Monday, January 24, 2011

The Speech

I have concluded that there is way too little news being chased by our full-court press “News” media. We have been given fair warning that, whatever President Obama says during his State of the Union speech is largely irrelevant. What matters almost exclusively, is what the “pundits” say (we really need a new term here, perhaps “bobble-heads”).

They have been telling us for a week now what they think the President will, or should say. Some have been telling us for a week what they intend to say in response. Again, since they have already drafted their “responses” in the absence of information about what he will actually say, we need a new term—“response” isn’t accurate, since the word means a reply or an answer. Their comments on the President’s intended speech are more in the nature of, “what I would do or say were I the ruler of the world”. The key here is, they aren’t, so why do we actually care what the bobble-heads say?

Now journalists have been speaking their minds for a very long time—as long as there have been journalists. Some people are paid to report to us the “news”, i.e., the factual goings-on in the world. Others are paid to tell us what they think the facts mean. But, because of people like Rupert Murdoch, and others of his ilk (the Koch brothers come to mind), the news business has been debased along both dimensions, the factual reporting, and the “telling us what it all means”. We now understand that journalism, as we once knew it, is dead. What we now have is a set of PR outlets that are intended to sway public opinion one way or another. And, we need to be clear, there is no ethical dimension guiding these PR outlets. These are entirely business propositions aimed at increasing the coffers of gold of those who own these PR outlets. In the case of the “responses” to the President’s address, we will hear how each bobble-head believes the President has deviated from what the bobble-head would have said. In a few cases, Michelle Bachman and others of her ilk, we will hear what they would say, were we to elect any of them President (Bachman, ugh . . .makes one want to vomit, huh?).

It would be nice to know where the people went who used to care about the common folks, and about the concept of community. I wonder whether any of them will show up. Tune in to discover what shocking revelations the bobble-heads have uncovered.

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