I started…and posted…a reply to Booman’s recent post I Feel Like a Dumbass regarding the media’s relatively blind eye as it has been trained on the upcoming election.
He wrote:
I expect to look like a dumbass this year, although I expect the same for most everyone else, too.
Yup. Precisely.
I am sorry to have to say this, but that feeling of “dumbassness” of which you speak is not being caused by being right or wrong in terms of political predictions. It is being caused by retaining any faith or hope whatsoever that the corporate-owned media are going to get “better.” They are great at what they are doing now; it’s just that you think that they should want to do something else…tell the truth, make the country more democratic (small “d”), etc. They don’t, because that’s not their job. Their job is to sustain the plutocracy by any means necessary. Dassit. That’s all she wrote. Once you truly understand that, your dumbassness will fly away to Cloud Cuckoo Land to join all of the other poor dumbasses in media bog…errr, ahhh, I mean hog…heaven.
Read on for more.
Much more.
Case in point? My own analysis of what is happening now.
The media is primarily engaged in one thing and one thing only.
Making money.
How do they make money?
They sell advertising. The more people that can be shown to pay attention to a certain media outlet, the more money they make. What sells to the largest number of people is what is covered. Violence and fear are historically big sellers; politcal and sociopolitical analysis not so much. Couple that plain fact with a couple of other plain facts, that the system as it stands today is rigged to keep itself in power any which way it can and that said system…the corporately-owned political system…is controlled by the same forces that own the media complex.
Now another fact:
Non-personing a dissenting and thus dangerous politician by the media has proven itself to be a powerful weapon. It worked on Ross Perot; it worked on Howard Dean and it worked on Ron Paul. The political situation here is in free fall, really. No one seems to have any faith in either party…well, not “no one” but not very damned many. So now the media are effectively “non-personing” the political process itself.
Duh.
Plus the alternate topics make money, so why not?
Put a better lure in the water and the fish will flock to it.
Hook, line and s(t)inker.
EBOLA!!!
ISIS!!!
MASS SHOOTINGS!!!
Bet on it.
Meanwhile, back at the Fix Ranch…who’s paying attention to how they’re branding their chattel…errr, ahh, cattle?
And more.
So much more!!!
“Judging from our cultural ideas about the red- and blue-state divide, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people who identify as Democrat or Republican have different preferences in what companies they support. But a new study by the YouGov Brand Index has found exactly which companies liberals and conservatives prefer, using an index made up of consumer impressions of each brand’s value, quality, reputation, their satisfaction with it, and their interest in recommending it. These are the results.”
This infographic is showing what brands members of the Democratic and Republican parties prefer and their impressions of the brand. The infographic is using comparison and contrast, but instead of showing how their members prefer different brands, as one would assume, it shows how they seem to mostly prefer the same brands. Of the top ten brands for each party, seven appear on both lists.
I repeat:
“Of the top ten brands for each party, seven appear on both lists.”
Of the avowed members of the two parties, roughly 70% of them are both prone to obey advertising and are consuming media…and thus in an overall sense “obeying” media because they are in a trance state while in the act of consumption…that make money off of the same brands.
Hmmmm…
So…at least you don’t have to feel like you are alone in the Great State of Dumbassness, Booman. Instead y’all are in the majority.
Rejoice.
WE WIN!!!
WTFU
AG
