blackbird grille

This week, I opened the newspaper and was ambushed by a local story about a man killing a dog.  Last week, there was video in the on-line edition of the local newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, about a young woman beaten in her face and body by her father who happened to be a family court judge while her mother screamed at her.

I will not read the local newspaper again.

I will not watch the local television news again.

Twenty-six years ago, I was working at a television and a radio station as a news reporter and producer.  My inability to read or watch the local news today is not so much about me but about what has happened to my relationship with journalism.  Journalism has often been exploitive and debasing but stories that describe and depict beating women and killing dogs with video and graphic detail is a new low. 

News should be offering information about this critical time in our history.  My students don’t know who the Republican candidates for president are or that the voters Mississippi are contemplating granting personhood status on a fertilized ovum but they do know who is on the television program, Dancing With the Stars.  In all fairness, I recently had brunch with 50- year-old classmates and that were equally ill-informed.  Americans are not a particularly well-informed citizenry.  That observation confirms that it isn’t age but the media that is culpable for our national ignorance.

The beating of the dog and the woman covered by the news was not about news but about selling newspapers.  Even on-line newspapers.  Profit is driving the news.  Sexual gratification in the form of information is driving the news.  The dog’s death and the woman’s beating were exploited by a press and a readership that is excited by the agony and suffering of another living being.  It is a kind of snuff film that sexually excites the observer and I don’t want to be counted amongst those turned on by the show.

The purpose of news, according to journalist Walter Lippman is to “offer a portrait of reality upon which the citizen can act.”  I can’t save the helpless dog.  Law enforcement will not charge the judge who savagely beat his helpless daughter with a belt.  What can I do but feel helpless and spent by this so-called information?  I can give money to the SPCA and to the judge’s opponent in his re-election campaign.  I can also stop watching news that depends on revulsion and grooming viewers for more exploitation and abuse.

A few days after Steve Jobs’ corpse is interned, youngsters have begun to apply the term “fascist” to describe Jobs’ tight control of his company and products.

They believe that they are being clever and are countering popular media’s description of Jobs as a “visionary.”  

Media has their meme and they have worn out that word.

But FASCIST?

Children, please.

When you actually know what a fascist is, then you can use the term.  But it doesn’t apply here.  

Did one of you ever actually hear of Jobs controlling and exterminating people based on their race or ethnicity?  No.  Did he topple governments, invade countries, impose his politics on anyone?  No.  Please don’t say he didn’t support free speech.  That is about government action and the First Amendment.  He wasn’t a government.  He was an extraordinary inventor, not a politician and you are merely showing your own limited intelligence.  There are plenty real fascists that deserve your disgust.  And Jobs isn’t one of them.

He had well known personal problems.  Those are personal. And he didn’t owe you an explanation.  He no doubt made his peace.  Must your Gods be so pure?  When you find that perfect God, let me know.

But fascist?  You have no idea what that word means.

If you don’t like his company or his product that doesn’t make him a fascist.

Save the term for use where it actually applies.  And get over yourself.