Our product is outrage
Earlier this week I read a story about lawmakers feeling pressure to pass mental health bills because so many people have suffered anxiety and/or depression during the pandemic.
And whether you’re anxious about being depressed or depressed about being anxious, you might be right to feel that way because it seems like people have gotten a lot more rude and combative, a feeling which is backed up by this next news item.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, in 2018 there were 159 reports of out-of-control plane passengers, in 2019 there were 146 reports, in 2020 it was 183 and 2021 there were 4,156 mask-related incidents which is 22.7 times as many incidents as the previous year.
So if you’ve been thinking people seem batshit crazy lately, you’re on to something.
When I was looking for examples of people’s nuttiness – like insisting that Donald Trump won the presidency despite over 60 U.S. courts rejecting his fraud claims or COVID not being real despite 947,653 Americans dying from it – I had no shortage of questionable mental health examples, but did have a shortage of cartoon space.
After being banned from social media platforms after he was accused of posting messages inciting violence, Donald Trump started his own social media platform called Truth Social which claims it “encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating against political ideology” – a claim that seems somewhat questionable because they’ve already censored an account that ridiculed the app’s CEO.
If you want to read more about that incident, here’s the link:
https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-truth-social-devin-nunes-cow-joke-censored-2022-2
The app immediately had technical problems and the app’s CEO – former Congressman Devin Nunes – promised people who signed up it would be fully operational by the end of March and you might think you’d want the app fully operational before you asked people to sign up for it, so you can see why someone might want to make fun of him.
Nevertheless, lots of people tried to sign up for the app because some people think Donald Trump is the Second Coming which is only accurate if you think the First Coming was some combination of P.T. Barnum and Bernie Madoff.
Originally, the cartoon set up was going to be the same, but the punch line was: “Donald Trump’s running for the Senate?” but then I thought about Fox News and decided that was a better fit because I’m not exaggerating about being able to lie and stay employed by Fox News.
And if you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe the lawyers representing Fox News and Tucker Carlson in a slander suit back in 2020. The judge hearing the case bought the argument presented by those Fox News lawyers and wrote:
The "'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' "
"Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."
So Fox News lawyers actually argued that any reasonable viewer would be skeptical about the statements Tucker Carlson makes.
And when it comes to journalistic ethics and the lack of them at Fox News, Tucker isn’t alone. According to an Associated Press story, in 2016 Sean Hannity told the New York Times:
“I never claimed to be a journalist.”
A year later Hannity told the New York Times:
“I’m a journalist. But I’m an advocacy journalist, or an opinion journalist.”
As someone else already pointed out, Sean Hannity considers himself a journalist when it suits his purposes (like when he’s trying to get you to believe his bullshit) and an entertainer when it doesn’t (like when you call him on that bullshit).
OK, so far I’ve expressed opinions, but they’re opinions based on facts and you can look those facts up and see what you think for yourself which is why I supply links to articles that Substack analytics show very few people use, but at least you know I got my facts from some news source like the Associated Press although Donald Trump kinda screwed up that process by claiming any facts he didn’t like were “fake news” and if you choose to believe Donald there’s not much I can do about that.
Anyway…
If you want to read more about Tucker Carlson and the Fox News lawyers who argued that nobody with half a brain would believe the stuff Tucker says, here you go:
And speaking of media opinions you might not want to swallow, hook, line and sinker…
Recently, Joe Rogan got in trouble for spreading misinformation about COVID and saying the N-word on his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience and Whoopi Goldberg got suspended for two weeks for saying some dumb stuff about Jews.
And now let’s circle back to the beginning and if people are actually getting nuttier and being more confrontational, whose fault is it?
I don’t think my profession deserves all the blame, but some people in the media certainly aren’t helping.
Everybody is trying to get your attention including me and I can tell you from experience it’s really, really hard to come up with intelligent, thought-provoking statements day after day, week after week and year after year, so some of us settle for being outrageous.
I try to present my opinions with some humor, but as every comedian who ever stood on a stage can tell you, being funny is really hard and a whole bunch of people don’t know how to do it, so instead they’ll just say something controversial like “COVID isn’t real” or “Donald Trump had the election stolen from him” or “the Designated Hitter should be used in the National League.”
And then people who are willing to believe anything that fits into their pre-existing prejudices might go out and act on that misinformation, like when Donald Trump told a bunch of people their country was being stolen from them and they had to go out and fight like hell.
Or someone who was told mask mandates are the first step in becoming a Communist Nation, then being willing to fight a 98-pound stewardess who has been asked to enforce a rule she didn’t create.
A while back I read “An Atheist in the Fox Hole” which is about a Liberal who went to work for Fox News and the author – Joe Muto – talked about some of the people who pretended to be a lot more conservative than they really were to keep their jobs and I’m not sure if it’s worse to actually be an extremist or pretend to be an extremist to get ratings.
Because those pretend extremists create real extremists.
I have shared my opinions with the public for 46 years and I actually believe everything I say, but that doesn’t mean I’m right and even if you agree with me 99 percent of the time that still means you’d disagree with me at least three times a year and you ought to.
I don’t think I’m going to say it any better than George Harrison, and he said he wrote this song to target narrow-minded thinking and if you spend the next two minutes and 18 seconds listening to it, it might be the best thing you do for your mental health today.
And please don’t fight any stewardesses.