a bowl of mac-n-cheese and a slice of pizza for lunch, anyway, I’m getting off topic. I wasn’t trying to deny the tubes’ existence (I had most definitely experienced their effect earlier that day when I spent like my entire monthly allowance on food), but I was telling my friend, who I neglected to name, that I could give less of a crap about what Disneyland was trying to do with my head, I guess I didn’t really want to spend my long-awaited five minutes of glory on Pirates of the Caribbean thinking about how each and every one of my senses was being manipulated by some dude in a lab brewing up an ocean breeze-scent, or adjusting the lighting so that the hair on my arms stood on end. I just wanted to enjoy the experience, because sometimes, the less I know the better.==== ====I could have gone on and on to my friend, who I neglected to name, about how Walt Disney was a notorious anti-semetic, and how his severed head was probably sitting in a freezer somewhere beneath our feet, and that Tom Sawyer island portrays a very romantic view of white manifest destiny in the 1800’s. I could say that Frozen was deeply propagandistic – the whole storyline of this wicked femininity whose eyes are opened by Hans, representing masculinity, reason, faith, and truth… it’s uncanny. But I don’t because its fricking Disneyland, the “happiest place on earth”.==== ====Perhaps this applies to more than just theme parks. I think I could find shit on just about anything that exists or anyone that lives, but I don’t because I understand that good cannot exist without bad, that light cannot exist without dark. Just because you smoke marijuana doesn’t mean you’re a foul soul. if you watch porn, you’re not automatically a pervert. Naming a dorm after Woodrow Wilson is not an endorsement of white supremacy. W.E.B. Dubois, though a supporter of African American eugenics, was not some kind of black Nazi. If the only thing we do is judge something by its lowest common denominator, we’d end up being skeptical of everything and appreciative of nothing. It is instinctive for people to look for things to get mad about, but I find it a useful skill to temper myself against this continuous outrage, which trivializes ACTUAL problems. Heck, if you turn over any rock on the ground, no shit you’re going to find dirt.==== ====I should’ve titled this something else because I’m not accusing all muckraking of this, but “Muckraking the Muckrakers” sounded cool. Go ahead and muckrake me for this false headline. What’s gone down on this page so far has been all too judgmental against journalism. There is real muck in society that needs to be raked, I don’t deny that, but every bit of faith that I lose in humanity seems to find its way back to me somehow or another, I think its only right that we recognize both the good and bad that surround us.====