I want to be dispassionate about this … nothing personal. In the larger scheme, people like me do not have impact. One only need glance at how much coverage, how many hits, a figure like, say, Madonna receives to understand how the mass media controls the public mind. I wrote recently about Eva Peron and her daughter, Madonna Ciccone, and my visits on this blog soared from less than 500 on a good day to over 6,000. Then they plummeted again.
Why did that happen? Word of mouth probably. Eva Peron (Madonna Ciccone nee Fortin, “Evita”) is so far removed that hardly anyone knows, much less cares, of her. Madonna, on the other hand, her daughter, is still cranking along. Eva was once First Lady of Argentina in the early 50s, and during the recent final of the FIFA world cup between Argentina and England, who should be featured during intermission but the 68-year-old pop star, Madonna Ciccone! . Whaaaaat? Was Che Guevara not available?
This is not about that. This is about censorship, and not about me personally getting roughed up by it. It is about the extent to which it goes on, and how utterly effective it is. I’ll go back to 2020 and the Scamdemic, and Facebook and Youtube and Nextdoor, three outlets that get heavy traffic, the last, less so but still managed from high above with eyes on all activity. Each outlet made it clear that there would be allowed no criticism of the World Health Organization (WHO) or of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Nextdoor even announced on a banner headline that any comments critical of either agency would be immediately removed.
Let me say at the beginning here that I do not care that Facebook cancelled me. It is as if I was going with a girl and tired of her, but before I could dump her, she dumped me! I put myself in that position, however. Let me explain.
Have you ever seen one of these dramatic courtroom presentations where, upon leaving the courthouse, the lawyers and defendants are swarmed by journalists and cameras? I can’t be sure, but I do not think that happens in real life. Journalists are kept not on leashes, but rather choke chains. As Ben Bagdakian (1920-2016) made clear in his book , The Media Monopoly (1983), young journalists are trained to rein in their curiosity, to not get emotionally involved, to get a quote from both sides and move on. TV drama would have them off the leash looking for stories, challenging powerful people, and in general, being a pain in the ass to the comfortable … doing their job. Ain’t so. Ain’t done. I know this from my own life experiences … journalists do not know how to do the one thing that one would think was their calling … to search for truth.
Piece of Mindful 