Double Flee A

notes from our amazing world

News used to be, or so I like to think, about presenting facts. Now news, and this I'm sure of, is about opinions. Attitudes. Personalities. Even still, this presentation of reality, which is no more than an accepted way of getting around the facts, is still "news". Why does this qualify?

That pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity don't present facts is beneath debate. These men contravene facts. If you like them, if you get where they're coming from, they take care of your beliefs for you. They're the custodians of the faithful and weak-minded.

It would take an encyclopedic history of what's what in the media to understand exactly what it was that took place to bring things to the sorry state they find themselves in today, so instead of trying to prove how it happened, my inquiry is pointed in a direction where it can develop. How is it that this is tolerated?

It doesn't say a lot for the state of thought in modern America that this accumulation of obnoxious, megalomaniacal shits is what the market of popular consciousness will bear. It does say a lot, though, for the kinds of animals we are.

The combative verbal style preferred by these people is nothing if not a means to dominate. I propose that they owe their fortunes to that humans want to associate themselves with the power that issues from them and by extension their message. This of course is because all humans are descended from apes, which is where they got not only most of their DNA, but a lot of their behavior as well.

Millions of beta males across the fruited plain want to experience the sense of social safety that comes from sidling up next to the alpha. You sure as hell don't get that good, safe, validated, superior feeling from finding out the president fucked over at least three generations of Americans by leading them into war for no reason. And like I emailed dog the bounty hunter, if there's something worse that a president can do, I'd like to hear what it is.

That's how I explain the rise of the pundit in the modern media. Leveraging a very simple technology, feelings, with very simple methods -- among them, interruption, framing questions, changing the subject, and attacking people for a lack of patriotism. It's dumb, I can't bear to witness it, and it's been wildly popular for years now.

It's important to understand these legions of betas have what to the rest of us are incomprehensibly deep personal investments in their (wrong) beliefs. It isn't that their actual beliefs are deeper, it just hurts them on a different level if they turn out to be mistaken. Ironically, this is a statistical certainty, because their beliefs are usually pegged to nonsense.

So we get a sizable portion of the country in a perpetual state of denial. I was just thinking about it is all.

posted by dale @ 9:08 PM