Cable News Hallucinations

I try to enjoy most evenings at home, a Rockwellian domestic scene with Lynchian mood lighting set to an early Scorcese pace. Or maybe some deep Ashby focus with a Von Sternberg score and Sturges slapstick thrown in for laughs. Depends on the night, mood, bank balance, and mental temperature.

Last night, it was naked Dali and Buñuel, with televised faces melting and bubbling, "experts" shrieking their predictions, shouting their "analysis," emitting some of the most horrific subhuman noises outside of Gitmo. Thank Shiva that the majority of Americans don't watch the cable news nets, because if they did, I suspect daily life would be much more dangerous and unhinged. People would take numbers to shoot up fast food joints, while absinthe would enjoy a spike in popularity, consumers openly guzzling the trip syrup in midday, stumbling around strip malls and crashing their SUVs and Hummers into lightposts or driving blindly off bridges. Anything to smother the hideous sounds of what is bizarrely called The American News Media.

Makes you appreciate "reality" TV, yes?

Watching the primary returns on CNN, Fox and MSNBC, you could immediately see how dead the American political system truly is. Well, dead for the average person, not for those who own and run the machine. For those in charge, this is a sweet moment in time. They pretty much have the rest of us subdued and gagged, allowing us enough mobility to touch a screen or jot on a paper ballot -- that is, if you can find one. In Ohio, land of the lost vote, some 21 precincts were short of paper ballots, with only 10 of those kept open after the polls closed. End result: 5 extra votes were cast. Huzzah. Cue the flag-colored confetti.

Of the three major channels, MSNBC has to be the worst. Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Tim Russert taken all at once is too much for the sober mind to process, their pale, sagging faces morphing into a single yammering unit. Toss in Stepford Anchor Norah O'Donnell and the mummified remains of Tom Brokaw, and who needs hallucinogens? Granted, MSNBC is bad acid, cut with the cheapest speed, but you'll experience insane images and sounds not found at its competitors, especially Fox News, which looks like something they pipe into solitary cells in federal prisons.

As for Hillary remaining in the race . . . is anyone honestly surprised? Even had she lost Ohio and Texas, Hillary would've found some reason to keep her dreadful campaign rolling, as the Clintons are experts in buying time until they can kill off their political opponents. As it stands, Hillary is still a mathematical long shot to snag the Dem nomination. But never underestimate that gang around her, nor the mule elites who still support her campaign. They will pull out all the stops over the next few weeks, sliming and slandering Saint Obama using anything they can seize. With the Clintons, there is no barrel bottom. Only victory or a cozy career with lucrative speaking fees. Either way, Hill and Bill will remain in the hi-def picture, reptilian eyes cutting through their human visage.

Comments

[larry278]

There aren't many sadistic writers around in 2008 but we have cable news. Nobody notices the shortage of writers of sadamist writers since we have cable news 24/7.

[normathumb]

You might think the Democrats are against each more then they are against the Republicans. Had Clinton won ten in a row prior to the most recent primaries, she would have been loudly demanding to know why Obama was still in the race. As it is unlikely she will win all the coming primaries with massive landslides, the only way for her to get the nomination is through a brokered convention, the worst possible scenario. Denver '08 could look like Chicago '68. That is a scenario she is apparently willing to chance. I will vote for anyone with a chance to defeat McCain. I don't think we have begun to see how ugly this can get and I am not just referring to the rhetorical hyperbole.
To be clear, I was a Kucinich supporter. I believe our current junta is composed of war criminals and aspiring tyrants. They swore to uphold the Constitution and instead turned it into a museum piece. Extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, torture, unwarrented domestic spying and the suspension of habeus corpus smack of Stalinism. The truly scary thing is many Americans think these are good things. It makes you wonder what our issues with the old Soviet Union truly were. My doubts about the Democratic front runners stem from them not calling the administration out and my fear their reason for not doing so is their anticipation of being the next "unitary president". Cheney and company are not gentleman. His policies are too egregious to be treated as mere differences of opinion. Until I hear a Democrat call it for what it is, I will, unfortunately, be voting for the lesser of evils.

[Dem02020]

Gee I was with you Dennis, from the title of the essay, right on through the first several paragraphs. It's true, this televised cable "media" is worthless and insubstantial to a surreal extreme. Watching the empty talking heads on CNN last night, I kept wincing and flinching with the various deep insights they were expressing, and the profound questions they posed one another, and answered.

And I'm under the suspicious impression that they're doing this intentionally, keeping the political talk as superficial and insubstantial and dumbed-down as possible... I'm not so sure of any single reason for this contrived and idiotic level of discourse, but I'm sure of it just the same: as we don't have to truly know the cause, to observe and appreciate the effect.

It seems like a form of propaganda, except instead of specializing in "counter-information", it's mostly no information at all, but merely a fool's appearance of it. It's as though Goebbels had the brilliant stroke, of instead of talking politics in a serious tone (and risk raising the level of discourse, and inviting debate), make it as banal and empty as possible... it's what Goebbels might have achieved, if he had the brilliant stroke of putting vaudeville acts and circus freaks and clowns and religious delusionals on the radio, to not so much draw the hearts and minds of the German people toward what the nazi government was doing, but to confuse and distract and bore them away from such interest.

Cable "news" seems to employ gameshow hosts and gameshow contestants, and talkshow hosts and talkshow guests, to achieve the same thing: confuse and distract and bore the American People away from any interest in National Policy, instead of toward it.


But then your essay turned into a Swiftboat, aimed at the majority choice by the People of Ohio and Texas, and Providence Plantation too, in last night's Primary ...

Who knows why you had to do that. It seems to have confused the focus of the essay, at least as far as how it began, as an insightful and biting critique of the cable televised "media".

[CjAzure]

Interesting perspective. The Dali imagery is spot on and the dramatic prose a refreshing read, The Clintons as reptilian monsters? It works for me!

[BachelorJohnnyCool]

LOL! You really should just come out and say what you mean instead of beating around the bush like that.