We’re all spun now in this never ending he said/she said battle, while being fed rations of gossip-ridden gumbo every day by the talking heads and print media. We’re urged to base the depth of our political knowledge not on the social and economical impact of the decisions made by our leaders, but instead on the depth of our capacity for bickering amongst one another over who’s more of a scumbag, who lied more, and whether an attack should be condoned or vilified. Who threw the first punch? Who was justified in lashing out because of what? Who’s taking the high road? Who approved the funding needed to build the high road? Who’s hiding what, and why are they justified or not justified in doing so?
We’re allowing the media to deviate from relaying facts and instead reside in the realm of arbitrary for as long as people are interested in bickering over a certain thing. When a particular derision has been squeezed of all its bile, there’s always another one on its way down the conveyor belt that can easily be spun into an ‘us vs. them’ saga. As it’s apparently the paramount goal of the media of our generation to now divert attention from facts and reality and instead turn the entire process, one that affects each and every one of us in specific ways, into a never ending episode of ‘Melrose Place’.
On some days, all you see posted in internet blogs are rants about the fluff, inciting an arena for people, under the protection of cyber-anonymity, to clutter each others’ minds in a supposedly intellectual way by throwing feces at one another. Through this, our brains are repeatedly beaten into submission and taken in to slavery. The presidential race is no longer ours, nor does it belong to the candidates. Instead it belongs to the influential talking heads and agenda driven print pundits who are too easily able to crack the whip and turn our slave minds into washing machines. We launder the spin and allow them to turn it into the story, rather than it being a method of telling the story. We voluntarily legitimize their version of reality, then attempt to peck each others’ eyeballs out, all the while ingesting talking point after talking point aimed at accomplishing nothing more than to encourage self mutilation of ourselves from the brain down.
The spin, and our addiction to it on both sides, has allowed the press to become the story. It’s allowed the realities of policy decisions and ideas on what to do to make the country better to take a permanent back seat to whatever the press tells us we should be arguing about on a given day. In fact the real stuff isn’t even on the back seat; it’s tied up and gagged in the trunk. The real stuff is kept safely away so as not to divert our attention from the fluff to what our tax dollars are actually facilitating behind the curtain.
I read pieces written by people that state facts and arguable points of view concerning the science involved in making America a better place, but these are generally overlooked in lieu of the gossip that we naturally flock to. Our lives are impacted by the actions of politicians every day, but these actions are covered minimally, while the drama is dissected in every imaginable way. How many people on average understand how our economy works? How much of an impact does consumer spending have? What is GDP and what does it mean when it’s reduced? If you judged by the spun up drivel we’re fed everyday in the form of ‘political news’, those things wouldn’t appear to be important at all.
Why? Because it’s all about making money, it’s about catering to a market who’ll stick with you because they like how you describe things, how you apply your particular spin style, or how viciously you insult and berate those on the opposing side. Diverting attention from reality is paramount because, unfortunately for the talking heads and print media, facts do and always will exist whether any of them care to admit it or not. Facts aren’t biased, nor are facts partisan or arbitrary in nature. Drive-thru news outlets would anger their customers if they focused too much on the facts. So they keep our heads chained inside cages with unlocked doors for specific a purpose. To ensure their profitability and survival remains in tact, at the expense of objectivity and the necessary accountability of our leaders. By pushing our buttons in a precise way, while always pointing out that the door to the cage is open, we’re lulled into a deep and blissful state where nothing is what it seems and all of us are always right.
We’re mental slaves to this chicanery. The political media in America has now taken over the role of enslaving minds from government and religion, and the proof surrounds us. We’re not different than our neighbor now because we pray to a different God, as that would be prejudiced and wrong. Now we’re different than our neighbors based on what version of spin we chose to allow into the laundry room of our minds. Bias has become the story, and in this extended battle of bias vs. bias, the only losers are you and I.
First Posted: 8/25/04
Thought this one was as pertinent now as it was pre-election.
We’re all spun now in this never ending he said/she said battle
This is the only thing I disagree with you in this whole post. This didn’t just happen all of a sudden, haveyou heard the term yellow journalism. This is how humans in large groups have swayed the popular opinion since language came about.
Something more recent, what is your impression of Joseph McCarthy? The liberal media angle is probably what sticks out in your mind because we have been conditioned to believe the revision of history. The shocker??? He was right, communists had infested the most sensitive corners of our government.
Reagan was the Great Communicator. This isn’t something that has transpired over the last few years, it’s always been. Great post!!!!
Thanks Right – that’s one I originally wrote during the campain, so that first line is more in that context than the specific situation today. In a lot of ways though, the article is sort of universal to any time in recent years in terms of politics in America. I’m fascinated by yellow journalism and the reasons for it.
On McCarthy…I don’t think it was ever a posibility that our system of governance would have been overthrown at any time. The sensationalized threat is most dangerous in our world, and determining what is and what isn’t is crucial in these times of mega-media coverage. Too often, the threat is described the same way across the board and the public is hoodwinked to certain facts and saturated with the facts they want us to focus on.
The sensationalizing of communism in our country enabled the Vietnam war to take place, and that’s a horrible way for such a thing to turn. Ironically, ‘The Deer Hunter’ was on HBO last night…so I’ve been th inking about it quite a bit today. They don’t make ’em like that anymore!
Here’s a good related topic I thought of when reading your reply. I propose that it is necessary to put the fear into people to get them to act, as was done with communism, The Flu, AIDS, Child Molesters, Iraq, Taliban, Global Warming, Life Insurance, Seat Belts and the list goes on.
Wouldn’t you agree that in the interest of national security and public safety the government, who ever it is, needs to create a lot of hype, sensationalism to spur action and defeat indifference?
Are you happy with the results of sensationalizing communism in the case of the Vietnam War? Unnecessary death has to be the worst that can come such things, and that war was chock full of it. It’s not always right.
Without having to lie, we can get the job done.
My Dad has been in public service for nearly all of his career and was absolutely certain that the voters would see through the fire and realize that there was no heat, or true content, in the the 2004 Presidential campaign.
He believed very strongly that if the average person sat down with themselves and considered the lies that got us into Iraq, the state of the economy, the opaque, Kremlin-like manner in which this Adminstration manages its business, and that the only logical conclusion would be that Bush had to go.
He failed to realize that the heat for most people is the content. People are voting exclusively Republican over the abortion issue, in spite of Republican efforts to do away with programs such as Medicaid that are so critical to the welfare of children born into single-parent or indigent households. They believed that by invading Iraq Bush was effectively fighting the war on terror, despite the assurances to the contrary by nearly everyone who knew anything about the subject.
I agree with Right Thinker … people generally do what they do because they really, really want to, or because they’re afraid not to. That’s certainly where I am.
I listened to NPR today. I listened to the chairman-of-the-board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Tomlinson, try to justify a new financial strategy that CPB is considering.
To make a long story short, CPB funds PBS (largely TV) and NPR (exclusively radio), the two primary content providers of all public radio and talk news content you’ll see or on public television or radio stations.
Tomlinson, a Republican and and admitted conserative, had great concerns regarding what he saw to be the perception of liberal bias in the content these organizations provide, despite statistical evidence that relatively little such concern exists among the listeners and viewers of that material.
To make a long story short, and in my own opinion, Tomlinson fell on his face while tried to support his claim of bias, especially in the face of his own statistical evidence.
The capper for me was at the end of the interview, when the host brought to his attention his stated intention to begin to shift funds currently available to local stations for the purchase of NPR news broadcasts away from that purpose and towards the purchase of classical and folk music material.
Tomlinson alluded to CPB’s alleged obligation so support classical and folk music traditions in this country. When the host brought to his attention the nationwide trend of radio stations moving away from the very formats he wants to force upon public radio audiences, he simply reiterated what he sees to be this incredibly important obligation.
My gut was twisting during the entire interview. NPR is one of the few places where you can hear a comprehensive objective analysis of nearly any public or political issue worthy of review. Commercial broadcasting offers no equivalent.
That he so boldly implies that the nation’s need to listen to Vivaldi and Gershwin trumps a detailed explanation of the impact of the Patriot Act on the average citizen, or the wisdom (or lack thereof) of personal accounts in Social Security, is as frightening as it is mind-boggling.
To completely understand his motivation you need to watch the Today Show on your local NBC affiliate and compare the clap-trap you see now to the content of just eighteen months ago.
Eighteen months ago “entertainment” news was provided no earlier than the second segment (after 7:30 am). The first segment were the morning’s headlines and other “hard” news. Now you can barely tell the difference between what used to be the number one nationwide news broadcast and the afternoon’s edition of “Hard Copy” or “Celebrity Justice”.
There is no such thing as a “Michael Jackson or Britney Spears-free” zone. This crap starts at 7, commonly dominates the entire broadcast, and occasionally serves as the lead story.
The initial result is easy to spot; the Today Show ratings are tanking. There are contributing factors, but in the final analysis the nation and the world have lost what used to be considered a pretty credible source of morning news. Some cheap suit has decided that we need to know more about Britney’s pregnancy or Jackson’s pedophile predilictions than we do about the questions that actually affect our lives.
GE can dumb-down the Today Show, but the Bush Adminstration can’t obviously try to do the same thing to NPR. It’s against federal law.
That’s why Tomlinson’s there.
Mr. Tomlinson, if we don’t pay attention, will make a scrap heap of these critical institutions and lay further waste to the prospect of civil public discourse in this country.
You’re right. We need to be afraid before anything is going to change.
Personally, I’m scared to death.
Tim
Wow! Awesome post Tim, and welcome.
I just heard about this maneuver yesterday and had a few ideas for presenting it here. Your assessment pins it down perfectly. The shift of relevance you pointed to is happening across our entire culture. The flagship GOP station on TV – FoxNews – has been pandering to this gossip quota for years now. The over-coverage of the Laci Peterson case was sad. You want to take the word ‘news’ seriously, but at this point it’s entirely subjective.
I’ve got a few more articles on the media you might be interested in – let me know and I’ll post links to them here.
My Dad has been in public service for nearly all of his career and was absolutely certain that the voters would see through the fire and realize that there was no heat, or true content, in the the 2004 Presidential campaign.
I think this is called tranferrence. It’s where you think that because you have it all figured out in your mind, according to your beliefs, that everyone will think the same way. Maybe it’s not transferrence, or is it?
He believed very strongly that if the average person sat down with themselves and considered the lies that got us into Iraq, the state of the economy, the opaque, Kremlin-like manner in which this Adminstration manages its business, and that the only logical conclusion would be that Bush had to go.
I see where the thought process broke down, you see, lies didn’t get us into Iraq, Saddam Hussein got us into Iraq. The Al-Queda network and other terrorists using Iraq as a safehaven and base of operations got us into Iraq. We had to assume WMDs were there because he wouldn’t let inspectors do their jobs and he had them and used them in the past.
I get this mental picture from some liberals that Saddam Hussein was over there minding is own business, tip toeing through the tulips, green grass, clean streets where everyone knows your name. Everyday is a festival with cotton candy and ferris wheels and young lovers holding hands and kissing under the fireworks lit sky. Then the U.S. bombers flew over and destroyed it all.
Tomlinson, a Republican and and admitted conserative, had great concerns regarding what he saw to be the perception of liberal bias in the content these organizations provide, despite statistical evidence that relatively little such concern exists among the listeners and viewers of that material.
The reason that relatively little such concern exists among the listeners is the conservatives have been insulted away. My taxes are going to a program that I cannot be part of, unless of course I enjoy a healthy dose of indoctrination.
If this was Catholic radio and only Catholics listened to it I am pretty sure that relatively little such concern would exist that it is biased in favor of Catholicism. NPR is for liberals by liberals and thatis the point and good for Tomlinson to go in there and make this public program suitable for EVERYONE, not just one ideology at my expense.
Tomlinson alluded to CPB’s alleged obligation so support classical and folk music traditions in this country. When the host brought to his attention the nationwide trend of radio stations moving away from the very formats he wants to force upon public radio audiences, he simply reiterated what he sees to be this incredibly important obligation.
Public programming isn’t about doing what’s trendy, it’s about providing content that the other networks won’t support. Do you really want PBS to become Must See TV or do you want the ability to culture yourself a bit with symphonies you can’t afford tickets for and culture for Seniors who are still alive and like this stuff?
NPR is one of the few places where you can hear a comprehensive objective analysis of nearly any public or political issue worthy of review.
Wow….my Tourette’s Syndrome just kicked in. I’ll have to pass on this one.
trumps a detailed explanation of the impact of the Patriot Act on the average citizen
While I don’t like to consider myself average I’m sure I fit into this category. I have been completely unaffected and actually feel more secure. Are you writing this post from a political prisoner camp somewhere?
of personal accounts in Social Security
I’ve been in the financial business for 15 years, this is a great idea to those who understand what it really means for America.
GE can dumb-down the Today Show, but the Bush Adminstration can’t obviously try to do the same thing to NPR. It’s against federal law.
We’ve been talking about this with regards to school and religion and I’m pretty sure Chris has a solid argument that it is indead against federal law to use tax dollars for private party ideology or anything that is exclusionary of Americans.
That’s why the government isn’t supposed pay for political campaigns entirely or provide funds only to one party, like what is happening with NPR and PBS. It’s just free publicity for the DNC and a government funded endorsement of liberalism.
Wow! Awesome post Tim, and welcome.
I 110% agree with “and welcome.” What public service is it that your father does? Will you follow in his foot steps or do you have your own thing going?
Right thinker:
I would be interested to hear your take on this editorial. Personally I think it sums up the danger of a borrow first policy, but it would be nice to get another perspective on it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/20/opinion/20krugman.html?hp
I would be interested to hear your take on this editorial. Personally I think it sums up the danger of a borrow first policy, but it would be nice to get another perspective on it.
What are you asking? You want my opinion on someone else’s opinion? I can’t get to bugmenot.com from my office computer so I’ll have to look at this when I get home.