Confessions of a Starving Artist

News is what someone somewhere wants to suppress.  The rest is advertising.  ~ Lord Northcliffe

I think that it is remarkable how contemporary sketch comedy can become such a compass directing us towards the bitch of a society.  In other Occidental countries, international flavor has kept Americans en vogue as the butt of most jokes, but with the arrival of President Obama and his celestial popularity among the ABCs (Australians, British, and Canadians), these countries have had to look inward to find a somewhat more easy target than loud, seemingly brazen Yanks with their ineloquent ex-leader.  We too have had a radical shift within the focus of what is funny and what is not, mostly for the same reasons.  So if Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are any sort of gauge (and I whole-heartedly believe that they are) it would seem that a new target is within their pseudo pundit cross-hairs: The Media.

And really, thank God, because these fuck-rods have been getting off light.  For those of you just tuning in, I have been actively lambasting the main stream media and 24-hour news networks for at least as long as I have been writing this blog… which will be four years this September.  The fear and loathing and general degradation to journalistic integrity that these so-called reporters have brought into this profession over the past decade is enough to make Walter Cronkite claw himself out of his grave and punch Sean Hannity in the dick.  And while President Bush conducted himself in a controversial manner thorough his presidency, if measured only on The Hill, the vote was always somewhat even.  If measured in the polls, it was not.  What was important to note, however, what that this was more or less a constant variable through his eight-year administration, in other words, not terribly newsworthy.  It was the media who created the veritable ‘shock and awe’ surrounding every little minutiae, throwing Liberals into frenzies and slamming Conservatives ever so much further into the right-wing corner to defend themselves with ostensible American Values from the onslaughts of theoretical common sense. 

It would seem that this media divide would be out of work.  Ironically, a black President isn’t so controversial after all.  But remember, this isn’t your daddy’s evening news, this is a mindset closer to Perry White of the Daily Planet.  So reportedly, President Obama’s shift in politics is more than enough to insight the same fever-pitch of hullabaloo that President Bush did, but new networks have become unable to produce anything more than noteworthy considerations for dinner conversations as, for the most part, a general feeling of ‘wait and see’ presides over these amber waves of grain.  I’m not calling it a calm, but rather a patience, certainly more so than the past eight years of near revolt. 

What’s changed?  Perhaps it’s the fact that one half of this absurd argument among the masses has declaredly had its chance and now are respectfully silent… Ha!  If that were only the case.  The conservative right has done nothing since November except show its witless and hypocritical ass splashed all across the media in a way that would make The National Enquirer blush.  Like a closed circle of high schoolers, they come off with mis-facts again and again, and by the course of mass proliferation, attempt to make it true… even if it means changing history.  Most recently, a wave of conservative ‘experts’ claimed all over FOXNews that the New Deal under FDR didn’t work at all, something which even my basic political science education knows in false.  It was successful every year except for one when unemployment spiked (in his second term, I think) when President Roosevelt cut back on government spending.  Another bungle that happened a month ago was Dick Cheney going on a series of interviews attempting to lambast the current administration’s stance on security policies.  To be fair, I listened to most of what the ex-Vice President had to say… until he admitted that he didn’t have access or read the intelligence reports anymore.  By that respect, I should have more input on the news networks than he does because at least I get to read a handful of those reports!

With News Week recently calling Rush Limbaugh, “…what Jessie Jackson was to Democrats in the 80s,” it is obvious to me that the Republican party is just losing it as they are continue a man who can’t even keep his sound bites from contradicting as their media mascot.  And apparently, out of utter fear of America’s current tsunami of believed Liberal undermining, FOXNews and some of its more right-wing pundits have completely lost their damn minds as well.  However, nothing tops the lunacy, which I was privileged to watch at work the other day.  Glenn Beck seems to have taken a queue from his Rushness and added to the red-neckery of everything by beginning to rewrite present-day history within minoritized right-wing audience through the institution of his new “9-12 Project”.  While the intentions of this project I only somewhat understand, what confuses me  most is why it is necessary in this day and age where our country is been more unified politically than ever in the past eight years do we need a unification project?  Still, if you’re not convinced, YouTube Glenn’s performance as he introduces the project to his fan base with, and I can’t make this up, Chuck Norris.  By the way, his acting is about as good as Chuck’s… oh and if you fast forward through the part where Glenn attempts to cry because of his professed “love for this country”, then you’re missing the best part.

And while you’re on the internet, check this out.  It’s Jon Stewart’s interview with Jim Cramer.  He’s the insanely caffeinated gentleman who hosts CNBC’s Mad Money.  Lately, Jon Stewart took an entire episode of The Daily Show, which by the by is supposed to be half-hour of comedy, and took this masquerading economic journalist down a peg in what I thought was one of the most brutalizing interviews that I had seen since Murphy Brown went off the air.  Do yourself a favor and be sure that you make it completely through the interview, because what I find the most funny of all is that it takes a guy who plays a fake journalist for a living to point out the complete lack of journalistic integrity now alive and well in the business today.  I for one applaud Jon Stewart and Stephen Cobert for taking the info-tainment industry head on.  Bless you, boys, you do God’s work!

However, they could still screw this up for me.  In a take-no-prisoners war (something that is more akin to Stephen than Jon) I fear for my only network news darling, Robin Mead.  She is what we refer in to in my line of work as ‘deployment porn’.  I can’t have Comedy Central roasting Ms. Mead for she is all that is good and pure in morning news.  …but feel free to hang the rest of those mindless bastards!

VIVA LA GONZO!