Demosophia

The Daily Depress

OK, I read this by MyPetJawa. The theme is coherent enough, and I basically agree. Having entered a "state of war" on Sept. 11, 2001 we have divided up our western society into teams, in order to act out the theme of war that isn't present in our day to day experience. Nice, safe "liberals" that I knew and liked before 9/11 are now idiotarians, while to them I'm some sort of war-mongerish fascist. And the whole red pill/blue pill thing has created the most biased and partisan press I've ever seen, running directly into and undermining the war effort.

I understand the attraction of censorship. I'm almost there. We've had anti-sedition laws during wartime before, when the "state of war" resulted in partisan ideological bickering that threatened the nation's security. Surely Ted Rall ought to be in a dungeon somewhere, right? Yes, I understand.

But I don't understand how it could possibly work, with the internet and all?

Could we possibly institute some sort of simple metric that let people know precisely, and I mean to a pretty fine measure just how biased their favorite news outlet has become? Say, it's something like what Edith Efrom used in her classic book Twisted Media? Something that even a third rate academic, or a hair stylist could get their head around? That would give us some sort of leverage that allowed the market to do it's work. Can we call a summit with the Annenburg School to flesh out a few ideas?

Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Body Count, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, 9-11 Hearings, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Body Count, Terrorist Explosion, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, Abu Ghraib, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah, blah

I mean, this has gone about as far as we can tolerate, hasn't it? It's almost self-parody.

And does anyone have the lyrics to the song "Daily Depress" by some obscure acoustic artist in the eighties? Anybody remember that? It could be our theme song.

Posted by Demosophist at May 20, 2004 02:34 AM | TrackBack