Terror To The Rescue!
In the dog years of the media, the “good old days” were back in 2001,when one and all wore flak jackets, talked tough, and blathered on in the most maudlin yet bloodthirsty way, and despite the fact that they were providing such ghastly television and worse journalism, everybody watched. They mattered, which is important if you’re an airhead, overpaid gasbag with the attention span of a drosophilia. Glenn Beck tearfully waxing lyrical about “9/12″ is no aberration; to these chickenhawk nincompoops, 9/12 was their San Juan Hill, Normandy, and Midway rolled into one, and the fact that they’ve gone downhill ever since is a constant source of wounded pride and overeager distractions.
For “journalists” so completely inadequate to their craft, 9/11 had the advantage of being understood without any cool, intelligent heads around to explain it; not so the wars, constitutional usurpations, additional attacks, hurricanes, and on and on that followed in its wake. A sort of nostalgia has thus set in for that one time in the last ten years that they didn’t get a story completely wrong, and they would so love to step before the cameras again and be BIG, like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Unfortunately, in addition to lacking any notion of journalism, they also lack all perspective; a lot of people got killed, after all, on 9/11, and the fanatical attention given to the underpants and Turf Builder “bombers” and their hapless ilk only serve to drive this point home, all these years later.
Sadly, a large portion of our political class also leapt up from deserved ignominy, like Rudy Giuliani, or obscurity, like Joe Lieberman, in the aftermath of 9/11, and by being loudly and maniacally wrong about everything from that day forward, have joined the media in the terror fetishism that plagues us to this day, when these idiots are brought on TV to blather on about inconsequential nonsense. Thus, amidst a rapidly unfolding disaster like the oil gusher in the Gulf, too much coverage of which might offend advertisers, we are blessed with some content-free bloviating to push aside such discouraging topics, all the while burnishing the image of the political faction that caused the disaster and focusing Americans on the REAL problem, that too many brown people consider themselves citizens. Ahhh, now you’re talking, Holy Joe, and thanks for coming on tonight.
In a media/political landscape utterly devoted into preserving the irrational (and not coincidentally, lucrative) fear of terrorism among Americans, huge things can happen: cities drowned, oceans befouled, taxpayers robbed, and the miscreants run off with the money, and if some nut unsuccessfully tries and fails at a fourth grade science project, it gets covered wall to wall at the dire expense of the reality currently unfolding. I can’t decide if this is a bug or a feature, but if it’s a bug, it certainly is a recurring one.
Of course, Fox News is taking no chances; in addition to hopping on board the increasingly feeble terror train, it also dipped into the dregs of the barrel to scoop up Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown, to darkly intone on air that the Obama Administration “wanted” the oil spill, for reasons only a worthless, addlepated layabout like Brown could hope to conjure. In our co-opted media, reality is always so pulled and prodded to support the flimsiest and most discredited memes on any given day; the narratives were already chosen so the news will just have to fit.
And when the news can’t be shoehorned in, hope for Terror.
Well, the good news is that Rush’s digs in Florida are probably awaiting the arrival of BP even as we speak. Maybe when the gooey stuff actually gets there he can head down to Costa Rica. I’m sure that the Hotel Del Rey will save him a stool at the Blue Marlin, and let him phone it in from there.
(Those filthy environazis, you see, blew up BP’s rig just to drive down his property values, but since he had the foresight to buy half of Costa Rica years ago, he’s still got the beach, and the microphone. Never for a minute think that you get the better of the fat man.)
Ah, those scheming hippies strike again..
This
caught my attention because I happened to be browsing CNN when Anderson Cooper had that guy on.
At Cooper’s CNN site, he intones
To invite the disreputable and clearly soulless Brown on and treat his spittle as, potentially, “facts” illustrates the utter bankruptcy of major media in this fine country.
And, regarding the terrorism bogey-man that serves to distract from, as you say,
we’re treated to shifts-in-responsibility from a “liberal” media that can’t wait to validate the non-validatable posturings of the righties.
Samples (h/t Salon’s War Room):
And
Etc.
And, if one were to accept any of these assertions, what’s the proper response? Why, accelerating the slaughter, of course.
Makes sense to me.
We murder indiscriminately, with impunity.
+
Survivors seek some semblance of justice for their murdered relatives.
=
Kill more of them!
It’s nuts, and outside of the most bonkers wingnuts, it’s also old and tired; sort of the Lawrence Welk of TV news stories. But they don’t have anything else, so….
RFK Jr., posted this morning …
$500,000 not spent per U.S. oil platform in recent years (for acoustic regulators) means at least $14 billion in damages today.
We don’t need no stinkin’ regulation!
Heckuva job.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/sex-lies-and-oil-spills_b_564163.html
What a surprise. Funny how kissing corporate ass (even literally) is good, while bowing to the Japanese Prime Minister is bad. Which one costs more in money and lives?
I found a post on the TV “journalism” show that replaced Moyers Journal. I will find it very hard to like this show because it caused the demise of the best interview show on TV. Here’s the link:
PBS and Our “Need To Know” the Truth “Described as “a multi-platform current affairs news magazine, uniting broadcast and web in an innovative approach to newsgathering and reporting,” the Need To Know hybrid effort premieres nationwide this week on PBS — and on line at PBS.org/NeedTo Know.”
http://www.opednews.com/articles/PBS-and-Our-Need-To-Know-by-Rory-OConnor-100505-269.html
The Enemies of Freedom
Even The Atlantic‘s stupidest pundit is smarter than Joe Lieberman:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/05/citizen-lieberman/56227/
* * * * *
Lieberman’s and McCain’s demagoguery probably won’t quite succeed this time, but when there’s a real bomb and real blood, they may get real traction.
The title said it all, but then the interviews just made it worse. Moyers never operated on a “need to know” basis; these cretins clearly do.