Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Missing the Plot

I was reading today's LRC, and I caught this fantastic quip by the always wise Bill Bonner:
"Watching the news is a bit like watching a bad opera. You can tell from all the shrieking that something very important is supposed to be happening; but you don't quite know what it is. What you're missing is the plot."

If there is a better description of mainstream news nowadays, I've yet to hear it. Of course, the "plot" that does emerge from all the shrieks of deliberate (or sometimes not) disinformation is the Official Truth, a shoddy work of fiction that is nonetheless taken at face value by the masses simply because they cannot conceive being lied to on such a grand scale. But just because one cannot grasp something, that something is no less real.

(Off-topic here, I was thinking of posting an apology for the relative paucity of posts lately, and the absence of Balkan Express, but then I realized I'd already said, right in the beginning, that I'll post as often - or as little - as I felt necessary. So I'll just chalk it all up to August heat exhaustion and move along.)

No comments: