Tom Wolfe on the Media and its "Narrative"

One thing that Jon Stewart at the Daily show has been very successful at is skewering the news media for its adherence to a fixed narrative for covering current events.It is nothing new really, as Tom Wolfe wrote in The Right Stuff about the press coverage of the Mercury Seven in the late 50's early 60's:

"It was as if the press in America, for all its vaunted independence, were a great colonial animal, an animal made up of countless clustered organisms responding to a central nervous system. In the late 1950's (as in the late 1970's) the animal seemed determined that in all matters of national importance the proper emotion, the seemly sentiment, the fitting moral tone, should be established and should prevail; and all information that muddied the tone and weakened the feeling should simply be thrown down the memory hole. In a later period this impulse of the animal would take the form of blazing indignation about corruption, abuses of power, and even minor ethical lapses, among public officials; here, in April of 1959, it took the form of a blazing patriotic passion for the seven test pilots who had volunteered to go into space. In either case, the animal's fundamental concern remained the same: the public, the populace, the citizenry, must be provided with the correct feelings! One might regard this animal as the consummate hypocritical Victorian gent. Sentiments that one scarcely gives a second thought to in one's private life are nevertheless insisted upon in all public utterances. (And this grave gent lives on in excellent health.)"

The problem today is that cable news in particular has been taken over by ideological hacks bent on take the narrative concept to an extreme not seen since the 19th century partisan newspapers and never so widely disseminated.

However, there are ordinary rational citizens trying to push back in a true grass-roots fashion. It first began on, of all places, the Daily Show message boards and now has its own site, check it out.

Satire freaks out writers of the narrative

I wasn't going to say much more on the Colbert/Stewart rallies until after they went down, but the screaming from the whining political/media types is cranking up and deserves some response. There seems to be two flavors, hand-wringing from professional liberals and hyperbolic put-downs from the right, with a dash of "how dare they" from the so-called journalists who give the duo most of their material.
Methinks we have a bunch of people feeling threatened by a live outdoor showing of satire programs.

Here's a rundown of the insanity-
"Is Jon Stewart a communist tyrant? All things considered, we'd have to say no, although Kyle-Anne Shiver of Pajamas Media hears echoes of Soviet repression in the Comedy Central host's plan to hold a "Restoring Sanity" rally in Washington next week." James Taranto, The Politics of Sanity Soviet-style pseudoscience and the American left. Wall Street Journal.


"...I have argued that his type of humor undermines American politics by turning everything into a joke and a source of mockery. My argument is not that we need to respect or idealize our political officials; rather, I believe that by constantly laughing at public figures, we feed a libertarian consensus." Bob Samuels, Why Jon Stewart is Bad for America, Huffington Post

"But for this particular event at this specific point in time, playing it close to the vest can hurt. In fact, to some degree, I think it already has....While there’s often spontanaeity (sic) in the summer, the public tends tend to be more thoughtful when it comes to making fall and winter choices." Frankie Stone, How Stewart/Colbert are Dooming their own Rally, The Wrap Note: spontaneity is misspelled in the original!

"Stewart is something of a coward in that he has never gone deeper with his material. He is a victim, as well as perpetrator, of the smug decadence of the liberal West, which valorizes choice and irony above all else, even trutth" Mark Judge, The Paralysis of Jon Stewart's Liberalism, the Daily Caller


"Please, Jon. There's still time. Cancel the rally. Call in sick. Say you couldn't get a sitter. Even better, say it was all an Andy Kaufman-esque spoof, a multilayered joke-inside-a-joke not only on the politicians and blowhards who hold rallies but on your own audience, which should have known better..." Carlos Lozada, The case against Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity, by a 'Daily Show' fan. Washington Post

"The more I hear Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert talking about their rally scheduled for Saturday on Washington's National Mall, the more I wonder if there is anything that is not a laughing matter in our national life any more." Laughing on the way to the Voting Booth. Stewart/Colbert rally has people approaching Election Day with postmodern mockery David Zurawik, Baltimore Sun


"On Reliable Sources yesterday Time television critic (and friend of Mediaite Office Hours) James Poniewozik said that the risk Stewart is running with this rally is that it may make him appear as though “he’s taking himself too seriously or becoming some sort of messiah figure or a partisan telling people, you know, go forth, my mighty people, and vote XYZ and pursue such and such policies.” Time Critic On Jon Stewart Rally: He’s Risking Being Seen As A ‘Messiah Figure’

Not any Colbert bashing? Maybe they should all attend The March to Keep Fear Alive part then.

What are the Colbert/Stewart Rallies?

Bloggers, pundits and others are trying to get their heads around the (newly re-named) Rally to Restore Sanity and or Fear. Is it straight comedy? A useless gathering of apathy and cynicism? A desperate leftwing plot to .....well I don't know. People are even more clueless about the impact, if any, on anything.

From following the development of these events I can safely say no one knows, as it is an entirely organic happening. It is a true wildcard, maybe even -going out on a limb here- possibly a black swan event.Or it could be nothing at all, though the fact that there will be satellite rallies even at the Everest Base Camp makes me think that isn't the case.

It fits no ones narrative, which is what makes it great.  The current political dynamic in America is still defined by the late 60's and the reaction to it.  Political institutions and the media have artificially kept this dynamic going well past it shelf-life.  Dynamic is actually no longer appropriate, since it is a static, inflexible paradigm and our perceived political/cultural  paralysis is the result of trying to shoe-horn everything into it. Everything event needs to fit a narrative, which the fearful (of all persuasions) need so they believe that they can control the future.

Along comes this thing which resists the shoehorn, angering those who need the narrative to simplify a complex time of change. In the end, no one (even Stewart and Colbert) knows  what it all means. I have no idea and neither does anyone else, especially the writers of the narrative. Hence the anger. In some ways it is the ultimate GenX (which Colbert and Stewart truly belong to) ironic, disrespectful and subversive finger to the boomers' self-centeredness and self importance.

The greatest thing about it is the uncertainty, the reminder that the future is not yet written. Maybe that will be the only result, a reminder that no one can predetermine events and our narratives are really so much BS.

Cages are rattled!

Moderates start to speak (politely!) and the extremists imeediately respond psychotically."Does not compute, must be either hard left or hard right. No other ideas can exist."

First though, this is the best and most accurate take yet.

The righties of course miss the idea, lost in their own persecution complexes.

Then we hear from the idiots on the left
 
 Amazing isn't it? A call for civility and reason is attacked by screaming and simplistic rants that completely prove the need for such a call. It is entirely obvious that many of them didn't even read the statement or watch Stewart's announcement. Or how they perfectly fit into Colbert's parody.

We're like Poland in '39, attacked by deranged ideologues from the left and right.

Sanity and Fear -more news

Well now we have democratic party folks and the professional liberal commentariate upset at the Stewart/Colber event. Why? Well:
From Poltico, "the planned event has also produced a bit of hand-wringing among Democrats. For one thing, Stewart hasn't mentioned that labor groups and other institutional Democratic organizations are already planning a big Washington rally to counter Beck: The One America rally on October 2, which has been struggling to get the kind of attention Beck does. And the Stewart rally is also, for Democratic field operatives, at an inconvenient time: Its participants are "not doing GOTV on GOTV weekend" said Matt Ortega, a former DNC staffer, referring to a weekend typically spent knocking on doors and making calls in one's home district, not Washington."
 And from Slate. "Democrats look at the electoral map and see that they're doomed. Their hope rests on the resilience of liberal activists and union members, who will be spending the final 72 hours of the campaign pulling voters to the polls. And all of a sudden here come Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, turning a joke into a mega-rally and plucking liberals right out of their get-out-the-vote operations during their most crucial weekend."

OK numbnuts, Stewart and Colbert and their fans, may lean left, support Obama and hated the Bush years BUT they do not work for you. I know the right thinks they do and I guess this proves you're not that different. If you're in electoral trouble its your own hand wringing fault. You along with the right deserve to be mocked.

I know now why I registered Independent in '84 and never looked back. The people obsessed with the simplistic liberal/conservative world view on EVERYTHING are nothing but arguing loudmouths who really aren't any good at actually solving problems.

Restoring Sanity and Marching for Fear

Unless you live under a rock, you heard that Jon Stewart is hosting a Restoring Sanity , to countered by Colbert's  March to Keep Fear Alive, which warns, "...there are dark, optimistic forces trying to take away our Fear."

Now, the purpose of the Sanity March is pretty clear both from the mouth of Stewart and the website, "We're looking for the people who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat; who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard; and who believe that the only time it's appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles."
"We live in troubled times, with real people, facing real problems, problems that have real, if imperfect, solutions, that I believe 70 to 80% of our population could agree to try, and could ultimately live with. Unfortunately, the conversation and process is controlled by the other 15 to 20%." So true...

Unfortunately, if you look at sites like HuffPo and ThinkProgress, there are many who think this IS going to be some sort of Micheal Moore rant-a-thon, filled with all manner of shouting and angry signs carried by professional activists. Apparently they have reading comprehension problems as bad as the teabaggers. If they hijack and wreck this I will consider them the same as the TP.

A Politico piece last week did a good job of breaking down the differences between TDS/Colbert audience and Becks:

"The largest segment of Glenn Beck’s audience is over 65, while the largest segment that watches the Daily Show and the Colbert Report is under 30"

"But Daily Show and Colbert Report fans are on average less far left than, say, regular watchers of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow."

While we're at it, one thing that TDS does extremely well is skewer the media for not researching their stories. And now we a poorly researched story about the rallies in the NYT. Nowhere is it mentioned how ths all came about, with a single comment on Reddit and Colbert's fans setting up websites and Facebook pages.

I have no idea how this will turn out, but already it proves two points from the shows, the media sucks at doing their job and loud minority extremists try to hijack any thing remotely connected to politics in this country.