When I was a kid, long ago and far away, my Uncle John bought me a “magic trick” set. Among its many wonders were a magic coin, and a deck of cards which you could magically turn from a normal 52 different card deck into 52 identical fives-of-diamonds. No matter how you flipped the coin, I could make it come up “heads” 100% of the time, or if I chose to, “tails” 100% of the time.
There were other tricks in the kit. I quickly learned that in order to make everything come out his way, the magician not only needed to learn how to manipulate the items with unerring slickness, but how to manipulate his audience with the same slickness.
I wasn’t much gifted in the way of slickness; my tricks inspired few oohs and ahs but plenty of giggles. I did learn something useful though. It was always far easier to manipulate folks’ perceptions if they wanted to believe. They wanted to believe this kid could turn a normal deck of cards into something else right before their eyes; pull cards out of thin air; and that by sheer will, he could make a two-sided coin turn up “heads” every time.
Though very, very few of us kid magicians ever grow into David Copperfields or Penn and Tellers, the awareness of how easy it is to manipulate an audience tends to make us skeptics of the highest order.
Particularly disturbing is how reporting and analysis of today’s news events is every bit as manipulative of the news audience as my ol’ reliable one-sided coin trick. News, no matter its source and venue, can no longer even pretend to be unbiased. Every report, analysis and editorial is designed to raise the well-measured passions of the core audience of any one particular news venue. They decide what to feed their audience according to the day’s rules of political correctness. Anyone thinking outside their narrow PC rules is headed for ostracism or worse. There will be only one side of a coin tolerated. The PC side. No other thoughts allowed if they might cross into politically incorrect territory.
Even as the basic who, what, where, when of news events are reported, the viewer/listener has been manipulated into seeing the event as the media wishes you to see it. You are fed only agenda-driven news and analysis. Whether you believe it’s done by design or by ignorance is irrelevant. It is done. And, once again, the news audience has been had.
Here is the bare-bones essence of a recent event:
A young man sitting among a congregation of church goers suddenly pulls out a hand-gun and starts shooting, killing many of them, including the preacher.
Reported in such a way, devoid of any politically or culturally loaded adjectives or phrases, it is neither heads or tails. It is just a very nasty coin. But the event is so awful, so compelling that audiences’ blood lust demands more. If news outlets fail to satisfy their lust, people will begin filling in completely imagined details on their own. Or to use highly technical language, they will pull kaka out of their own arses. Knowing this, news outlets begin adding images, innuendo, interviews and analysis which sculpt the image on its one-sided coin. Or to use a highly technical news term, they pull kaka out of their own arses. But since they are The (bow your head) Media, fronted by self-proclaimed high priests and priestesses whose pontifications thou shalt not challenge, their kaka is accepted by all non-magicians.
News people aren’t magicians but neither are they stupid. Like magicians and carny barkers, they know that most of you want to believe. Itching to throw down your entry fees to once again be had. News editors, reporters and analysts seem to be driven by an insatiable need to out-PC their competitors. In order to prove they are in the very dizzying heights of our cultural atmosphere, they season their interpretation of events with innuendo, images, statistics and outright nonsense supporting their view. And because it is usually done before any actual facts are in, nonsense it is.
If this is so, one concludes that much of what is presented by the news media as “fact” is little more than fabrication. Not completely truthful. Bordering on lies. Kaka. Or at the very least misleading. Perhaps so. But most news events, if reported honestly and fully, would at least show the coin has two sides. In the eyes of a large audience either or both sides of any coin may be valid. Now it will be your own bias if they show you both sides but you still refuse to see anything but one.
Most of us have our favorite news outlets. This could be a function of the personality of the presenter, or presentation style, or simply our own personal political bent, or maybe we can only get one tv or radio station in clearly, or perhaps it’s just plain old habit. Whatever the reason, it is still possible... no... it is imperative... to see both sides of the coin. But the more politically correct the audience, the more it will choose not to see.
We have created a culture not only of biased news media but of viciously biased news audiences! An intelligent news consumer ought to be able to hear either the heads or tails version of a news event, and by careful, open-minded analysis of that side, easily deduce the other. Fair judgement doesn’t demand you believe one – or either – side, but it does demand your awareness.
And so, disregarding all sense of balance, each news event is presented, politically correct, embellished, seasoned with all the day’s cliches, cooked to satisfy the appetites of its audience demographics:
A young white terrorist sits among a congregation of black Bible students at an historic black church. The young man, a known supporter of apartheid, with a history of arrests and drug use, suddenly pulls out a .45 caliber hand-gun, which his father gave him for his birthday, and starts shooting those poor innocent black leaders around him, killing most of them, including a well-known rising star preacher.
My notion is the only unseasoned, unembellished, genuine universal human reaction to such an event is to choke back your gasp, shake your head in silent sad disbelief, or furrow your brow and mutter Oh my God while feeling your eyes getting wet. Oh, I’m not telling you how you should feel... people will feel the way they will feel. But PC often has them muttering brainless cliches because they think it’s expected. Few people have the gift of capturing the moment in extemporaneous comment. I certainly don’t. It’s what people mean when they say “I am lost for words.” Everything beyond that is banal kaka.
News reporters cluster around anyone connected, in even the most remote way, to the incident; poking their licorice ice cream cone mikes in their faces, trying to interview police and sheriffs and friends and relatives of the victims and perpetrator as if anything they say will cast light or meaning onto yet-to-be investigated murders. In this case there is no doubt. Dylann Roof essentially confessed to the cold calculated slaying. Yet we are still fed the “senseless murder” baloney, as if murder sometimes makes good sense. Murder is inherently evil. It is anti-life. It is a vote in favor of violent death over life.
But the other side of this evil coin is young Dylann’s thinking. Upon first glance, perp-walked in cuffs and flack jacket, he looks like another stupid kid. A loser. What could make him capable of such a heinous act? Is there anything which might mitigate this monstrous deed? Is it only pure evil? Was he possessed? No. He is a cold, calculated murderer. But one quick read through his “manifesto” reveals the other side of this coin; a tortured young man; one who has thought things through and come to a conclusion which in its stark assessments of today’s world and America’s failing culture reveals a surprising intelligence, if such a thing may be said of a cold-blooded killer. Awkward. Racist as his conclusions might be, they bring some perspective to his behavior. He is a smart loser.
Mitigating circumstances? There can be none. But newspeoples’ innuendo... now that’s kaka of a different color. Listen carefully to the innuendo in how the media framed the crime. As if it would have been less horrible or more understandable had it not been perpetrated in “an historic church.” Or less horrible if the victims were not all black. Or less horrible if he were not white. Or not young. Or not sitting among the congregation like a snake waiting to strike. How did the news media know the victims were “innocent” people? They took no time to check before making their “expert” pronouncements. What if Roof had used a blow-gun or bow-and-arrows, or samurai sword, or a bomb? Is there, in the minds of news people, a more politically correct way to murder?
This is what news-speak innuendo is designed to do. To lead you down the garden path to a lynching. Not every crime that happens is leaden with far-reaching implication. Cries of “gun control!” Plenty here. But few seem to add the same politically correct innuendo when gangs of same-skin young men, perhaps with unpublished manifestos, mow each other down outside “historic black churches,” with guns and knives not “given to them by their fathers,” et cetera, ad nauseam.
The sad thing is if this young racist really planned on sacrificing himself to his beliefs by murdering those he saw as the destroyers of his culture, he could hardly have chosen a more innocent, sympathetic group. In that there is genuine outrage. Had he the moral courage, like Charles Bronson’s character in the “Death Wish” series, to chose his targets (as he wrote he wished he could have) from among the gangs in his city, perhaps losing his own life in the process, the story would be very different. It would have challenged the arbiters of the politically correct tyrants. It would have been a coin with two well-defined sides which they couldn’t disregard.
In no way will it mitigate his crimes, nor make them any less evil, but if Roof ever gets the opportunity to express his thoughts in an open court or forum, an open-minded public may find some truths in his tortured fears. The other side of the coin. Yes, young Dylann is smart alright... but not smart enough to see through cowardly outside racist influences... not quite smart enough to conclude that cold-blooded murder as a cure is far, far worse than what, according to him, is the problem.
