By Eric Le Roy
Content 18+ The overwhelming mandate in favor of Donald Trump was also an indictment of the ‘mainstream’ American media. Nothing could be a better statement of the general good sense of the public at large than this categorical rejection of Far Left Wing propaganda, which has been nonstop for years now.
Who am I to say this? Well, I am a 75 year old white male who never understood or saw myself as a de facto racist, misogynist, homophobe, and board member of a White Male Patriarchy – until the media told me so. Gee, I always thought I was a-a-a-a-a liberal at heart. But such august authorities as the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, AOL, Time Magazine, CNN – and other shapers of opinion, all staffed by people much wiser than myself – have spent half their lives and all of their careers assuring me that I – little ole me – am the villain.
Luckily for me, I am made of stern enough stuff to reject all that. And it was NOT because I joined the Nazi party, threw a white sheet over my head, or started badmouthing or bashing gays. Far from it. I supported the Kennedy’s – John F. and Bobby (Robert). I supported (and still admire) Bill Clinton. I was fine with Obama. But I voted for and gave my full support to Donald Trump.
So what happened? Did I lose my mind? I hope not. I think What Happened is very simple: a radical shift of mainstream media sources to the Left. The Far Left. Calling themselves ‘progressives’ and Woke – they have been on a mission that was never what it pretended. It was not a noble effort to unite people, to bring us together – far from it. It became a malicious ‘cancel’ culture charade encouraging division, schism, and ultimately hatred. In vilifying the ‘white man’ or ‘anglo saxon’, it tried to steer everyone away from the real problems America has. And in scapegoating the white American male, Woke also tried to castrate him. And the Media bought this warped view of reality hook, line, and sinker, and flogged it nonstop to the public.
As I said, I am 75, and I have seen a lot of changes over these years. For most of them, I turned to the media for honesty, articulate argumentation, and clarification. For all those years I trusted what I was getting. If I wanted straight news I turned to the front page. If I wanted an op-ed, I turned to the opinion page. It was that simple. News was news, and opinions were opinions. And, especially for big city papers like the New York Times, the Sunday Supplements were Gold Mines – libraries unto themselves, and I avidly basked in them. I did not support the views of conservative pundits such as William F. Buckley, but I listened to his talk show and read his columns. I loved the hard-boiled working class columnist Mike Royko who wrote for the Chicago Tribune, as I recall. But mostly I read and agreed with the liberals of the day. I believed that they were for the ‘people’, particularly those who were disadvantaged. Also, they just struck me as being more evolved, somehow just more intelligent than a lot of the right wing types.
But at least reasonable discussion was possible. Left and Right alike, they always remembered that they were Americans. Naturally, serious disagreements arose, especially over the Vietnam War. Fathers and sons parted company over that one. And most conservatives despised the Hippies. But the hippies wanted to ‘make love not war’, and the fabled Martin Luther King was a champion of peace. I, as a teenage child of the ‘60s, believed that we were on our way to peace and good will towards all.
Wow, was I ever wrong. Greater opportunities for previously disenfranchised people, far from softening anger and unrest, seem only to have exacerbated it. Now we stand at a greater and more acrimonious divide than ever before.
And the Media is largely to blame.
Investigative journalism began with the Watergate scandal created by none other than Richard Nixon, America’s equivalent to England’s infamous Richard III in terms of character. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Pierce the cover-up; get to the Truth. I thought it was great detective work being carried out in the public interest, and often it still is because, as we know, the Guardians of the Military Industrial Complex and Corporate America will do nothing but lie as long as they can get away with it. What I loved about investigative journalism was that the Good Guys had a chance to win, to be redeemed from the institutional wrongdoing of their masters.
Another point worth making is this: back in the day, journalists actually protected the people they were covering. President John F. Kennedy was a whoremaster beyond comparison with anybody who occupied the White House before or since – but we didn’t know it. WE thought that Jack and Jackie were the ideal couple. Camelot, and all that. Mickey Mantle was one of the greatest baseball players of his day. We saw his face on the back of Wheaties cereal boxes, eating the Breakfast of Champions. We didn’t know that Mick started most of his days with a couple of slugs of whiskey. We thought the movie stars were Perfect People leading paradisiacal lives – exemplary, beyond reproach. The perfect role models for the rest of us. We didn’t know that many of the leading men were short, alcoholic, and often gay. We didn’t know that the great starlets got their roles by blowing the producers and directors at MGM and Warner Brothers, etc. The Press didn’t tell us. And, who knows, maybe it was for the best.
But then investigative journalism, noble in its beginning role, started to get fly-on-the-wall-itis. Suddenly, it became the business of the press to find out who was screwing whom – and Tell Us. The next thing that happened was the birth of the Tabloids. These rags were designed solely to titillate the public with every scandal they could come up with. TV programs, such as The Jerry Springer Show (there were many tawdry copycats) would pay dysfunctional people and families to make fools out of themselves in front of a TV audience in exchange for bus fare and 15 minutes of fame. The whole idea was based on what Artem has accurately diagnosed as our insatiable lust for the sordid and vile, the bloodier the better.
I personally have a game I play with my students when ‘the media’ becomes the subject of discussion. I ask them: “If you were walking down the street and saw two newspapers side by side, and the frontpage headline of one said “Madman Chops Off Ten People’s Heads at the Mall (illustrated by a photo of a decapitated head bouncing down the steps) and the other headline read: “Community Raffle Generates $500 in Charity for Church Youth Facility” (augmented by a picture of a cleancut Christian boy appreciatively accepting the cheque) – which newspaper would you buy?”
Of course, my young scholars try to lie at first and say what they think I want to hear, which is a politically correct distortion of what they really feel. So they start by saying the ‘Right Thing’, but clearly they underestimate my appetite for the truth. So finally they blush, start laughing and cry “The Madman of course!!” And we all guffaw because we have hit upon a real insight into humanity. Most of us have good ‘souls’ but tabloid hearts. Another example: in a boxing match or MMA battle – unlike the Romans, we really don’t want to see violent death. But not a love fest either. Give us some blood and snot. Bread and Circuses. Some things about us never change.
You think the media doesn’t know this? That they don’t package it and sell it? Can’t you hear them sneering and chuckling at OUR vulgarity as they fling it out to us over and over again, secure in their belief that we will Never get enough?
But before technology and the internet took over, the mass production of this sort of sickness was limited. Now it is off the charts. Now everyone has a microphone and the more outrageous they make themselves the more followers they have. Moreover, the idea of the media existing to report the news has completely given way to the absurd notion that they – the media – should set about creating the news which they then presume to ‘report’. And so the media becomes, more and more blatantly all the time, the Shaper of the news and public opinion. At this point, the media doesn’t just reflect on the facts before us or provide commentary on what this information may suggest – while making a policy of opting for a balanced presentation of opinion; instead it has seized on the idea of telling us what to think. And what it told us this time was that Trump was a Nazi and we should vote for Kamala Harris.
I have no problem at all with anyone who sincerely believed that Kamala was the better choice. That’s what democracy is all about. But what I have justifiable FURY about is the manipulation the media tried to engage in, its shameless dishonesty and one-sidedness. This nonsense has got to stop.
The American people have just declared that it has to stop. We all should respect each other’s opinions. The media are NOT Olympian gods presiding over us; nor are they self-appointed parents, psychologists, or PC prison guards who are in place to straighten out our ‘incorrect’ thoughts and put us on the right track. The media should be a sieve used for sifting information through – like sand through an hourglass – NOT a dam constructed for diverting the water in one direction only or a detour sign directing us down a dead end street – the equivalent of a one-story narrative.
The recent one-sided, deliberately dishonest and blatant attempt to manipulate the news to serve its own ends is repulsive, disgusting, and, as we have seen, ultimately self-defeating. The public already is clear on this; let’s hope that the media gets the message and engages in some serious soul-searching – and mends its ways.
