12/4/08 f.g. (B2)
Pseudo-Journalism
From book: King Max of America
Page: 31
Excerpt from Chapter 2 – THE CAMPAIGN

Until now, the mainstream media, often referred to as the corporate media,
had ignored Max. “Why wouldn’t they?” Jo said to Max. “People like you and
me are burning dust in their eyes. We are biting ticks in their hair. We are
cockroaches on their empty dinner plates.”

Completely profit driven, the corporate media by now was a slick
and highly effective mass communication tool catering entirely to the
conglomerates that owned the media and the corporations that supported
the media through advertising. At will, the corporate media’s content was
slanted and tinted to further the agenda of the Big Boys. True journalism
once was considered a non-reproachable business of hunting for the truth.
But the corporate journalism of today had turned into something completely
different: pseudo-journalism.

“Pseudo-journalism” Jo said, “is like food with little or no nutritional
value—intellectual junk food, basically. What looks odd, however, is that
the same pseudo-journalists still claim straight-faced that they are the
defenders of our democracy, our values, and even our morals.

“They don’t defend those things! They spit on them. They abuse our
democracy. They have shredded our Constitution to pieces. And things
like morals and values and justice and freedom, which, I’m sure you have
noticed, they always carry at the tips of their tongues. In fact, they use
these values to cover up their sleazy plots and projects for self-profiteering.
And look what else they are doing. The corporate media now behaves also
as the Big Boys’ guard dog. Social justice and fairness for all has long
been removed from their scope of reporting, most likely also from their
conscience.

“Little people like us, working-class Americans, have no value to them,
except as passive, consuming beasts. They don’t want to hear about our
concerns and fears for our country and our future. They think working
people have no brains, certainly no match for theirs. And to them, we are
bleak, too close to the truth. They don’t want the truth; they detest it. To
sustain their deception and to divert attention from real issues, they want
fakery, the banal stuff, you know. They need sex scandals. They gorge
on celebrity missteps. They thrive on who had what silicone implanted
where, how much and when. They need senseless TV spectacles. They
need the never-ending barrage of sporting events. They need greasers like
Sam Spiffer, phony pro-wrestlers, slick, sugar-tongued TV psychologists,
magic-curing-head-banging TV preachers. They need parades. They need
memorial holidays galore. No doubt, they have an insatiable appetite for
what you, Max, have called it ‘rutted dirt.’”

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I don’t know if I want to go as far as Jo [Altman], the farmer, who describes
the corporate media so delicately! But one thing is clear to me also: Once a
media, corporate or not, is involved with reporting on the given subject and
creating content for the same given subject, trouble automatically becomes
a partner. The worst and most obvious trouble appears right away in realizing
that the reporter / commentator has absolute no intent to get to the bottom
of any story. This only agitates the skin of the surface while the real issues
under the skin are completely ignored.

Pseudo-Journalism has nothing to do if a media is corporate or not. Corporate
media can make choices not to engage in pseudo-journalism. And so can the so
called “non-corporate” media. In the final analysis it is all about the fundamental
principles behind, the soundness thereof, and the morals involved conducting the
business of journalism, or for that matter, conducting any business.

Future ahoy,


Franz G.

12/10/08 f.g. (B1)

We The People, We The Cows!
From book: KING MAX OF AMERICA
Page: 104
Excerpt from Chapter 6 – THE INDIVIDUAL, PARTNERSHIP, AND LIBERTY


Max pointed to outside somewhere, and then he continued.

“On the way here this morning, you might have noticed the herd of
cows in the pasture. What magnificent animals. And how easy it is to
control them. You simply put a fence around them so they can’t escape.
And better yet, you electrically charge the fence, so if a cow touches the
wire, it gets shocked. And as long as you put up that fence in an area
where the cows have grass to eat, they are happy cows. And they even let
you milk them. Everyone who still believes and follows our Big Boys, in
effect, is like such a cow. As long as you stay away from their electrically
charged fence, and as long as you don’t complain about the quality of the
grass, or the lack of grass, for that matter, and produce milk and willingly
let them milk you day in and day out, you are in good shape. And you can
be a happy cow.

“We the people. We the people. The very first words in a document
that many consider to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest document,
ever conceived. Our American Constitution begins with these famous three
words. For many of us, now might be a good time to give this document
another look and understand what that document meant then when it came
into existence, and what it means today, two hundred and twenty years later.
We the people!

“We the cows! How does that sound? We the cows. The Big Boys
milking you how does that feel? The Big Boys putting you out to pastures
where the grass gets scarcer and scarcer, how does your stomach feel? Does
your stomach growl? Please understand it’s not that there isn’t plenty of rich,
juicy green grass around. Oh no. There are huge tracks of land in our country
that are some of the most fertile pastures on earth. Unfortunately, that part of
the American landscape simply is off limits to you, the cow, of course. Why?
Silly you. You don’t know? That’s where the Big Boys keep their mansions, play
golf, and build their second, third, and forth vacation homes. That’s where the
Big Boys shoot quail, and maybe you haven’t heard, occasionally, shoot each
other in the ass.”