A thought about the media.

Okay so I was listening to NPR and as per usual I was getting upset at something the government was doing. And I had planned to come home and rant and rave about personal freedoms and the unique role of the legislature and the judiciary to circumvent the will of tyranny but, also as per usual, as soon as I turned my screen back on I went to tunasherpa instead and then got myself caught up in a rant about literature and the difference between fiction and non-fiction and Dan Brown and for some reason that makes me want to talk about the misconceptions of Darwinism. So instead, I think I'm going to start really slow, and work my way back up to ranting and raving.

First of all, NPR is a crock of shit. ( Way to start off slow, Josh. Smooth. You idiot. ) Let me explain.

I'm not going to claim for even a second that I'm the poster child for any one political, social, or cultural movement. And we can all thank G-d for that. But I would like to address the idea that there are only a few bless-ed sources of media that I still trust. And with that trust I like to include the idea that I'm getting REAL information. Hell, that's the whole reason I stopped listening to all the OTHER news stations. I thought I was being lied to. I was being fed information. They were telling me what they wanted me to hear.

And in my extreme idealism, I was sure that National Public Radio would have the foresight, no - the common decency-, to withhold their own standards of publication; I was solid in my foundation that NPR would stick to its guns and give its listeners only the most relevant, the most up-to-date, the highest of quality news and reports. Now, before anyone rails me for being so gullible as to trust the liberal media, first understand that I realize that everything has its perspective. I'm not trying to get un-biased news. They're is no such thing, right? Every event, every report, every person has their own set of circumstances and perspective. I get that. I have mine, for sure. I know that NPR is going to support those programs and reporters that will be listened to more often. Everything is always about money. Nothing new there.

But recently, as I turn to 90.3fm ( the St. Louis/UMSL affiliate of NPR and PRI) I'm deeply grieved by the almost revolutionary tone that is set by a number of their staff. I have listened to stories and reports of which I have extensive knowledge and have been offended by the sway this information receives before being passed down to listeners. For example, a couple weeks ago I was listening to someones account of US governmental policy in South and Central America, and how those same practices were being implemented to affect the Haitian elections. Over a large course of time, I have become increasingly interested in Third World politics and History, and especially the colonial role that Western Nations (especially now the United States) play during those nations rise into international power. So I've watched the last 20 years of Haitian news an history with fervor. I know a little bit about it, anyway. And this guy that was on the radio, this political and historical analyst for NPR, was saying a lot of the same things that I had come up with.

"Yes," I said, when he said that the US was fully accountable for ousting Haitian ex-president Jean Bertrande Aristide.

"Absolutely!" I said, when he said that Rene Preval was a student of Aristide's and would be the peoples choice for the elections. "He promises to bring Aristide back. That's what the people want!"

And when this idiot starts ranting about the failure of diplomacy and tyranny and how the US has never done anything right and we shouldn't be involved in any other country's business, I'm still nodding but he's screeching a little. Like he's not being heard.

"But you're preaching to the choir here, buddy! You don't have to be so dramatic, " I says to myself. But he just keeps climbing and yelling and talking about how the US deserves to be attacked and that we're setting ourselves up for South and Central America to terrorize us in twenty years and I still sort of agree but I wouldn't have put it like that and I really don't want to agree with anything this guy says anymore no no no because it sounds like revolutionary action and hes the reason independent media isn't taken seriously. So shut the hell up!

And then I realize that we all are seriously fucked. Because NPR is just as bad as FOX. Google is censoring the Chinese Internet. The freedom of information made possible by blogs is being used to pass around pornography of some Singaporean college student doing her boyfriend on her mobile phone. It's all bullshit. Hyped, stapled, packaged for individual servings, advertised using e-mail free lists, purchased on eBay for a retail plus $1 and consumed by a eager mass of hungry mouths. I feel like that video of ducks in France, with the tubes in their throats, getting force fed to death only so that their liver can become 75% fat and be harvested for foie gras and eaten by some piece of shit Michelin critic who doesn't deserve oxygen compared to most of the world but instead is catered to and eventually comp'ed because his write up is important for the third star.

But whats the solution? If I knew, I wouldn't be ranting on some backwater internet page. That's for sure. But somebody's got to know right? But I guess that's the problem. And not just of our generation. With humanity. Everybody thinks about culpability and action but waits for someone else to do the work for them. Or scarily enough, some are willing to put everything they believe in to the test and sacrifice the only thing that is sure in this world, LIFE. They blow up themselves and a building and hundred of innocent people because their religion isn't getting the respect they think it deserves. But they're stuck in the middle ages.

And I'm geting more positive political theory from a science fiction book than I could ever suck out of the headlines. Because they're all a sham. So supposing that anyone wanted to know any of this, and if so then maybe they ask, "Why Josh? Why would you write at all then? What's the point?" And I'd be speechless. Which, maybe, wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

"The Whales do not sing because they have an answer. They sing because they have a song."

Ashes and Snow