Letter: Unmuzzle the masses

Editor, Daily News:

The conservative radio talk-show host Michael Smerconish got it exactly right when he said in his best-selling book "Muzzled": "There was a time when telling an inappropriate joke might get you slapped. Today it gets you fired and sued. We want everybody happy. Everybody equal. Everybody looking, acting and talking the same, and those who dare to be different will be damned."

This "political correctness" craziness that seeks to reduce us all to a bunch of mindless cattle is compensated for to some extent by sexual excess, drug abuse, drunkenness and violence against others.

Americans are not a happy bunch in general , regardless of what the media, the government and the rich interests would have us all believe. From TV commercials to the advertising inserts in newspapers, we are all portrayed as giddily happy and contented beyond measure.

Everybody's smiling. Always smiling — with teeth as white as snow. We lack for nothing. We live in Utopia. It's all a lie. And I think we are a nation that lies to itself more and lies more often than any other nation in history.

And in the end, unless we can start telling the truth for a change — even if it's some very unpleasant and inconvenient truths, such as the fact that we are decidedly not "created equal" or that global warming is a grim reality — unless we can unmuzzle ourselves once and for all, then I think we are doomed as a nation and as a society.

— Kenneth Carson / Naples