24 Hour Bad News

I'd like to think I'm not that old but I remember when the news was only on at either 6 o'clock and 10 o'clock. And that was all. Before the news came on, you watched something else. Anything else.

Then in 1980 CNN went on the air as a 24 hour "News" broadcast cable station and now everywhere you look there's "News".

And it's not good news and these days we don't know which of it actually happened or whether most of it is true. Sure, storms really happen. Planes really crash but the other stuff, the subjective stuff, the things that happen in other places, we don't know the half of it and the only word of it we get is through the 24/7/365, never ending news channels.

And we already know they're all full of SHIT.

The local outlets are the worst at trying to fill up their massively expanded schedules. With their vans driving up and down the highways hoping something bad will happen because we all know this "news" has to be BAD.

Bad news is important to the TV executives and it's important to advertisers. The term "If it bleeds, it leads" is now spread across the entire day. If a plane skids off the runway in Singapore or a car hits a tree in Dallas, it's on our local Boston "news", why?

Probably because they have an "insert car crash here every day in this time slot" mandate and if nobody local crashes, they get footage off the wire to fill the spot. I don't really know but I always wonder why I'm hearing about something that happened in California like a car chase or a house fire when they happen on the East coast too but just not that day. There's a lot of time to fill up now so they have to keep the bad "news" coming.

I remember Fox news used to love to broadcast California car chases. That's "news" as entertainment, watching a car chase. Here in New England, car chases suck because there are too many trees to block the camera crew. Car chases happen in Andover, Massachusetts I'm sure, you'll just never see one on television.

Bad News Over and Over

But with all the satellite feeds, the global networks, the broadcasting vans looking for cats caught in the trees, these stations still run out of bad news to hit us over the head with. So what do they do? They REPEAT it over and over, sometimes for three days.

In the Internet world, three days is an eternity to hear the same thing over again. Bad enough you hear it again in an hour but, just in case you somehow missed it, here it is again today. Damn it makes it hard to turn on the radio, I've long ago stopped watching television.

Casting a Pall

What this does, all this bad 'news", is cast bad feelings among the populace. People actually feel the world is going to Hell. The world is not going to Hell. The world is the same as it's ever been. It's always been turning, always there is turmoil somewhere. Just not the same place all the time if you don't count the Middle East. That's a world constant.

But there's always a bad law about to be passed, always a "crisis" to be averted and always someone trying to convince you that unless you go jump through some HOOP, the worst possible outcome will be made real.

But the 24 hour "news" cycle causes preoccupation with what's going on, or at least, what we THINK is going on. I wonder sometimes how information got around back in colonial times. Information traveled slowly and I'm sure was subject to miscommunication and modification.

So the only thing that's changed is the speed of miscommunication and modification.

Why Television Exists

Is it to inform you? It can do that. Is it to educate you? It can do that too. It certainly can entertain you. But the reason it's here is to sell you things.

Beyond all the advertisements, the people who control the media and it's portals want to show you what they want you to see and only what they want you to see. And it's all pretty dumb and contrived. Most of the time, since television was developed, the government and the media were on the same page as to The Message they wanted to send the public. Right now there is a schism and the two are currently split.

Mostly these days the media is selling fear, angst, worry and remorse. Fear of the outside, angst about your well-being and remorse over parts of our history you or your family was never a part of.

It's about "helping" you form ideas and opinions that are of a certain perspective, their perspective. You're told either the truth when if fits, half-truths when it doesn't and outright lies when it suits them. And you have no idea which one you're getting.

Yet people believe it just the same.

Swallowing the Elephant

I never get people who, even though they know that they've been lied to, believe the next thing that the liar says! If someone lies to me once, I tend to have a doubt about the truthfulness of anything they say after that. But that's just me. It's more about how people are inclined to believe "facts" that fit their own opinion about a subject no matter what the source.

We catch a "news" station deliberately distorting the facts and the next day someone says, "Hey, did you hear what's on _____?" Same station. I mean, they're not going to stop broadcasting just because they were caught in a lie.

I don't know if anyone remembers back to 1993 when NBC News, not having success confirming the rumor that the pickup truck GM was making at the time had a problem catching fire in a roll-over accident, actually put a LIGHTED FLAIR on the gas tank and re-did their roll-over test. That worked! The truck finally caught fire.

Of course, the flair showed up rather prominently when General Motors ran the footage in slow-motion.

Oops!

Politics, Politics, Politics

Politics was never far from "news" since the beginning of time. The way certain information is going to be perceived by the Public is always worrisome to those with something to lose.

All news today is political. Why the car crashed, why the storm tore your roof off your house, why your wife left you and why your young kids come home from school and tell you that the number one priority of their lives will be to save the planet.

And whether you think you're a Progressive or a Conservative, you just have to know you're not getting the whole story. The bubble you've built for yourself by only watching certain stations or reading certain publications that back up your thinking to the point where people who risked their very lives to bring you a different sort of news and put it out of reach of the people who don't want you to see it, are ignored.

If the truth should suddenly hit you in the face, would you even know it?

Believe it, don't believe it, that's not the point. The point is that you should have access to it and know it exists.

Something to believe in. 

At What Point Do You Stop Listening?

The press just can't get enough of the "feud" between President Trump and The Squad of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib and that overt Jew hater, Ilhan Omar.

It's the media corps that have elbowed Nancy Pelosi to the back of the room and put the spotlight on these four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse and it is they who are the reason that this is all a big deal.

It's not a big deal.

If you're worried that people may be believing all the zany things these people are saying just because they're all over the airwaves, I wouldn't be.

It isn't like the political arena lacks for want of crazy, prescription-drug crazed politicos because there seems to be no short supply.

I don't blame the Socialist Sisters for being camera hogs, I blame the people who are supplying the cameras. It's Fox News and "The World is Coming to an End" Drudge Report that are making the most political hay out of this. Talk about "It's all about the Benjamins".

All the accusations of "Racist" and constant media deluge of media hate towards the president, the wobbly GOP who would still rather have Hillary Clinton than prosperity and a good economy, the radical leftist states that every day announce another reason for their working citizens to get the hell out of there, it's all for naught. It's just the constant stream of nothingness and minutia that the "News" has become today. Nothing more than an incessant drone of negative energy, causing no good and if you listen too long, will cause mental instability.

In the Oppressive Ogres Corp where I work I share an office with another person. He's a political guy and a Trump supporter and each day he can't help but peruse MSN, CNN, Politico and other such non-sense media sights and read me some of what they say. He gets upset about it. I say, "I don't understand why you do this to yourself, you already know what they're going to say." But he can't help it. He gets even more upset when Fox says the same thing.

"Stop reading that crap!" I insist, "You're going to drive yourself Koo-Koo!"

And here we are.

I've checked out. I don't give a flying Phitt about what any of these people have to say or the so-called "conservative" media outlet that gives them a forum because I know it's all just about ratings and the advertising dollars they bring. Fox isn't in business to "Defend the Republic", they're in business to make a buck and if you're stupid enough to jump through a hoop or run into the streets in outrage every time they come up with a "Crisis' then you have nobody but yourself to blame. It's all just Street Theater for the Rubes.

As my older brother used to say to me all the time...

"Don't be an idiot."

It's not going to make one iota of a difference when it comes time to vote. Nobody is actually picking up what they're putting down and all the dead people in the country won't be able to out-vote the living when the time comes.

Because, quite frankly, even though we are not all "Brothers under the Skin" like most whackos want you to think, we do all want the same basic things.

We all want a roof over our head. We want a good livelihood for ourselves and a future for our children. This includes an acceptable level of education and opportunity for them to pursue their interests when they are old enough to decide and choose.

We all want...stuff! Whether it be a nicer car than most people drive, a boat, a nice house with central air conditioning and nice patio furniture. Oh, and a patio!

And we're all too willing to work for it, to drive great distances daily to get to our chosen places of employment and to withstand most daily torments of American life to get this...stuff!

Now I don't care where you're from originally. If you grew up here, you'r ruined for any place else anyway. Once you are "Americanized" you're screwed. No, we should figure out what to do with the Dreamers because even though your name may be Hernandez and you're parents are from Mexico, you'd be fucking lost in Mexico. I have black friends that went to The Gambia for a visit. They're like, "Wholly shit, I couldn't live there!" Of course not, your a friggin' American. You haven't washed a dish by hand since childhood never mind having to live on rice and beans. They don't even have cable!

So anyway, no matter what your background, if you're working for a living, trying to play by the rules and putting up with hearing all this whacko bullshit on the television and radio, when you finally get to the voting booth this November are you really going to pull the lever for what these nutjobs are trying to sell you?

No, I don't think so.

Like me, you may not have the best setup but it's working. You can go out every so often, have dinner and drinks, maybe once a week, take in a show, go for a hike, hit the gym and have some semblance of a decent career and life. You're hanging in despite the effort. But you know as well as I do that if you let this group of Quarter-Stalins get a hold of the means to your paycheck and livelihood, it could all turn to shit in a hurry.

There'll be no place to go but down...

And everybody knows it.