"Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of Man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out that window, hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in on the queer things that are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with it's conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable." -- Arthur Conan Doyle
We're going to take something of a break from our usual fare of laughing and pointing at the poor dumbasses who inhabit this spinning blue Loony Bin to instead turn our attention to what might be the singular most-remarkable phenomenon in Modern Media.
The Fake News Story.
I have no doubt that since Man first invented Media that The Lie entered not three seconds after the discovery was made. I can't be bothered to find specific examples of this statement (and the ones I could recite from the top of my head would keep us here for years) through all the annals of recorded history, but I'm certain most people would agree with me.
Somewhere in France there is probably a cave painting depicting a single hunter taking down 50 antelope with only his enormous penis.
Pharonic tombs are lined with the great lists of the supposed achievements of their occupants which never happened.
The monuments of Rome and Persia are carved or engraved so as to extol the virtues of Kings and Emperors who had none of them.
The Ancient Chinese didn't even make a secret of sycophancy when recording the deeds of their Emperors, and later Communist Overlords, so that today a billion Chinese believe that they are the center of the Universe.
(Which is complete bullshit, because I AM THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE. How do I know? I took the trouble to write this, that's how. I wouldn't have bothered to write it down if it wasn't true, Silly).
The idea that people will lie is not a shocking one. Taken further, that people will lie on cave walls, tomb paintings, public monuments, print, the internet, over the radio, and whatnot, is also not a surprising revelation. Human Beings are born liars, after all. It takes great personal control not to lie, sometimes.
The thought, however, that such things routinely occur in what is known as "professional journalism" is even less stupefying when you consider that why the past fabrications of the "official" media could probably be justified on the basis of propaganda, politics, cultural matters, custom, or even ignorance of truth. The Lie still had some connection to Reality; the facts of power, a response to a perceived need, if we were generous about it.
The Lies of today, though, don't even appear to serve any need, at all. The Lie occurs when there is not even a need for it.
Here are two examples from the Intertoobies I found yesterday. One is a proven Lie (the author admitted as much, but only after he was debunked by a concerned citizen -- and we'll get to her motivations, as well), and the other is so fantabulously fucked up it HAS to be a complete fabrication.
The first example concerns an article run by the German magazine, Der Spiegel. I am vaguely familiar with this magazine in it's English edition, and I happen to know that there are articles which appear in the German version which never make it to the English version, and vice-versa. This might have been one of them; it was intended solely for German consumption (probably so that Germans, and by extension, Europeans, could feel superior to Americans. It's what Europeans like to do, anyway: feel superior).
To summarize, a German reporter goes to a small town in Minnesota to examine the Trump Phenomenon. Never mind that Minnesota is probably the worst place to do this as an examination of the typical Minnesotan, and never mind that a small smudge on the map in the Minnesotan hinterland was going to be representative of the entire country.
Anyway, Adolf Eichmann With a Pen weaves a tragic story of inbred nose-picking shitkickers who live in a stylized version of Dante's Ninth Circle of Hell, only with a McDonald's. We are introduced to a cast of INVENTED characters who bear what are -- to the European mind -- the worst stereotypes regarding Americans.
So, we find the virgin republican with a gun fetish. We find the de rigeur oppressed Hispanic. Here, in this little slice of bucolic tundra, we discover that civilization has hardly arrived. The people live a Dickensian existence in the shadow of the Dark Satanic Mill. They gorge themselves on pizza, drinking crap beer, in a dive bar watching the Super Bowl on TV, and outdated movies in a cinema that hasn't seen a new film since 1956. They Square Dance. No Black People seem to exist in this microcosm of the Master Retard Race. There's more: the debunking has to be read to be believed. The original article, alas, has been memory holed.
Now, it seems to me to be a total douche move to spend three weeks anywhere in Minnesota only to have to write a fictional account of what actually transpired there. My guess is that Hermann Boring went to Minnesota in much the same way an anthropologist visits a tribe in the Amazon, to prove a theory, only to find the theory is wrong. Only someone picked up the bill for this little jaunt and you have to produce SOMETHING.
In the case of the anthropologist, he's never really "wrong", it's just that his theory has been proven to be crap, and given the rules within which Science operates, he's achieved a "Negative Success" -- he proved SOMETHING. The Media Business, however, is different; if you go to the ass-end of the planet (Rural Minnesota is fairly close to it) to show your editors the Rubes in their Native Habitat, you'd better damned well come back with rubes. You got paid to find rubes. That was the point.
Hence, why Sigmund Fraud invented some.
The Lie serves no useful purpose; it's simply pandering to a readership that holds certain obvious biases and which only feels comfortable when those biases are reinforced. The Liar decides a piece of fiction that does this is not only a good thing, but an acceptable thing, to do. The only wrinkle in his plan was that he came up against someone more biased, perhaps, than he is, considering the tone of the response.
As to the response, Ms. Bleeding-Heart is not so much interested, I believe, in setting the record straight (liberals, after all, love lies) but in distancing herself from the crass stereotypes -- and real Trump voters -- as possible. So that her response is, in fact, another lie. She can do little more than to trumpet her Libtard credentials -- female, check; artist, check; Trump-hater, check -- towards the end of an otherwise masterful debunk, except complain "but not meeeee.....I'm special!". She's not one of these Philistines and if in the process of making this distinction she has to lie -- she really DOES respect these people -- then so be it. It's just virtue signalling of another kind.
The second example, in which a transsexual "confesses" to having perpetrated the greatest scam EVAH upon it's unsuspecting "husband" that reads like a cross between Dear Abby and Penthouse Letters, has to be a genuine piece of fictional reportage for two reasons.
The first is that no Man could ever be this galactically stupid. A woman, perhaps, guided as they are by their emotions that leads them to substitute the wish for the real, could be, but never a Man. Particularly when it comes to the correct number, arrangement, appearance, and more...ummm...aesthetic...circumstances of all the holes in the female body. The second reason is because just come the fuck on.
We are supposed to believe that Hubby hasn't caught on that Wifey is a Female Facsimile after about four years of marriage?
We are also supposed to believe, because the article's very existence implies it, that this is a "common" problem among the transwhatever community. It's also very informative on just how deep this mental retardation goes; somehow, they can't manage to be honest --after all, how honest are they being with themselves that they aren't mentally ill? -- until cornered by the facts of biology, and then they can't hide, anymore.
That is to say in wanting to have children, but not having the right equipment to do so.
And now is somehow the right time to tell the poor doofus you've been lying to for four years the truth, you hold out hope that Hubby will be okay with it all, and life will go on much as it has. Happily Ever After.
Because that ALWAYS happens...
Again, the transwhatchamacallit runs into the conflict between Fantasy (I'm a different gender!) and Reality (Biology always wins!).
Now, what makes this particular piece of (probable) fiction especially disgusting is that it is intended to garner sympathy...for someone who has lied; who has perpetrated a fraud over a prolonged period of time; who has taken advantage of another in a way that is so intensely personal that the revelation that Cindy is really Sidney, and the pain that would inflict upon the unsuspecting, is supposed to be forgotten about.
It isn't the Husband who we should be concerned about -- it's the Liar. The Liar deserves the sympathy here, not the Man done wrong. It is the Liar who is suffering the pangs of remorse and guilt, the fear of being found out, the trepidation that attends ACKNOWLEDGING REALITY. As if doing so is a exploit of bravery on par with charging a machine gun nest to save your platoon, riding a rocket into the unknown cosmos, or running into a burning building to save 11 people and a puppy.
And this is a truly bizarre aspect to all of this: we're supposed to have sympathy for the mental midget who can't abide their own genitals...and then have more sympathy for them when their own genitals expose them for the sociopaths that they are. In no case are we to exercise moral judgment; we're not to weigh the Truth against The Falsehood; we're not even supposed to make a distinction between Reality (I'm a deranged, self-hating psycho who should be castigated for my deranged, psychotic self-hating that harms others) and the Fantasy (I'm a deranged, self-hating psycho who should be CELEBRATED for my deranged, psychotic self-hatred that harms others).
This follows on the heels of another laughable News Story Meme of the "Incredibly Woke 7 Year Old" that began appearing in the 1990's, but who became legion on November 9, 2016. It was then that America discovered that there were legions of savant children -- always the progeny of the liberal writer, of course, because your kids are inferior -- who look up form their Corn Flakes at the breakfast table, utter fear in their eyes, with tiny voices forced out through quivering lips, wondering if the elevation of the Bad Orange Man meant that they wouldn't be able to get an abortion or screw a cocker spaniel when they grow up.
And, always, with a psychological atmosphere intended to portray the utter, speechless, gobstammering bewilderment of the parent who...just...can't....deal...with...this...new reality, which was always the same Reality. Which is to say, a Reality they never really partook of because they never really liked it, and because they considered themselves elite for having gone to four years of expensive Journalism school to learn how to punctuate a sentence properly.
Something the rest of us learned in 3rd grade.
It has been my experience of the (few) Media types that I have had contact with in my own, largely unsuccessful, attempts to earn a living by writing (they have been largely unsuccessful because the people who are successful are both simultaneously aware and unaware of what dim bulbs they are, and so guard their profession and prerogatives jealously) that making things up out of thin air is a stock-in-trade for the modern reporter.
Orwell remarks that one of the tricks of the newspaper reporter is to make it appear as if there's news when there really isn't, so that, for example, firemen rescuing Mrs. Smith's cat from a tree, with the addition of some photographs and thrilling description, becomes a major, three-alarm rescue effort with a happy ending that ate up several column inches and 3,000 words at 25-cents per word. Much like endless investigations of "Russian Collusion" turn out to be not so much about Russians and Collusion, but about abuse of government power that is routinely ignored.
Reality is not as exciting -- or as useful --as the Fiction.
The Modern Media leaves much to be desired. It was once an institution that could be counted upon to give at least a general sense of Objective Reality to events and culture. Even when it was glorifying the inglorious, they were, at least, still real people and the events were verifiable -- there were a million dead at the Somme; Mount Pinatubo did erupt; so-and-so is a flesh-and-blood person.
But not anymore.
UPDATE: As I was about to publish this, another example came to us, courtesy of the two biggest New York daily newspapers.
No comments:
Post a Comment