You have to give Conor Friedersdorf some credit for writing about a contentious issue with sensitivity to both sides of said issue. But as with the self-inflicted travails of Paula Deen several months ago, one needs to look beyond the fripperies of "human rights" and "tolerance" of "both sides" of these things.
As a lifelong diehard fan of professional and college football, I absolutely get that people want to believe that the televised broadcasts of games are there to enable them to watch their favorite teams compete, and that the commentators are selected for their ability to entertain. Sure, and the nightly news is there to inform you, right?
Look. Sports and news broadcasts exist to sell you shit, period. And with sports broadcasts especially, this is even doubly or trebly true -- since unlike the news broadcast in between the endless commercials for insurance and pharmaceuticals and big ol' pick-'em-up trucks designed to make you feel better about your tiny dong, the televised game also implicitly sells tickets and swag for the teams and the league.
It's a sports broadcaster's job to keep customers coming, and clearly Fox thought his comments might drive away customers, just as the Food Network thought Paula Deen's comments might drive away customers. These were not (at least not predominantly) moral considerations driven by political correctness. These were business decisions; in fact, it is entirely plausible that if James' and Deen's respective comments were found not to be impactful to the bottom line, their employment statuses would have been unaffected.
Individuals make moral decisions, but organizations do only when it is advantageous to do so, and I think that's something opinion writers tend to forget, which puts them into the position of begging the wrong questions. This is also a symptom of financial reporting, as perfectly good writers and thinkers persist in grabbing the wrong end of the stick.
As long as the government is giving free money to the banks to turn around and soak the peons, there is no "crisis," nor even a problem, from the viewpoint of the usurers, for whom the economy and the political system run. So the reporters and observers ask their plaintive questions of what needs "fixing." It's fixed, folks, take a closer look; if you're Goldman Sachs there is no problem. The object of the "economy," such as it is, from the rentiers' perspective, is to keep as many people as possible is a state of perpetual debt. This is accomplished primarily by chronically depressed wages, due to outsourcing and siphoning all profits from worker productivity gains at the top levels.
With non-stop news cycles and practically infinite modes of commentary, it is still a bit weird, if not terribly surprising, that so few "mainstream" media folks are inclined to simply see things for precisely what they are. The continuing, increasing rates of wealth inequity and hyperconcentration of wealth, and the domination of rackets in captive markets (especially health care and higher education), constitute the greatest threat to the well-being of American society.
All the more reason that no politician from "either" party will ever do a goddamned thing about any of it. They are being paid to let it ride. Those are the questions that need to be asked, at least as often as whatever tedious celebrity-sniffing bullshit gets offered as "news," or even "entertainment."
As a lifelong diehard fan of professional and college football, I absolutely get that people want to believe that the televised broadcasts of games are there to enable them to watch their favorite teams compete, and that the commentators are selected for their ability to entertain. Sure, and the nightly news is there to inform you, right?
Look. Sports and news broadcasts exist to sell you shit, period. And with sports broadcasts especially, this is even doubly or trebly true -- since unlike the news broadcast in between the endless commercials for insurance and pharmaceuticals and big ol' pick-'em-up trucks designed to make you feel better about your tiny dong, the televised game also implicitly sells tickets and swag for the teams and the league.
It's a sports broadcaster's job to keep customers coming, and clearly Fox thought his comments might drive away customers, just as the Food Network thought Paula Deen's comments might drive away customers. These were not (at least not predominantly) moral considerations driven by political correctness. These were business decisions; in fact, it is entirely plausible that if James' and Deen's respective comments were found not to be impactful to the bottom line, their employment statuses would have been unaffected.
Individuals make moral decisions, but organizations do only when it is advantageous to do so, and I think that's something opinion writers tend to forget, which puts them into the position of begging the wrong questions. This is also a symptom of financial reporting, as perfectly good writers and thinkers persist in grabbing the wrong end of the stick.
As long as the government is giving free money to the banks to turn around and soak the peons, there is no "crisis," nor even a problem, from the viewpoint of the usurers, for whom the economy and the political system run. So the reporters and observers ask their plaintive questions of what needs "fixing." It's fixed, folks, take a closer look; if you're Goldman Sachs there is no problem. The object of the "economy," such as it is, from the rentiers' perspective, is to keep as many people as possible is a state of perpetual debt. This is accomplished primarily by chronically depressed wages, due to outsourcing and siphoning all profits from worker productivity gains at the top levels.
With non-stop news cycles and practically infinite modes of commentary, it is still a bit weird, if not terribly surprising, that so few "mainstream" media folks are inclined to simply see things for precisely what they are. The continuing, increasing rates of wealth inequity and hyperconcentration of wealth, and the domination of rackets in captive markets (especially health care and higher education), constitute the greatest threat to the well-being of American society.
All the more reason that no politician from "either" party will ever do a goddamned thing about any of it. They are being paid to let it ride. Those are the questions that need to be asked, at least as often as whatever tedious celebrity-sniffing bullshit gets offered as "news," or even "entertainment."
2 comments:
"I honestly don't think the economic powers that be will ever allow Millennials to live as comfortably as their elders - the rich want more and more, they feel they're entitled to more, and they're simply not going to permit the political system, which they run, to reduce ever-increasing economic inequality." - Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog
That's absolutely correct, and it will not change unless and until -- and maybe not even then -- enough people get sick of it, get up on their hind legs, and take some sort of action, any action at all, even just disengaging from their rackets en masse.
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