A Single Example of Media Corruption

We all know the press is bullshit. Wherever we are in the world, our contempt for the information offered to us consumes our understanding of reality. We doubt everything we hear, and argue sometimes over dueling lies. No wonder we are so viciously divided. We have entered an era where we can pick and choose our own variations of truth based upon how much we dislike those who think another way.

The news is not so much made up stories, and malicious gossip set up to outrage people, although of course all of that is present in editorial commentaries(like this one), but the real news, the stories that different viewpoints cover in their own partisan ways, in ever part there is some cagey truth waiting to be expressed. The news makes this into a pick and choose game, reporting whatever facts join a narrative of their forced agenda. FOX News, (outside of its 92% editorializing), does not lie. They simply edit out the stuff their market share viewers will not like (and will suddenly denounce because, you know, truth doesn’t really matter), and pile on commentary from partisans to discuss the sliver of truth exposed.

CNN doesn’t lie (outside of its 74% editorializing.) CNN, in fact, remains a beacon in the dissemination of news, like a ticker tape back in old timey days, where zillionaires first learned about the stock market collapse. CNN has a much larger reach, despite their sinking ratings in the US. They are everywhere. They cover everything. They have channels we in America never even see, with news we will never hear about being every bit as scattered as the worst piece on OAN. It does not change the fact that what they are reporting is true. CNN is the least popular of the three major twenty-four hour news networks because they are the least entertaining. They are the network that imparts the most actual news, and why does anyone want to hear about problems elsewhere in the world they do not care about?

MSNBC, frankly, is a clown car. Unabashedly leftist, complete with snide, condescending hosts — people easily written off as “nerdy intellectuals talking down to me,” none of this interferes with the fact that they, too, are offering a picture of the world in all its prearranged glory. What they show is not fake. It is a portion of the actual news.

Yes, some of these networks show, say, Donald Trump in all his bestial corruption and unhinged, tantruming rage, showing off a man that only animals could follow. None of what they show is a lie. It is not made up. Donald Trump actually did and said all of these things being reported on (yes, he was even involved in some way with Russia, although the full extent is uncertain. I seriously doubt that a man of Donald Trump’s arrogance could really be anybody’s bitch like crude cynics on the left tried to paint him. No, Trump would only think he was outsmarting Putin over money, or that he was making a deal much to his own advantage, whether it was true or not. Donald Trump does not consider what other people are thinking, or if they have opinions, or even if they exist outside of his view. So it does not matter to him if someone is controlling everything behind the scenes. He doesn’t acknowledge it. Because of this it is very difficult to pin down his siding with anything.) — — — — — — — continue drastic edit

Let me get this out of the way first, before I rant on one of my chief issues, the preponderance of gun violence and the smugly stuttering reaction from the fake 2nd amendment shriekers (they do not understand what this right means, but we’ll get to that); let us realize that the press, regardless of their unquestionable any-longer biases, still is our best venue for information about the outside world as it actually exists (online we hear conspiracies, nonsense, and mean-spirited lies almost exclusively). We can bitch and complain and shout about things we do not agree with (regardless of whether it’s true), and then go forward and blame, let’s say, Don Lemon

or Tucker Carlson,

or even a past-tense activist TV personality like Rachel Maddow,

and we can comfort ourselves that these people are merely editorializing, that they are taking the sacred cow of the truth and twisting it towards whichever agenda they realize for the moment will gather more viewers. It is our cynical reality. But, but . . . but our response tothis cynical blather, this bullshit shrewed out onto a confused, frightened and angry public has grave consequences.

Let us look to today, to the day I write this, March 22, 2021. We are in the tail end of the Covid-19 Pandemic (one can hope), and the frustrations of the modern world have slightly broken as my children have returned to in person schooling this week (for example), four days a week. Things look brighter. It is nearly spring break for us, nearly the start of the 4th marking period for the children (says the former teacher for whom this means something.) We have even discussed taking a short trip, maybe, before and through Easter, and it provides something to look forward to in this grim time.

And yet today — today! Yet another cracked lunatic decided to bring loaded weapons into a public place and rat-tat bang bang!, shot down however many people it was (I write this with the breaking news shuddering in the background. This will not be updated once more information is gathered because such a horrifyingly frequent explosion, one that might be relevant to the reader a year from now, is almost secondary to the fact of how it is reported.) This plague, which I have written about numerous times before on recordingeditorialhistory.medium.com is something we have terribly grown to expect every few months, every time some disaffected school kid snaps, every time a shame-faced pervert regrets, and every time a religious fanatic or racial lunatic decides the time is right. We gawk at the horror of what people are capable of doing.

Just this past week some monster shot up three different Asian massage parlors (calling them brothels, I suppose, is slightly inaccurate and certainly politically incorrect),

and yet this story in itself has become muddled in the righteous fury of different sides.

Now look: clearly this was a targeted frenzy. Some people wish to proclaim it a racist crime, and you can certainly validate this perspective. Yet there is another side to this discussion (and how has it become a debate?), and this is the self-obsessed religiosity of the broken madman who took it upon himself to murder eight people (probably seeking to kill more.)

It should go without saying (yet here I am saying it) that religious fanaticism has a problem with sexuality. Wherever this horrible man targeted, these massage parlors (should I put the first word in quotes?) he seemed to fire with a frenzy of moral righteousness. Now of course this could be a statement on his idea of racial integrity, but it might also resemble the frustrated rage of an Isis-styled terrorist, resenting the whole world’s temptation, and seeking to purify whatever perversion continued invading his mind.

Now the fixation on Asian women, of course, provides a significant racial understanding, and yet, perhaps, that might be merely his personal kink, not so much a hatred (although racist in its own right, in another way), but a selfish sense of regret, his own implied perversion. Maybe it is just a sign of his opportunities or even merely the nearest dens of sin (as he saw them) deserving his idea of the wrath of God. Any of these ideas are relevant when attempting to unravel the mysteries of psychotic actions, and none of them should be dismissed outright. After all, a man who murdered eight people on a killing spree does not need to cower against hate crime legislation for a lighter sentence. Perhaps — and I say this with a horrible taste in my mouth — perhaps his boo-hooing ballyhoo after the fact is the truth.

But this divided narrative, different sides claiming and justifying different things for their own personal reasons merely gives rise to the awfulness of what the news is now saying (or not saying), about at least ten people gunned down in a Boulder, Colorado supermarket. We have no idea, as I write this, why this happened, or who the eventually three-named creature who did this is with his (surprise!) AR-15.

I sit and watch the news (right now!) in the background, my normal election day process of changing the channel every few minutes in effect, and what I have discovered could not be more telling about the validity of the modern media. You can tell what my opinions on this are by now — certainly, you can tell! If not I hope you might look back over the past three years or so when I talk about guns and gun control and the disgusting politics involved in defining who is a victim. And yet this fucking clown carnival proves something even darker than I have been vindictively proclaiming.

On CNN and MSNBC? Wall-to-wall coverage, a voyeuristic, masturbatory account of what is certainly major news, but which is looked upon with a mixture of horror and glee — what a great news story! some of the faces giddily exert. Oh my God, what has become of humanity? others lament, wiping both fake and real tears from their eyes.

Know what’s on the right-wing news? I switch between Fox (obviously), Newsmax, and OAN. Every single one, in prime time, not a word (in the early evening Fox offered a dose before resuming its usual cynical rant about whatever their viewers wrote in complaining about). Right now, as I write this, Sean Hannity is smiling his hilarious approval of drunken Florida spring break revelers trashing the bars and the streets because “these liberals are taking away our freedom!” (said some drunken frat boy who likely puked all over the camera after the shot was ended.) This is what they talk about, about removing pandemic warnings, about renewing the selfishness of humanity because we have all had enough of this bullshit.

They are incensed about an imposed curfew, again a petty me-first agenda broadcast to a frustrated public, condemning the local Miami government for demanding that people get off the streets and stop gathering in hordes, potentially infecting people. They are telling them that not everything is about themselves and that the community (in particular the local community, where the bulk of these ravenous interlopers are not from) requires some safety protocol. But Hannity is having none of this, promoting his own selfishness to the selfishness of his viewers because this is his idea of freedom, a big fuck you to the rest of humanity because everything is about me me me!

Tucker Carlson, an even more appalling creep, blares out his success just before Hannity’s smugness. He offers the coldest, most cynical words possible while ignoring the horrorshow unfolding in Colorado. He interviews snide right-wing kids, just out of college and sick of being bullied by the, admittedly, pushy PC pricks on the university campus, imposing speech regulations on everything because everything is now offensive. The one on screen in particular (I don’t remember his name and frankly do not care), huffs and puffs, clearly the sort of kid even the non-political mocked, and invents exaggerated puff about what words are banned and what the fake punishments are for saying normal everyday things (he claimed that “Good morning” was banned at one or another corporation, an obvious lie, which he giddily smiled while telling Carlson, giving his classic hollow, empty stare).

My point is that this is what they choose to air, bullshit culture war nonsense that no one takes seriously. No one. Even the rank liberal anarchists, those grotesque chatterboxes, offended by everything and therefore laughable, they can see past the brilliant marketing campaign condemning, for example, Dr. Seuss (I will never vary in my belief that this controversy wasn’t real, but a slick sales tactic, seeing Amazon.com’s top 100 book bestseller list, in the immediate aftermath, have 61 spaces full of Seuss, including seven of the top ten. How else to get the snowflake right to buy your out-of-date-shit then proclaiming {even from within} that you have been banned?) — even those pieces of shit manage to shut up for a moment to acknowledge a genuine human tragedy, the cold and senseless murder of numerous other people.

On the right, in their media? Nope. Never happened. Let’s pretend that the liberal douchebags have more influence than they actually do, giving a much larger microphone to their idiocy than they could ever hope to gain through their own efforts, or even through a liberal media that cannot take them seriously either. Let’s make this bullshit into an issue because talking about gun murder might annoy some of our most grizzled, paranoid viewers. They love guns, after all. Guns are what really matters, not life or human rights or the idea of freedom for everyone. No, our only freedom is to have guns, to shoot a place up if we feel threatened. Guns are it, are all that matters to some of these fucking animals. Such a story as this will be dismissed as a ‘false flag,’ as a lie for the liberals to take their guns away. And they actually believe this. They truly think that tragedies, that the worst possible things that can happen, which have happened, are really just about themselves, about some sinister plot from some unknown entity to interfere with their selfishness and impose on their singular idea of freedom. All these deaths, apparently, are part of the plan to control them. This is what some folks honestly believe as they load up more and more, buying more and more guns and ammunition, awaiting the end of the world where they can prove their brilliance by investing their lives in tools of death. Such a mindset really shouldn’t have guns. They are, after all, the sort of people who go into supermarkets or massage parlors or schools and kill as many people as they can before blowing their brains out because, after all, what better way to die than by expressing their right to kill?