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Saturday, February 04, 2017

Highest Bidder

Watching internet shouty-face cupcake Tomi Lahren on Bill Maher's show last night provided a nutshell take on every one of these interchangeable fuck-dolls, incoherently spouting quarter-truths, flat-out lies, and scummy innuendo for FSM knows what unholy purpose.

Lahren is, one supposes, conventionally attractive, although one thing these women seem not to realize is that that quotient is devalued in direct proportion to the bullshit that spews forth from their carefully lacquered mouths. In other words, it doesn't matter how cute you are, nothing's uglier than a shameless, lying hack who knows they're full of shit and keeps going anyway.

Then again, no doubt the inverse is true the further along the left-right political spectrum that their intended audience lies. But hey, if they're comfortable knowing that Fixed Noise viewers old enough to be their great-grandfathers are out there sputtering puffs of powdered man-chowder into their shag rugs, whatever pays the rent.

It seems that Lahren has, it turns out, a comparatively liberal recent past (then again, when you're 24 years old, your entire past is pretty recent), and that too should be no surprise, and should even be instructive, a confirmation of what we already know -- that while politics is marketed as a "values-based" product, it is in fact strictly business.

As I have said any number of times, it is very much like the NFL -- a violent, passionate game played by millionaires on fields owned by billionaires, with referees of occasionally questionable judgment, and masses of spectators who, with their face paint and props and cheering, seriously think they have some sort of outcome on the game.

Of course, in that analogy, the "refs" are the media, but while Lahren is technically a media entity, she is hardly at that level. She is more along the line of the sideline cupcake that provides third-down color commentary and jabbers at the coach at halftime, when he's trying to get his team to the locker room to tune them up for the second half.

All that said, I do personally know individuals for whom people like Tomi Lahren ventriloquize their life frustrations, their ineptly expressed but deeply felt convictions that Something Is Very Wrong. This is an important dynamic, and it is only going to gain traction as the "legitimate" media get undermined and delegitimized. As with music consumption, it is very much becoming a fractal media market out there, a loose system of competing niches, catering to audience preference.

Obviously, this undercuts greatly the nominal role of the legitimate media, that of stating the facts, speaking truth to power, blah blah blah. They have by and large abdicated that role to chase eyeballs with cheap clickbait and breathless headlines, written with marginal literacy and minimal ethics.

The assumption is that the audience simply tunes in to what they want to hear, without any dissenting or inconvenient facts. They have their alternative facts, and are content with those. This is part of the problem. Another, greater part of the problem is that the audience has assumed at this point that the media have given up on them, and are content to spoon-feed them lies and half-truths, which no sane person has the time to drill down and find the empirical fact. It is an ugly symbiosis in play here.

Of the seven deadly sins, anger and lust are perhaps the two most powerful, always lurking just below the surface, ready to pounce and play, the negative energies of each commingling in Dionysian ecstasy. What better way to expiate your political passion than with a vicarious anger-bang via some glossy tit-monster hollering your favorite epithets right along with you? What one thing would make your anger with Colin Kaepernick's treasonous conduct better, than to have some cute blonde join in with you? When facts no longer have any meaning or utility, it makes sense to retreat to this more simplistic, id-based mentality.

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