Our Liberal Media

While it is a problem that NBC free-agent pickup Megyn Kelly is giving completely unnecessary face time to conspiracy-peddling jagoff Alex Jones, a bigger problem is that she's probably not going away -- in fact, this clusterfuck of an "interview" will probably end up being a stepping stone to Kelly getting that sweet Baba Wawa gig she wanted in the first place. NBC paid a lot of money for her, and they won't want to admit they fucked up.

I mean, Jones is who he is, but at least WYSWIG, right? If you want a fucking crackpot who believes that Sandy Hook was a staged hoax -- why is anyone's guess, since not a goddamned thing was done about guns as a result -- and takes his shirt off to eat barbecued spare ribs, then he's your guy. Jones mines that same ugly spectrum between entertaining and appalling -- let's coin the word appallitainment -- that other talk-radio shitheads like Rush Limbaugh have held court in for decades.

In fact, Jones and Limbaugh and the rest of these dirtbags simply underscore the point I and so many others have been making for quite some time, that Emperor Snowflake is not the disease, but a symptom. The hate-talk assholes are also symptoms, albeit  much more pronounced ones, since they were there when Snowflake came on the scene, and they'll be around after he's gone.

Nope, America is the disease, and we're metastasizing like stage-four brain cancer. Now, you and I might like to look at ourselves and the people we care about as individuals of good nature and good will, and that may very well be true, as far as it goes. But in a nation of 320 million people and counting, the law of averages says that some indeterminate number of that aggregate total must be assholes. That's just science.

So it behooves us to get some sort of idea as to roughly how many assholes there are, how many are actively spreading the monkey-brain-eating prion disease that has taken over the American political body and the media that cover it. Alex Jones peddles hateful lies and conspiracy theories to addled retards, who then turn around and threaten and harass the parents of murdered first-graders because of some "hoax" that no rational mind can possibly explain.

There are conspiracies in this big, beautiful, awful world of ours, and every single one of them starts with one question:  Cui bono? Who benefits from this plot, to what end is it constructed and executed? And can it be carried out as described?

And as much time and effort as Jones and his dipshit listeners have spent mooning over this loco jabber, none of them have yet presented a plausible theory of execution or rationale. This is where the 9/11 truthers fell short as well -- it's not that the gubmint is above doing something awful, but the logistics of it being carried off without a loose thread talking are roughly zero.

And in the case of Sandy Hook, even the "gubmint doing something awful" part doesn't make any sense. There are tens of thousands of violent gun deaths in this country every fucking year. Most of them could easily be leaned on in graphic, heart-tugging detail to push gun-control proposals. The idea that anyone would sit around and go, "You know what would really work with getting some gun control passed? Let's fake the slaughter of a classroom of first-graders? Can't fail!" Right.

Seriously, how fucking dumb does someone have to be to buy into something like that?

I like a good conspiracy theory or alternative history as the next person, but it has to make sense, and there has to be some sort of corroborating evidence. Here's a more harmless example:  Cleveland Cavaliers player Kyrie Irving supposedly believes with some level of sincerity that the earth is flat. I have a feeling that Irving is probably just screwing with people, but let's say he's serious. One would reasonably assume in that event that Irving has thought out some sort of scenario or (from the fiction-writing arena) "world rules" that comprise a somewhat coherent thesis?

For example, does "flat earth" mean that the planet is a disc? Okay then, what is at the center of the disc? What is on the bottom face of the disc? Is the Northern Hemisphere on the top face, and the Southern Hemisphere on the bottom? (But wait, it's no longer a "sphere," is it?) And so on. Tectonic geology, climatology, orbital physics -- there are countless empirically proven facts such a "theory" would butt up against.

Anyway. It's not a problem that Alex Jones and his toxic crap is getting exposure -- in fact, it might be a good thing that folks who somehow have still not been aware of this weirdo get a load of what he's been selling. The problem is that because Megyn Kelly is not actually a journalist but a media personality, her instinct is to sell Jones and "humanize" him, in the name of "both sides" or something. She could have simply researched the things Jones is on record as having said, and perhaps asked him directly about some of the more contentious pieces, of which there are many.

It sucks that "we" are all in this together in some respect. The idea that someone who listens to Infowars and harasses Sandy Hook parents also votes, breeds, drives a car, and maybe owns a gun is disgusting and horrifying. That is the sort of person who is ruining this country and the world, and it's a goddamned shame they don't have the guts to do the right thing and end themselves, to prevent further polluting the gene pool.

In the meantime, the very least we can do is boycott Megyn Kelly, and maybe make NBC think twice about giving any sort of platform to a hateful liar. (And no, this time I don't mean Newt Gingrich.)