Someone, please remind me that going out three consecutive school nights is bad!

I'm enrolled in a journalism and mass communications course this semester that requires us to meet periodically throughout the week in a chat room. We have a moderator who presents us with a series of questions and as a group we discuss them. Today, we discussed fairness and bias in the news as a consequence of media conglomeration, mostly pertaining to the conflict in Iraq.

For nearly an entire hour one individual argued that "hey this sucks, we're only getting one side of the story. We need other alternatives to the NY Times". Apparently by alternatives he meant leftist communist propaganda because when little me cited FOX News as a prominent alternative to the more mainstream war coverage, somebody had a hissy fit. According to him, I am a "freaking (other word was used) idiot who should be subject to the same torture as a traitor", whatever that means! Besides, he's the one who's the traitor, where's your patriotism buddy? I'm not offended, nearly amused that someone would have such a spaz attack in a monitored class discussion.

It's hard being a conservative at a large public university, nobody wants to befriend me except for the wealthy, drunken, frat boys of the Young Republicans Club.

On another note, I'm reading From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters. It details the origins of the eternal Arab- Jewish conflict over Palestine. It's thoroughly researched and interesting if you don't mind digging through 500 some pages packed with footnotes and references. It reads much like a text book. Regardless I recommend it to anyone who has any interest in the Middle East.