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Much of my time these days seems to be directed to a growing frustration with the lack of substance in our media "reporting".
While vehicles abound for actually providing the viewing audiences and readership opportunities to become informed about issues that affect their daily lives, we continue to be bombarded with stories that focus (and refocus) and build on incidents that are, at best, meaningless fluff! This week the "star" of all media has been that governor from Alaska (whose name should not be spoken).
No one has learned anything of value from the entire episode except that right-wing nutcases would prefer anyone not spewing THEIR hate should just "shut up"!!! The projection taking place from those on the right side of ideology/philosophy is no surprise to anyone who pays attention, listens, thinks, and makes their own decisions without "talking points" to direct them. But it would be silly were it not for the violence and harm that is promoted by the kind of fear, obfuscation, and, yes, hate that fills the print, airwaves, and cable news outlets.
I think it is time to just IGNORE them all. Pick up a book, make some chicken soup, write real letters to people you have lost track of, plant something, paint something, create something! What would happen if we didn’t mention the Palins, Coulters, Limbaughs, Becks, Malkins, and their ilk? What if we didn’t listen to the voices of "opinion" on CNN, MSNBC, FAUX NEWS et al?
Perhaps their revenues would dry up and they could actually experience life as others who are seeing their world turn upside down are living it…THEN, they might have an opinion worth listening to.
4 Comments
Sounds good to me! Wise thoughts widely shared, I betcha. Thanks for the encocuragement. With our upcoming move and associated scramble, we’ve simply left the telly off, and get our news from the Lake and occasionally Huffpo, plus our local rag. It’s almost refreshing when I find I’ve missed some “major” bit of fluff on the MSM. heh.
My tee-vee is mostly silent. In the last 6 months I’ve even nixed PBS, seems it’s prone to not air controversial subjects, or only he side the DCers want aired. Our local PBS has for the past 3 weeks nightly put on old re-runs of music of past eras, even blocking out the Friday night wrap-ups including Bill Moyers. A pox on them, they’ll get not another cent from me.
As for the Sunday talking heads, I can only bear to read the commentaries here at the Lake – sometimes not even that. It’s just a stage for the knuckledraggers in DC.
My philosophy professor pointed out that John Locke’s “blank slate” theory of the mind was very incomplete because, as any housewife of the late 1600s could have pointed out, the little rugrats don’t do everything you tell them to do. Why didn’t Locke understand this? Simple. Housewives didn’t have access to the public conversations of philosophers. Housewives weren’t writing books.
It was all very fine and well for liberals in the late 1990s to understand that the media was way the %$#& outta control, with wild, hysterical theories on Vince Foster and black helicopters and Bill Clinton’s sex appeal getting women all excited, but without a media infrastructure to put our concerns into the public consciousness, our understanding didn’t accomplish anything.
Nah, we gotta get our voices and concerns out there into the public sphere. We have to make our views known.
I think you’re right.