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An open letter to the American Media Machine...
18 years ago
...And to a lesser extent, the entire media world.
Hi, Media Machine. Can I call you Media? No? Okay.
You keep giving me steaming heaps of fresh horse-shi-- I mean news. Unfortunately, this news all seems to deal with Anna Nicole Smith, Brittney Spears, The American Idol contestants (That's some sort of game show, isn't it?), the various rapper gripes, what certain celebrities are wearing, doing with their money or sleeping with, the state of what's hot and what's not (Fire hot, ice not, am I right?) and various other entertainment news. Thank you so much!
I used to see the entertainment news only as a five minute blurb, on a slow news day, at the end of the news. Now thanks to your benevolent gaze and an oversaturation of Pop Culture Studies degrees, entertainment news is inundating the North American 24 hour news channels. This prevents me from seeing any news that will ever make me think about anything or consider the possibility that celebrity isn't everything. Obviously I was deluded for the majority of my life to this point, in thinking that entertainment news was not actually news but beneath the contemptible heading of "Tabloid Television." Thank you for opening my eyes to the truth that the state of affairs in world politics is secondary to who Brad Pitt is boinking this week, or how fucking insane Tom Cruise is now, or even what whorey thing Paris Hilton is doing in public at the moment. Don't forget Lindsey Lohan. She's drunk! She's Skinny! She's rehabbed and reformed!
Damn, that's some good news. It makes me totally forget that a religious fundamentalist nutter is in the White House, waging war with other religious fundamentalist (Ever notice 'mentalist' seems to be the root word there?) nutters without the consent of Congress. It makes me forget that there is another war going on between pro- and anti- environment nutters with no real solution in sight. It makes me forget that racist sentiments are more and more powerful in racially diverse areas world-wide and law enforcement and governments, the world over, don't know who the enemy is. It makes me forget that there are people who despise the western hemisphere of the Earth, in general, who are tinkering around with the fundamental nuclear building blocks of the universe. Oh, thank you, for telling me that I should be terrified about the state of affairs in the world and in the next breath, telling me that celebrities that don't give two shits about me are more important than I will ever be.
Thank you and thanks to whatever god you hold holy, American Media Machine, that those celebrities will be safe when the real news items of the world kill me and the other unimportant scumfuckers like me.
Thanks.
I look forward to more of the horse-shit you blind me with so I am totally unaware of world affairs. This way, I will be so blinded and deafened by the steaming piles of "news" you feed me that I won't see the totalitarian regime rise and stamp out freedom world-wide. I will, instead, sink to the bottom of the new inland oceans chained to my TV.
Thank you, so much.
Pyro
P.S. You never call. You never write.
Hi, Media Machine. Can I call you Media? No? Okay.
You keep giving me steaming heaps of fresh horse-shi-- I mean news. Unfortunately, this news all seems to deal with Anna Nicole Smith, Brittney Spears, The American Idol contestants (That's some sort of game show, isn't it?), the various rapper gripes, what certain celebrities are wearing, doing with their money or sleeping with, the state of what's hot and what's not (Fire hot, ice not, am I right?) and various other entertainment news. Thank you so much!
I used to see the entertainment news only as a five minute blurb, on a slow news day, at the end of the news. Now thanks to your benevolent gaze and an oversaturation of Pop Culture Studies degrees, entertainment news is inundating the North American 24 hour news channels. This prevents me from seeing any news that will ever make me think about anything or consider the possibility that celebrity isn't everything. Obviously I was deluded for the majority of my life to this point, in thinking that entertainment news was not actually news but beneath the contemptible heading of "Tabloid Television." Thank you for opening my eyes to the truth that the state of affairs in world politics is secondary to who Brad Pitt is boinking this week, or how fucking insane Tom Cruise is now, or even what whorey thing Paris Hilton is doing in public at the moment. Don't forget Lindsey Lohan. She's drunk! She's Skinny! She's rehabbed and reformed!
Damn, that's some good news. It makes me totally forget that a religious fundamentalist nutter is in the White House, waging war with other religious fundamentalist (Ever notice 'mentalist' seems to be the root word there?) nutters without the consent of Congress. It makes me forget that there is another war going on between pro- and anti- environment nutters with no real solution in sight. It makes me forget that racist sentiments are more and more powerful in racially diverse areas world-wide and law enforcement and governments, the world over, don't know who the enemy is. It makes me forget that there are people who despise the western hemisphere of the Earth, in general, who are tinkering around with the fundamental nuclear building blocks of the universe. Oh, thank you, for telling me that I should be terrified about the state of affairs in the world and in the next breath, telling me that celebrities that don't give two shits about me are more important than I will ever be.
Thank you and thanks to whatever god you hold holy, American Media Machine, that those celebrities will be safe when the real news items of the world kill me and the other unimportant scumfuckers like me.
Thanks.
I look forward to more of the horse-shit you blind me with so I am totally unaware of world affairs. This way, I will be so blinded and deafened by the steaming piles of "news" you feed me that I won't see the totalitarian regime rise and stamp out freedom world-wide. I will, instead, sink to the bottom of the new inland oceans chained to my TV.
Thank you, so much.
Pyro
P.S. You never call. You never write.
Good going, media drones.
Locally the jumps at the Louisville Courier-Journal used to go from the front page to the back page, making it easy to flip the paper over and finish a story. Not anymore, the back is just as often a whole-page ad and even the formerly sacrosanct front page has ads at the top and bottom. Let's not forget that the Wednesday Features section has recipes because it's the same day the grocery ads come out.
No, those who think the news media is about real journalism has forgotten that they need to feed their multi-billion dollar corporate handler first. My journalism school taught me more about who owns what and the business side of it than [I}some[/I] of basic skills.
This isn't the fault of the corporations that hold the reigns. They just give the people what they want. The problem is, think for a second about highschool and how the popular people were, more often than not, worthless assholes. And the more worthless they were, the more popular they seemed to be. We're dealing with the same paradigm, here. If you look closely at your memories of HS again, you'll realize how much higher the number of useless people was than useful ones. High school is just a metaphor for society, sadly.
I don't watch the news. I don't like the news. Generally, I prefer to avoid the news altogether, but that's mostly impossible.
I watch the Daily Show. I don't make the mistake of thinking that it's real, or news, or anything remotely relevant. I watch it to be entertained, nothing more. Occasionally a morsel of real information slips past their filters and makes it on the air, but that's not likely.
I imagine I'm not alone in this sentiment. I imagine many people aren't satisfied with or interested in the news, and I imagine many people just watch TV to be entertained, not informed.
What can the news learn from this? Easy. People don't want to hear real news.
Let's face it. If you wanted the real news, you could find it online easily, anytime you wanted. The news media can't possibly compete with that combination of accessibility and diversity of information.
So what do they do? They do what sells. Smut sells. Gossip sells. Total mindless tripe sells.
If the news showed regular images of Iraqi casualties, of anti-American rallies, of scientists reporting increased volcanic activity in Yellowstone, of the results of global warming on various fragile ecosystems, it'd be damn depressing. People would stop watching. People don't WANT somebody telling them in detail about how the world is going to Hell in a handbasket.
They want to hear minor local events. They want to hear celebrity dirt. They want to see pictures of skinny prostitutes with their ribs sticking out and hear 'nappy-headed ho' at least once a day.
So the news- which is still trying to make money and earn ratings like EVERY OTHER TELEVISION BROADCAST, including Spongebob Squarepants, Battlestar Galactica, South Park, and reruns of the Cosby Show- has to play to what they assume the public wants.
And believe it or not, the public DOES want it. Those among the public who are satisfied by this garbage continue to tune in, day after day, broadcast after broadcast. And those who aren't are simply complaining about a vicious cycle- because as soon as you turn it off, you're only proving that you DON'T want to see news.
Here's today's news: You live in a scum-filled cesspool of joy and idiocy. Have a Starbucks coffee and a Big Mac and enjoy your day.
I watch TV for entertainment too, but there used to be a bastion of information (that predated the internet) where you could find out what was going on in the world without the spin, without the entertainment crap and without the irrelevancies and trivialities. There was a point where you could count on it for knowledge that could bring you somewhere intellectually. Now there is nothing like that.
Now we are all treated like idiot children because the idiot children have the loudest voices and are heard above everyone else.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
See? So simple, even the idiots get it.
I don't need to dumb things down for the idiocracy. When they get smart enough to realize they need some uplifting, they'll come to me.
If.
A present to you, to FA, and to the world. Readily, I give my present to you all.
Have a nice day. ^.^
And it feels good.
pst...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
See, it is a real movie. And it was kinda funny and super scary... ;-;
"Blow up the outside world."
---> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
That is all.