Really now, who does watch the watchmen?

This comes from someone I've never read and have little interest in learning more about. However, it exemplifies the type of media drivelry that has been dragging down our country for years. Its non-news masquerading as news. Its entertainers masquerading as newsmen. And its corporations with a dumb consumer population as their goal masquerading as upright distributors of unfiltered information.

The story is that a particularly heinous producer for Bill O'Reilly stalked a woman who questioned whether it was appropriate for a man like Bill O'Reilly, who has been accused and settled out of court for sexual harrassment and makes the claim that women who dress sexy are "asking" to get raped or killed, to address a fundraiser committed to helping rape victims. You know, maybe it IS appropriate for him to do so to apologize for his previously held conceptions. Although, Mr. O'Reilly is hardly known for admiting mistakes. Anyway, this producer stalked the woman for two hours then accosted her in the street like a coked up TMZ reporter repeatedly asking the same question then having his camera man follow her down the street for the obligatory "walking away with an attitude" shot that tabloid entertainment has become known for.

Here's the rub. Who gives a fuck? And if you really did give a shit (O'Reilly), why not actually try to ask her what she was trying to say. Answer: He doesn't give a shit. He just wants to smear her reputation and invent a story about her. In this case that she abuses rape victims. (No joke, this is what the slimy producer demanded she apologize for into the camera.)

So what the hell is up with fox? ANd what can we do about it? And honestly, its not just fox but if we could bring that edifice crashing down perhaps it would send a message to the other news organizations that edge closer and closer to triviality every day.

The frightening and infuritating part is that it seems there is nothing you can do. They are the gatekeepers. You wonder why a protest of 20 people having a tea party to protest Obama's stimulus package makes the news, but 100,000 people in the street with pitchforks and torches in Europe does not? Because the network airing it has a monetary interest in killing the stimulus bill and showing how many people are actually against it (20, apparently.) Whereas if you show what is going on in Europe (Mass hysteria, toppling governments, dogs and cats living together) you show what happens when the government does nothing. The corporations that run the news WANT the mass hysteria because it allows them to oust Obama and put someone else in power. It gives them the opportunity to take total control. It also affords them the chance to buy everything of value in the country at a cut rate. Since they live behind a 20 foot wall with security guards and years of food on the shelf, a panic doesn't really scare them.
Meanwhile, regular folk see what happens if the government does nothing and they say, "Okay, lets do this and see how it works. Its gotta be better than the alternative." Obama stays in power, the markets eventually recover and the super rich only stay super rich instead of becoming super rich and in control of everthing.

But we don't see the protests in Europe. We don't know that in Ukraine, you can't walk down the street at night for fear you will be killed for your cell phone. We don't hear that peace-loving Iceland has rioters in the streets and has every day for the past three months. That their government has collapsed and lost all authority. We don't know these things because Bill O'Reilly is too busy chasing a blogger down the street acusing her of abusing rape victims.

I am reading a book about the future right now, called The Singularity is Near, but I have to be completely honest when I think that the stuff the guy is talking about, as likely as it is in a political vaccuum, doesn't seem like it will ever come to be. I don't think we'll make it that long. Or if we do, we'll be indentured serfs, condemned to our warrens and to serving our overlords.

And by the way, Bill O'Reilly is that guy from V for Vendetta. Plothero I believe his name was. His purpose, to stir up the great fools of the nation, to misdirect their attention and anger toward that which actually works for the betterment of mankind. Because if mankind goes up, it means relatively, that O'Reilly goes down. And his whole gig is a crocodile dundee dance on the heads of all the little people.

This only makes me feel slightly better.
I wonder if a great horde of anti-disenfranchisementarianists like myself were to descend upon our tormentors, camcorders in hand, if we could perhaps alter the dialogue. If that were to ever happen, the right wing radio morons, the TMZ paperazzi and the obstructionist imperialists in congress would, I think, be the best people to bother. Along with every executive at News Corp and AIG.