Welcome to the home of the very worst of the meretricious poetasters!
number 26 for 8-13-05:
Paula Abdul is Like, SO Important
(Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back)
I don't think that the media controls our minds, tells us what to think and believe, and makes our presidents or breaks them. I don't think that all the stupid shit that gets by gets by because they want it to, and there's no grand conspiracy.
What the media DOES do is subtly influence the moronic masses in order to make money. And the moronic masses lap it right up.
This is usually quite benign. Like when Drudge hypes up Michael Jackson so more people will read his shitty gathering of partisan news. His priorities are, shall we say, popular and financial. Who else, on a day when a shitload of radio transmissions and oral histories from 9-11 are released could possibly put out a front page story like this:
That, to me, that's just shameful. Flat out shameful. On 9-11, I went out and ordered a New Yorker pizza and tried to go to the mall. Many people would find that disrespectful or asinine. But then, I did it so that I could show that I wasn't going to let terror change my life. No one came with me. Everyone else let terror change their life. Then they lied and said they would never forget it. I have never forgotten, which is why I try so hard to save this country from its own sweeping and amoral changes following 9-11. I am failing. Drudge is proof of that. The swirling, teeming masses want to ignore the few people whose free speech is being taken, the poor who are being fucked, and they want to know, instead, who Paula Abdul is fucking.
And we all get fucked by this.
It's not just Drudge. It's the news in general. Over the last year I've adopted a ton of links in order to find news items. Some I use daily, some I hit every once in a while.
Seeing so many news sources, from the very partisan (Fox and Drudge) to the rogue (Rotten) to the most basic of algorithmic (Google), you notice a disturbing trend.
When you look at what the world cares about, and what the top stories on the internet REALLY are, they're almost never the bullshit spit out by people's main news sources, CNN and FOX.
For instance, and I'm gonna do this right now without looking….here are the top stories on all three:
FOX: Iraq Bombings, Sri Lanka Emergency, Washington Wildfires.
CNN: Sri Lanka Emergency
Google: Bush snubbing protestors, 9-11 Documents, Evangelicals block Gay Priests.
Now you take a look at the utility of the news provided, and decide. I say that more bombings in Iraq, an emergency in Sri Lanka, and wildfires in Washington State (where I live), while exciting, are not really relevant to what we need to know to get through the day and be intelligent, contributing members of society. And that's the point of news, really.
The other items are critical to know of, as a human, as a patriot. That Bush has again ignored the will of the people, that he never acknowledges mistakes. That there are human records of the worst tragedy of our nation's history after the dropping of the atom bomb. That gays are still being excluded from our parishes worldwide out of an irrational prejudice.
Now, I hesitate to add labels, but you'll notice that the popular searches for news are very liberal items, and the popular, promoted, corporate news items are conservative. It's corrolary, and not logically sound, but I suggest by this (and continued gut intuition) that liberals are more informed in their choice of news, while conservatives are more rah-rah, so long as it's exciting. My experience bears this out.
My conclusion? We, as a society need to step up and diversify our news. When we get it from only CNN or Fox, we will get a view of the dominant powers in society, not what is really going on. So get out there and do it. Here are my cursory links, the ones I visit every day, so you can see what I'm seeing. The full list isn't here, but this, to be honest, is my core list:
http://www.dailyrotten.com/
http://www.gallup.com/
http://www.foxnews.com/
http://www.cnn.com/
http://www.globalsecurity.org/
http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&gl=us
http://www.drudgereport.com/
http://www.thenewstribune.com/
http://gorillamask.net/
ANCILLARY
This should fall under the no-shit category from yesterday, but regardless, its existence is enough to piss me off and make me raise the subject.
Bush is now talking about using force against Iran again. His tagline, as it was with Iraq, is "We will use force as a last resort."
Yeah. They sure did that with Iraq, didn't they. Sure gave the peace process all of half a year, right? How long has the peace process taken with North Korea? 40 years? And we haven't invaded? Hmm. Looks a little bit like a double standard here from the little man's perch.
Citation