Friday, May 21, 2004

where have all the rational people gone?

If you know me you know that I think you can take all your ideas about a 'liberal media' and stick them up your ass, if you can manage to slip them past your head. There *is* a liberal media in America... it's that guy trying to sell you the 'Street Roots' paper for a buck in the subway station, or one of a couple of magazines that you aren't *ever* going to see because they aren't sold in megamarts. Accusing any of the mainstream media in the US of being liberally biased isn't just fucking absurd, it's terrifying, because it means there are a few Bad Things happening:

  • Either the majority of the country has swung so far to the right that 'moderate' looks like 'communist', or
  • the assholes in the White House have put so much spin on everything that people don't know which way is up, and will therefore follow the loudest braying beast they hear (yeah, that means you, Rush, and about 50 other fascist hatemonger media figures), or
  • (and this is the worst bit, now, because it's so dead on) the average American is a fucking idiot whose logical faculties rank somewhere between the kid on the porch in 'Deliverance' and a potted fern.

Yesterday Fox News aired the results of a poll that shows that 33% of those surveyed think the media is too easy on Kerry and 42% think the media is too tough on Bush. Now think about that... if 33% think the media is too easy on Kerry, then 66% either think that they are doing an accurate portrayal, or that they are being too hard on him. If we had a liberal media, the headline would have been "66% think media is too tough on Kerry", but because we don't have anything even resembling a liberal media, we are instead told what percentage thinks the media is soft on Kerry.

Similarly, if 42% of the people think the media is too tough on Bush, then 58% of them think the media reportage is either fair or too easy on him. I didn't see any headlines saying "58% of Americans think media is soft on Bush"...

The problem is one of abstraction. We don't have a liberal mainstream media, period. Welfare mothers are not the primary cause of states financial woes. Despite what the media tells you, 'Supporting the troops' is a liberal concept: support them enough to get their asses back home, before our megalomaniacal president gets any more of them killed. The calculus of hatred that these people have been working on for decades has abstracted almost every concept so thoroughly that it looks remarkably like its supposed opposite. But you have to admire them, they've done a great job of making a country of ignorant flagwavers who hate what they are told to hate, because it's their patriotic duty (and or because Jesus told them so).

When the rally-round-the-flag spikes appeared in the graph of Bush's approval rating, you didn't see any media outlets saying '40% of the country disapproves'... you saw flags waving and G.I. Bush landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier with a warhead stuffed down the front of his pants to symbolize America's virility. Exactly the way a CONSERVATIVE media would report it.

Sheesh you people make me fucking sick.