There is Treachery Afoot
According to a recently aired, hard-hitting expos'e on Dateline 20/20, a commission fronted by the National Sleep Foundation has concluded that many Americans are not getting enough sleep. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable conclusion, but something here was definitely amiss. As I dug a little deeper under the surface, you may or may not be shocked to learn (read) what was discovered (imagined).
First of all, National Sleep Foundation? Is this really a legitimate government-associated entity? Based on the results of an independent commission of sleep foundation experts, no. But just to make sure, I visited their world wide website. Upon my initial view, it looked like the homepage actually contained a disproportionate number of images depicting awake people. And not just tired awake people who were on the verge of dozing, but cheerful people who obviously had been alert and being productive for hours. The only other piece of interest on the website was a link to the National Sleep Foundation's upcoming "Events & Activities." Not having followed-up on the link, I can only speculate that these categories mostly involved super-human endurance challenges. Like 24 hours of Le Mans, but with fewer pit stops, and more sleeping.
I for one would like to meet an employee of the NSF. How can this foundation accomplish anything, if all its employees are required by law to consume the minimum amount of eight 8-oz glasses of sleep per day? They can't. So they took the easy way out, and issued a report that played right into their hands.
Secondly, it must have been a spectacularly slow news week, because if even one dramatic incident involving a whale or a flock of geese or a Caucasian child had come up, these pseudo-muckrakists would not have run a segment about a lack of shuteye. No one likes to be chastised about how late they stay up watching the same phone sex commercial over and over again, if they could instead be hoping against hope that the confused baby Orca finds its way home. Human interest sells, or rather, is watched.
Thirdly, someone should really be checking into whether ABNBC illegally received funds from the NSF. Doesn't it seem a little too convenient that a report issued from the National Sleep Foundation came to the mind-blowing conclusion that Americans need more sleep? Why not air the results of a similar study conducted by Gatorade, in which it was determined that Americans are seriously underquenched? The whole thing reeks of foul play.
I didn't expect this from you National Sleep Foundation. It used to be about the sleep. I don't even know who you are anymore.
posted by Arthur Croft Yates @ 1:05 AM
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