If you live long enough you’ll find there is rarely any new news. You’ve certainly read 50 stories about people getting hit by lighting, and there’s a Storm of the Century every 20 minutes or so. You’ll read a fair share of “man bites dog” stories, and I recall several reports about bankers stealing smokes from blind match girls.
Fake news isn’t a new phenomenon either, but how much of today’s news is fake is hard to say. There has always been biased reporting, of course, and it isn’t hard to spot it. If Donald Trump fired a bullet into the air and accidentally killed Angela Merkel – who happened to be standing 2,000 yards out – the Arkansas Democrat Gazette’s story will be 950 words on what a fine shot Trump is and 50 words about Germans always overreacting to American Exceptionalism. The following week a dozen letters to the editor will appear thanking Trump for exercising his Constitutional right to bear arms, and for demonstrating how a well-regulated militia operates.
The moral of the story is that there are no building codes for castles in the sky. If a person wants to believe a thing he will believe it, even if it’s about roadkill tasting just like chicken, or that Republicans care about working people.
This fills me with a soupçon of pity for journalists who strive for straight reporting when their audience prefers taradiddle and twaddle to the truth. Yet journalism has always been a paradoxical job because our culture permits turning the truth upside down: we fervently vow to fight for freedom, but only if we can pay volunteers to do the fighting… God forbid there should be a military draft. We abhor the poor for asking for money, and applaud the rich for asking for more money. And yes, we love our purple mountains’ majesty but lease them out to the highest bidder.
One bit of rusting news is that our enemy of more than 50 years, the former Soviet Union (now Russia) – the country that financed Castro and our old pal Charlie in Vietnam – is the President’s new BFF. I guess the headline is The Death of Irony.
Death of irony? Irony seems to me to be re-born in the Age of Trump. The irony of all the old commie haters voting for him.The irony of Putin invading America with a welcome party of red neckers and self-proclaimed Christians; eyes alight with prosperity promises. Greed trumps everything. No irony intended.