Posted
on May 25, 2017 by Fred
Reed
Do you wonder why the
legacy media are such puzzled otherworldly twits? Why, for example, they had no
idea what was happening in the recent election? Why they seem to know so very
little about America or much of anything else?
Some thoughts from a guy who spent a career in the racket:
Some thoughts from a guy who spent a career in the racket:
Ask journalists when they were last in a truck stop on an Interstate, last in Boone, North Carolina or Barstow, California or any of thousands of such towns across the country. Ask whether they were in the military, whether they have ever talked to a cop or an ambulance crewman or a fireman. Ask whether they have a Mexican friend, when they last ate in a restaurant where a majority of the customers were black. Whether they know an enlisted man, or anyone in the armed services. Whether they have hitchhiked overnight, baited a hook, hunted, or fired a rifle. Whether they have ever worked washing dishes, harvesting crops, driving a delivery truck. Whether they have a blue-collar friend. Know what the Texas Two-Step is, have been in a biker bar.
Now do you see why Trump
surprised them?
Ask them how many have ever worried about paying the electric bill, had to choose between a new winter coat or paying the cable, or known anyone who did.
Ask them whether they are rich. They will say no, and believe it. Yet when friends drop in, the question will be whether to eat Turkish or Thai on the Hill. For much of America, dinner in a Turkish restaurant on Cap Hill, where the waiter puts a white napkin in your lap and the bill for four with drinks and tip is $180, would be the adventure of a lifetime.
In Washington, a
two-bedroom apartment in a very old building across Connecticut Ave from
the zoo, with the original steam radiators, goes for $2500 a month. An
835-square foot two-bedroom condo in Colonial Village, just across Key Bridge in
Arlington, Virginia, starts at $2450. Fifteen years ago, such a closet
sold for $300K..
Now ask how many
journalists voted for Trump. Close to zero. Virtually the entire press corps is
of one mind and slants the news to the point of verticality. In the absence of
Trump, they are almost as heavily Democratic. Most don’t know they are doing
it. It’s just that they are so obviously…right. They are not reporters. They
are advocates.
Journalists are not
stupid, running to well above average in intelligence. You could form a large
chapter of Mensa by raiding newsrooms in Washington. However, with a fair few
exceptions, they are not intellectuals, not contemplative, not studious. They
are high-pressure fact-accountants, competitive, comfortable under tight deadlines,
aggressive, combative, quick but shallow. This can be a serviceable substituent
for stupid.
In a curious process of
self-delusion, they imagine a world that doesn’t exist and then try to live in
it. For example, they don’t know what cops face in the ghetto because they have
never been in the ghetto and don’t know any cops. They dismiss anyone who tells
them that things are not as they think. Their confidence is invincible, for do
not all their friends say the same things?
Television
is the medium of the illiterate and barely literate. (People who can’t or don’t
read all have televisions.) It lacks the staff to have specialized reporters,
has to avoid offending anyone so as to keep the advertisers happy, has very
little time to spend on a story which it has to keep at a sixth-grade level to
avoid losing much of its audience. It has to be politically correct so as to
impose appropriate values. It can’t upset big corporations because that’s who
owns it.
Newspapers can assume
perhaps a tenth-grade and better readership, but they too must be PC, worry
about the advertisers, and they too lack staff. Big papers will typically pay
attention to State, DoD, Congress, the political parties, and themselves. Most
of the government simply isn’t covered. When is the last time you saw a story about
HUD, Commerce, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Energy, or Education?
That’s why the
mainstream media are largely vapid and predictable. It is why the internet, not
bound by political correctness or controlled by corporations, able to
specialize, to serve intelligent readers, is now primary.
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