Addicted to the Shindig

I understand the appeal of Donald Trump to the news media. The idea that they're all left-leaning and biased against Republicans or conservatism in general has never really been true, and it's actually pretty clearly the opposite in this current media era, after the advent and (one has to say) success of Fox News. The operating stance of all arms of media, old and new, is that conservative ideas and the actions of GOP politicians are, if not a default or correct (or at least self-evident) position, they are things for which journalists know the people speaking them are willing to go down swinging defending, even if they're know to be obvious and immediately disprovable lies. There's no point challenging something if it's going to be defended with crusader-like zeal and probably end with an anonymous death threat or two. On the other hand, anything spoken by a Democrat or even events that contradict the obvious and immediately disprovable lies already incanted into meat-space by some level of right-wing operative, must be covered with an immediate, sober scrutiny that none of us--not one!--should dare to be even the slightest bit hasty about lest we invoke the Spirit of Like I Dunno Maybe 1993 who will come and smite us. Then we'll be doomed to return to an era where the vise grip of commie-leaning journos skewing and butchering THE TRUTH so thoroughly and systematically, they had kept all Republicans out of any office for, like, a dozen generations or something, where they had never known power and never would again if the lying bozos in the press had their way.

But of course, Rupert Murdoch swooped in (first as farce, then as tragedy, putting a real Aussie spin on the idea) and saved us from an existence of perpetual knowing stuff in an information environment predicated on disputation of facts, reducible only as far as an irreducible root where actual truth existed. If you're not sure what I mean, just watch All the President's Men again and see press and power engage in a struggle of revelations and obfuscations until all the façades are at last pierced and the country's chief executive is checkmated into resigning in disgrace and fucking off to San Clemente. This outcome, of course, is not conceivable now, let alone possible, given that both sides have moved in such an eccentric yet tidally locked orbit they're practically circling an entirely different star. The Washington Post is fully industry captured and eagerly, pre-emptively capitulant and the executive branch has heroically become entirely inoculated against embarrassment, let alone actual shame. That's how you get a White House impervious to scandal AND an Oval Office decorated with bowling trophies. Both equally troubling when considered against the future of the republic.

So I get it, there's no space in this environment for media outlets to plant their feet and push back. There is no reward in it as a cash-making enterprise or in the culturo-intellectual headspace that has swapped out information for clout as a prime motivator. This isn't technically a media outlet (I don't have the money to hire an echo-chambered crypto-fascist dingus to write immediately outdated column pieces to spur negative engagement in the secondary micro-blogging marketspace, which is what I think you need to be considered print media these days), but still, even though the type of engagement might be cynical to the point of being bankrupt,* the one thing nobody is lacking in a Trump administration is content. You could really palp the strain on the whole system during the boring-ass Biden administration, trying to gin up some kind of heat from literally nothing. "The president is really old and kind of mumbles" doesn't have the same jet-fuel jump as "the president invited the president of South Africa over just to call him a murdering bitch in front of the press" if you're trying to draw eyeballs to the adverts you sold for joint cream and cash-for-old-jewelry schemes.

I can't really sustain it, though. If I tried to follow every outrage, I'd have to go back to writing every single day, which I've been over for a while now. Instead of that, I find it a lot more fruitful to generate "thoughtful" pieces where I talk around the issues of the day at one step removed, disguising my exploitation of the 24-hour news cycle as critique without ever having to actually be on the hook for saying anything. Wait a second, maybe this IS a media outlet...

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*in most cases literally, that's how you end up with dipshit billionaire or dipshit hedge fund ownership in the first place.