Mood:
sillyJon Stewart, host of the brilliant Daily Show on Comedy Central, was talking with the well-known New Age tampon/flake Bill Moyers the other day and they were beefing about how "gaslighted" the American public has been by an irresponsible media. True dat: I don't give a fuck about Scott Peterson, either, and can't understand why the 24-hour news outlets are so smitten with such irrelevance in the face of far greater issues.
Anyway, Stewart singled out and dismissed FOX News among all other American news divisions and channels because "every country needs its own al-Jazeera." (Please write to correct me if my quote is off.) That is, FOX News is so blatantly pro-conservative that it's no better than the cartoonishly pro-Arab/Jew-hating al-Jazeera Network is in the Middle East.
Well, it was a great line, but let's be clear about something: neutrality in the name of objectivity is no virtue. No news division or network is in any danger of becoming objective any time soon, so why should the public tolerate the pretenses to objectivity made by CNN or Jennings or Rather? It's a joke. The animus of these news outlets against the Bush administration is as clear as FOX's supposed cheerleading so long as you bother to recognize it. How do they get their digs in? Listen to the verbs, watch how many seconds or minutes get split between our own President and his detractors, and notice who gets let off the hook. I'd spend an hour watching test patterns before I'd give Aaron Brown or Keith Olbermann ten seconds. Ah, such wits. Cynicism over justification any day, right?
If people are concerned that they're being gaslighted, they are free to turn to other resources for their news. The profundity of this fact is often lost on clever assholes who rant and rave about our allegedly shrinking array of media choices. The truth is that there are more ways now to find out about the things that matter most to each of us than ever before. Do you doubt that as you surf between the online newspapers of practically every country on Earth or the hundreds of professional journals available at the click of a mouse or the thousands of well-maintained blogs calling out from every corner of cyberspace? Many cities and towns and every level of their government now routinely post and update information on the Internet so that you can be better-informed. I can read the full opinions of any supreme or appellate court in the land on any case I please by just looking for it online. I can participate in learned discussions on every conceivable topic of any value any time I wish.
Keep your evening newscasts, jack. There's nothing you can tell me that I couldn't have already learned from a half-dozen other sources ---if I will.