How the media’s obsession with the superficial threatens our freedom.
FPM:
“Democracy Dies in Darkness” is the motto of the post-Trump Washington Post. This pompous and self-congratulatory bit of virtue-signaling is meant to proclaim the essential function the media play in protecting the political order against the supposed threat of tyranny embodied in Donald Trump. The hypocrisy of a media that wear its progressive ideology on its sleeve, and that blatantly skew their coverage of the president at a 90% negative clip, has exposed the motto as mere marketing to the leftist choir.
The truth is, “darkness” is not a problem in the klieg-lit media carnival of 24/7, 365-day on-line commentary, blogs, videos, tweets, cable-news talking heads, and Facebook posts. The problem is the trivial, often childish, usually stupid content of our Madisonian “passions” that we indulge, even as our political dysfunctions relentlessly worsen.
That politics is a form of entertainment has long been obvious since Time-Life Inc. fabricated and marketed the Kennedy clan as a celebrity “Camelot.” Each subsequent decade has seen the worsening of the process whereby images and narratives appealing to the emotions or pleasure have increasingly crowded out verifiable facts and coherent arguments.
Gratifying our feelings rather than our reason was most obvious in the rise of Barack Obama. “The One” succeeded in becoming the most powerful leader on the planet despite being a political tyro with a poorly attended single term in the Senate, a negligently vetted candidate with a Swiss-cheese personal biography and a stable of unsavory associates like “free as a bird” terrorist Bill Ayers and “God-damn America” racist Jeremiah Wright, and a zombie leftist of the sort produced for decades by our decaying universities.
And Obama did so not just because of the duplicitous rhetoric of “unity” and “moderation” typical of all candidates, but because of the racial melodrama of white guilt and redemption promised by his light skin, lack of a “negro accent,” as Joe Biden put it, and photogenic smile and family the media made as ubiquitous as McDonalds. That’s all it took for the worst president since World War II to get elected twice. MORE
The left can’t pull off this kind of crap without dumbing down students and without the GOPe.
Obama the worst president since WW2? What president wasnt better than this traitor?
So many people want to be lied to. If it weren’t for this human failing the devil and the democrats wouldn’t stand a chance.
The article correctly points out that the press became entertainment chasing fame and fortune rather than pursuing the news during the Kennedy administration and its phony homage to Camelot! The so-called press (journalism) has gone severely downhill since then!
… What [George] Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What [Aldous] Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
– Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
I had a coffee conversation (so to speak) this morning, two anti-Trumpers and two pro-Trump. The anti-Trumpers were grasping at anything Trump had said, like whatever ‘raking leaves’ comment he recently made in regard to the wildfires. The other pro-Trumper and I just let them wear themselves out. Nothing to be gained by arguing.
Trump is in their heads. He owns them.
“Democracy Dies in Trivia.”
Like, wondering what Mooch is wearing today? 🙄