Media Creates Nothing From Nothing…And We’re Fascinated!
8November 21, 2008 by billie789
You know what I hate? Lots of stuff! It’s Friday and I have a couple of things I want/need to rant about, briefly. Very briefly.
I hate the media when some assignment producer/editor decides that a story has legs beyond a blurb in the back pages of a magazine or news story. Especially stories that are not news presented by news organizations that should know better. I think they even compete for the same bullshit stories.
Case in point: 
Madonna’s an aging skank, er, I mean entertainer and yet, there she is on MSN’s home page, scaring the Bejesus out of even the story writers. Ashley Dupre is a whore. Excuse me, a “prostitute.” The same whore, er, I mean, “call girl” who was screwing Elliot Spitzer, New York’s governor. Now, she has an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC to tell “her side of the story.” WTF!?!?! Her side of the story? What, she didn’t really want to be a prostitute, but what the hell, the money was good and she was working her way up to becoming another kind of professional; a singer. She apparently wants to talk about her “journey.” Give me a break or a spoon to gag on. She reminds me of a guy I was best frineds with in junior high school, only Ted wasn’t a WHORE!
BULLSHIT…bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!
I try to understand the demand-and-supply side of this country’s National Inquirer mentality. We like to stare at celebrities, local and national and chase sports stars around for their signature, which we then promptly try to sell on Ebay to other, lonely, emptied-out folks.
We (not me, uh, uh!) want to know if Tom Cruise’s baby girl looks like Tom or Katie, its mother. We want to know if David Duchovney found his one-night stands with strangers more appealing than being married to Tia Leone. I think Tia got tired of trying to figure it out and filed for divorce.
BULLSHIT…bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!
Why in the world do we watch this fluff, this unsubstantial news and gossip? Why do we elevate no-nothing-do-nothings to god-like creatures for 15 minutes? Some think it’s because we need distractions from our own, miserable existence. If that’s true, I’m in good shape, ’cause I hate this stuff. It reminds me of how shallow a large portion of our population has become and that’s depressing at times.
And don’t get me started on Joe, The Fucking Plumber. This empty set of overalls has stuff he needs to talk about…in a new book due out in about 15 minutes. Why, who knew that Joe doesn’t like welfare, although he’s been on welfare. He wanted to harass Barack about taxation and “spreading the wealth” was sounding an awful lot like the dreaded “socialism” to this wanker. He owes back taxes of a measly $1,100, unless McCain paid it. “Joe, where are you, Joe? Are you out there, Joe? Come on up here, Joe! They told me you were going to be here today, Joe!
McCain looked and sounded like an idiot. And he said that Joe was his personal role model and a true American hero…WTF!?!?
BULLSHIT…bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!
Finally, if I hear one more person described as “heroic” for either getting killed doing their job or for doing nothing at all, I’m going explode.
They just buried a local police officer here in Utah who died from injuries suffered in a car chase crash. He was a cop for about 2 years. He lost control of his vehicle while giving chase to a stolen car and crashed into a utiility pole. Died a couple of days later in the hospital. The newspaper headline on the front page of the daily paper was,”Hero Laid To Rest” I get the law enforcement-respect thing. My dad was a cop and so was my grandfather. This guy died from an auto accident. He didn’t save anyone, he wasn’t working “above and beyond” his call of duty. He wrecked property of the state of Utah. He endangered other motorists and citizens with an out-of-control car chase.
It reminded me of one of the first Utahns killed in Iraq and was buried back home as a “hero.” Huge deal in the papers and on tv news. The guy was sleeping on the ground in a sleeping bag and when guns started blazing in the middle of the night, one of his fellow soldiers ran over him in a Hummer. He was an accident victim, not a hero. Sorry. Same goes for the guys killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by auto accidents, falling from guard towers, being accidentally shot by one of their own in the tent at night, on and on and on.
BULLSHIT…bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!
And last, but certainly not least, is John McCain, war “hero.” There’s nothing heroic about getting shot down and losing an airplane. There’s nothing heroic about surrendering to the enemy. In many countries, surrender instead of a fight to the last breath is considered cowardly. I won’t go into the report by several of his fellow prisoners that McCain sang like a canary on several occasions to his captors.
Came home, saw that his wife had gained weight and been disfigured in an auto accident, all while McCain was in prison, and he divorced her and left the kids, the wife, the life and picked up Cindy McCain in Hawaii.
Heroic. Not in any pages in my book. We let the media tell us that he was a “hero” and that Joe The Plumber was a typical American working slob. He’s a slob, all right.
BULLSHIT…bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!
You can’t escape it without leaving the country. Some of the worst things about our society and our culture are embraced tightly by my fellow Miley Cyruses, er, I mean, Americans. You can only be vigilant in what you take in and process.
I didn’t get enough sleep last night. Can you tell?
Guitar Hero !
THE BS BLOG 
I discovered your homepage by coincidence.
Very interesting posts and well written.
I will put your site on my blogroll.
:-)
Where did you get your blog layout from? I’d like to get one like it for my blog.
I must say this is a great article i enjoyed reading it keep the good work :)
Thanks for the nice words about the BS BLOG Jamie. Bill’s the author of this post (and the political guru here at BS). I contribute the fluff pieces.
The layout is just one of the many standard designs offered here at WordPress, which absolutely rocks as a blogging platform. The spam catcher (and auto-save feature that works as you’re composing something) is worth the price of admission alone…which is free unless you upgrade.
Amen, Bill! Another case in point why we need places like the BS blog and TED (mentioned below), and true investigative journalism. I’m waiting for someone at work to ask me what I’m reading when I have my Mother Jones magazine out. Then I can watch the fog drift over their face as I attempt to explain. Love my co-workers, they’re great people, but the conversation there doesn’t get real deep.
Welcome, Jamie. Many an interesting, intelligent and hilarious conversation on the BS blog.
One look at the blog stats and I could tell Bill had posted again! There was a BIG spike in views after this one. In fact, Bill holds the Top 3 posts of all time on the BS Blog when it comes to number of page views.
I’m with ya Bill on several, but not all points on this one. The mainstream media is sounding more and more like tabloid journalism every day. Programs like Entertainment Tonight, Primetime Live, Dateline, 20/20 etc. all seem to be more interested in ratings than they are newsworthy content. But like everything else, it if didn’t sell – if these programs didn’t reach the households they do – then the sponsor’s wouldn’t support them and they would go away. Sadly, program content is a reflection of the interest of the masses.
On the hero thing, I’m on the fence, sort of. Perhaps not actually performing what could be considered a heroic act at the time of their demise, our military servicemen and women and local law enforcement folks often do perform heroic acts that go unnoticed and/or unreported. Because of that I don’t really quarrel with those headlines or with reporters taking that angle in those articles.
I formed many friendships with cops during my time in the Fire Department. I’ve even jammed with an all-cop band. Those guys knew how to party! But I’ll never forget sitting in a crowded funeral home as one of them played and sang “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” on acoustic guitar after a local deputy (and friend of mine) was gunned down in the line of duty. He was making what he thought was a routing traffic stop at the time. Not a heroic act, but it was preceeded by years of service that no doubt contained several acts of heroism in one form or another.
And when it comes to John McCain, I don’t have the personal knowledge necessary to comment either way. I wasn’t there. I know McCain had been home and reunited with his family for 6 years before he even met his 2nd wife, so it’s likely not fair to intimate he came home, found his wife fat and disfigured and then ran off with another woman. In my opinion though, he is an American hero.
More info on John McCain is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_mccain
I think that we water-down the meaning and honor of the word “hero,” Stu. I think it needs to be reserved for those who reach above and beyond their duty, not just survive something or watch something happen. Heroes dive into danger to protect or rescue people at little or no thought to their own safety.
Kid jumped into a river here in Utah this summer to save his little sister being washed downstream, that kind thing.
The rest, unfortunately, in my opinion, are victims of crime, casualties of war, etc. Iraq has produced an alarming number of heroes. I get the emotional connection because of this war, I really do. But I think we salve our national Iraq wound by making all service people heroes, regardless of their actions or postion to do heroic things.
McCain said Joe The Fucking Plumber was a hero. How come? Did he do something heroic? Or was this just a politcally masturbatory throw away line? If it’s a political throw-away, it proves my point. If it’s really what McCain thinks, it proves my point.
The word has emerged, or was torn, from our national vocabulary, ripe for patriotic misuse, political maneuvering and sappy accolades to the undeserving.
There’s a a police officer who was off-duty 2 years ago here in Salt Lake City having a Valentine’s dinner at a local mall with his wife. An 18 year -old immigrant from Bosnia walked in and opened fire, killing 6 and wounding 2 more. This guy gets up from dinner after hearing the initial shots and running, screaming patrons, pulls out his service revolver and stalks the killer in the building next door. He corners him with gunfire and keeps the kid pinned down. When the killer attempted an escape, this dude shot him dead. Other policemen who were called by this guy’s wife, sat outside trying to figure out the best way to approach while he took action.
To me, he’s a true hero. Caught in the moment, he put himself at grave risk to protect innocent people. When the media frenzy began, he said very solemnly that he was just doing his duty!
No argument that we as a society have watered down the meaning and honor of the word, “Hero” as you say.
“…torn from our national vocabulary, ripe for patriotic misuse, political manuvering and sappy accolades to the undeserving…”
Damn, I wish I had written that!