Media Porn
Fri Feb 09, 2007 at 03:21:55 PM PDT
When I turned on the television yesterday to get my daily ration of Tweety (Hardball), BowTie (Tucker), and TheBeard (The Situation Room) I was met with preemption. On a day when the prosecution rested in the Scooter Libby trial; another helicopter went down in Iraq; and 4 more soldiers died; I was preempted.
With what?
The death of Anna Nicole Smith. Evidently, the death of someone in our ridiculous pantheon of celebrity is more important. The Gods are angry... and bummed! We must pay penance and be subjected to endless nonsense about someone who did next to nothing but be white, buxom and blonde. Oh, right, and titillate our sensibilities. Or something like that.
(more on the flip - I always wanted to write that!)
Grrr.
This follows wall-to-wall coverage of the "diaper astronaut" and many more instances of, um, "women (sometimes men) behaving badly or getting killed or running off or whatever." Remember the runaway bride? The Aruba girl?
"Where The White Women At?" indeed.
But that isn't really it, actually.
It's the idea that our ostensible news organizations think we're such sheeple that we'll tune in because someone they put up on Mount Olympus did something "notable (notorious)."
Grr, again. It's porn. Not there's anything wrong with porn, per se, but I'm not reading the New York Times or watching CNN to get off. I'm reading/watching to be informed about, um, shit that matters.
So, here's my idea. An idea inspired by Chris Bowers BlogPac email onslaught to the Edwards campaign to keep the Amanda and Shakes.
Why can't we do that when we see our media run amok with stories that are, ultimately, trivial? Stories that distract us from reality. Stories that, frankly, are the equivalent of telling all of us, "Look! Over there! A shiny thing!"
I'm no web guru and I don't have the chops to set up a site that can mass email all the "news" outlets with our objection to wall-to-wall coverage of trivial things. But it seems to me that we ought to use these nifty new tools we've been blessed with here in the 21st Century to let them know that a great many of us think this kind of coverage is bullshit.
I'll bet you that those on the right would agree as well. Yes, these distractions keep their scandals off the front page. They do ours as well. Yes, these distractions keep their sandbag techniques from being talked about. But we're not so blameless that we don't have our own "players in the Great Game of Gotcha!"
If we can agree with them on Net Neutrality (as far as we do), then I would imagine we could also agree on this: Media Masturbatory Porn about things that DO NOT MATTER hurt us all.
So, two things:
a) Is this feasible? Can we build a mechanism whereby we can let all of these producers, editors and opinion makers know that there are large swaths of the public that would rather hear NEWS that affects them? And let them know immediately? Imagine a flood of emails... from both sides.
b) and, can we find common cause with our opponents on such a thing? Because, if we can, those producers who think feeding us endless amounts of celebrity bullshit might re-think a thing or two.
We are their audience, right?
Or have I just lost my tiny little mind?
I reserve the right to be spectacularly wrong. Sue me, I'm an optimist. And this is my second diary in, um, years.
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