For years I have read the Valley Advocate. 20 years ago they had *THE* best personal ads, the S&M Xena looking for her Gabrielle ad was brilliant. They also have some great interviews about how artists struggle to make money as well as bad movie reviews and really good thought pieces and some wonderful long form articles. There are also articles about farting in Yoga class and other things you’d expect in an Alt-weekly.
One of the writers in the Valley Advocate is Dave Eisenstadter, whose work has blossomed after the election of Trump.
I don’t have a bio to give you, but you should give him a follow and follow the Valley Advocate, too. You might find something interesting in there.
Two weeks ago, we saw a report where everyone buried the lede, even Democracy Now! I love Democracy Now!, however, the headline should have been, THE SECRET SERVICE IS BEING USED FOR MONEY LAUNDERING BY DONALD TRUMP. Snopes has a good article laying out other problems with the headlines we have, like THE SECRET SERVICE HAS GONE BROKE PROTECTING TRUMP.
The problem with headlines like this is it’s not quite true and because it’s not quite true, little Trumpettes can point to it and say “The Lying Press” and have some form of moral victory.
There are some things we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard. Reporting the news with headlines that create scrutiny is important. I believe I have to question authority, all authority. I think (and if you read my autopsy of Obama’s presidency, you’ll know this) that we must challenge our leaders even if they are on our team.
I wish over the electoral season I could have come up with a better argument to support Clinton, but I do believe in what Ben Jealous said, “That you never elect somebody to make change happen for you. You elect somebody to make it a little easier for your movement to keep on making change happen.”
That advantage of taking that moral ground in having someone “to make it a little easier...to keep on making change happen” with a critical press you can do both. The reason why Bill Clinton and Obama, when you look at the policies they pursued, were right-wing presidents was that the press that challenged them was the right-wing press. Before Clinton, no modern Democrat had served with the unleashed bias of a conservative press.
That unleashed bias has shifted the Overton Window rightward when we as a society are a left-wing culture. To fix this is more than I am able to write because there is so much we need to do to fix our broken media. When we have people like Jimmy Dore reading the Trump Jr. e-mails and skipping the part that should lead to an indictment saying “There’s no collusion here!” to Sinclare Broadcasting taking over the local news to push a far right-wing agenda, there is too much for us to focus on.
What we need to do is seek out media we like, and question them, like I question all elected officials. Support the good stuff, like Dave Eisenstadter, and if they write something questionable, write them, tweet them. Sometimes these people listen. All four estates of government deserve scrutiny. Right down to our local journalists. As citizens that is, after all, our job.
If you like this, please support it.