… let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know – fiction!
Because really, what incentive do these people have to answer your questions, after all? I mean, nothing satisfies you.
kredwyn is so totally doing that Novel in a month marathon thing and we should all be encouraging her and anyone else brave enough to attempt it, but that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about.
I want to talk about Media Complicity.
Tuesday’s performance by NBC/MSNBC/GE and by both Brian Williams and Timmeh was beyond pathetic.
But first of all Dan Abrams, BREAKING: CAMBODIAN FUCKING SEX TOURS INSTEAD OF A REPEAT!!!???
Have to blame corporate though for the shabby behavior of the Moderators.
From word one the sneering sarcasm and hostility of their every utterance was a burning stain on the filthy piss smelling hole that jack-off journalism has become. A collection of Thug talking points and dismissive condescension.
How about them Dodd minutes?
They wanted a cock fight and did everything they could to get one. I’m not going to pick a winner. We all lost.
They are bad for America.
I want to educate them and baseball bats are nicely balanced tools (and I am a such a Mets fan), but a golf club swing is so much more gratifying than some.
The idiocy of it is that they need us, without our money and/or eyeballs they are nothing. I’m ashamed to be a news junkie but what can I do? I’m not Nielsened (that I know), and I do love me a good train wreck.
The Sunday Shows don’t even advertise things that you buy. They advertise stocks that investors buy and so Faux News seems so much less disappointing to me than the “real” thing because at least I know what to expect.
As John Kerry said-
But the main question is: what can we do about it? I’m going to make this case in any way I can. Television, newspapers, you name it. There’s no magic bullet to this; we simply need to apply as much pressure as possible in as many ways as possible. I’ll be back with some specific actions from time to time because concerted action by many people toward a single goal gets the best results. But do as much as you can all the time. Drop by your representatives’ office and let them know your feelings. Write, call, fax, email, get in contact any way you can. These actions aren’t glamorous, but they really do make a difference. And don’t lose faith. The other side in this debate is intent on outlasting us, convinced that we’ll give up. You and I have to make sure that they are wrong on that.
Well, that’s about what we can do but the most important part is this one-
And don’t lose faith. The other side in this debate is intent on outlasting us, convinced that we’ll give up. You and I have to make sure that they are wrong on that.
So there you are.
No one has promised you a “magic bullet”, you have to make this case any way you can. You have to “apply as much pressure as possible in as many ways as possible.” “These actions aren’t glamorous, but they really do make a difference.” Temporary setbacks are just that unless you give up.
Do you want them to have that victory?
I say never. “Live Free or Die.”
The Media is going to be the slowest of institutions to change. They’re the very ground we’re fighting on, the embodiment of late 20th Century corporate power. Here on the tubz we fight free. As in cheap. As in 41 cents for a Benjamin Franklin letter, he of deserving neither security or liberty fame.
The limit of this tool is the limit of your imagination, just as for any artist. There is what is and then there is what you wish to see.
If the line does not look like a tree, change it until it does.