Gabe the Stupendous Beaver here, to enlighten and snub you. Be glad, I usually save that particular combination for Mother’s Day.
The question of the week is: Gabe, if you bash the media so much, why are you printed in the media?
Simple, kids, just because I poke fun of some media, doesn’t mean I hate each individual medium. I like newspapers if only because:
This is a whole paragraph.
Media is important to any free society (this message brought to you by Geico). But the problem is that media have to be self-sufficient, or else they’ll be as biased as purple dinosaurs in public television (don’t trust Barney, he’s a godless Commie. This message brought to you by ASNMSU). So media take advertising to inform. But since nobody likes information or advertising, the media also add entertainment (if you mention how I’m considered entertainment, I’ll smack you. This is an opinion piece, I’m allowed to do that).
But even the quality of that suffers. I’ll explain:
Have you ever been around a whole bunch of friends and you find yourself laughing at the stupidest things? The reason for that is that, since you can’t discuss deep and insightful topics (project: have a heart-to-heart with more than three people simultaneously), you end up playing to the lowest common denominator.
A general rule of thumb is that the larger the aggregation, the more basic the motivation need be. For instance, the speech needed to inspire your friend to light his underwear on fire must be a thousand times better than the speech needed to get 1000 people to light his underwear on fire for him.
Compare the dialogue between a personal interview with a political candidate:
“I believe that, though the economy is suffering a minor slump, my competitor’s plan will actually be worse for it will tie up transactions at an unparalleled level, leading to a result that is worse for the nation as a whole.”
and the same candidate on a stump speech:
“They want to enslave our free market!!”
Therein lay the problem for the mass media: how to communicate to a bunch of people no smarter than the same amount of grapes? We’re not talking about you, we’re discussing this on the hypothetical level.
Hypothetical means ‘imaginary.’
‘Imaginary’ means ‘not really real.’
So we’re forced to throw in silly things like comics, crosswords, movie times, and even horoscopes (by the way, watch out for Scorpios with birthdays coming up).
It’s that tension then, between what we want to write (Letters to Penthouse), what we have to write (this), what you want to read (Dr. Seuss), and what you have to read (Assistant Professor Seuss) that I make fun of. Of course, since that’d be too complicated to say, I just condense it all to “the media.” It’s a very ‘in’ thing to poke fun at. I know. The media told me so.
Mass Love,
Gabe D. Beaver
“Remember Kids: I love you, but only in a platonic, uncomfortable, but not yet illegal way.”