Courtesy of The Automatic Earth.
Marjory Collins Cooperative grocery store, Greenbelt, MD May 1942
Let me start off by saying that I don’t mean any disrespect to the families and loved ones of the passengers and crew on board the missing Malaysian plane. I just wish I didn’t have the insistent impression I’m the only one who doesn’t mean disrespect. But if this story can teach us one thing it’s that we have further mastered the art of all too easily turning genuine human misery into a made for 24/7 TV void. Channel after channel treats its emptiness-hungry viewers to hour after hour of experts, graphs, maps, photographs, and they all manage to show us absolutely nothing.
CNN might as well be airing footage of the Great Lakes, it wouldn’t make one iota of difference. Dozens of camera teams talking heads and pundits are sent to interminable Kuala Lumpur press ops where nothing is said simply because there is nothing to be said, while dozens of other teams are sent to cover search and rescue missions in any part of any ocean that any expert may have mentioned as a possible site to find debris. Any debris.
When Ted Turner started CNN there was no such thing as reality TV. And it still took a remarkably long time for TV makers to clue in on the most important lesson 24-hour news had in store: that people simply love to watch absolutely nothing, as long as it’s on, and the screen flickers. That this is perhaps a little disrespectful to the potential victims and their families and friends is something that doesn’t seem to occur to neither viewers nor TV makers. The camera crews and everyone around them probably even feel by now that they’re part of the story, and that they’re helping in getting the mystery solved.
So here goes another aerial shot of the Indian Ocean, or the Pacific, or the local pond, that shows what might be a piece of the plane, or it might not, with the same grainy resolution and clarity that we’ve come to know from the snapshots taken by holiday goers who claimed that dot in the middle was the monster of Loch Ness.
Disgrace, embarrassment, shame.
I’m not the biggest Ron Paul fan on the planet, I think he’s alright but he exhibits a few too many traits of a fossil for my taste. But today America should be proud they have the man, because he’s the only one in the crowd who dares speak truth to power, and does so in the elegant, concise and eloquent manner used exclusively by those who have nothing to hide and therefore don’t need to choose their words with the utmost care. Dr. Paul needs only 1:20 min to explain what is going on in Ukraine: “I think it was wrong for us to get involved and participate in the overthrow of their government. We spent over $5 billion with our NGOs to agitate and get rid of an elected government [..] … it would be best for us to stay out.” Listen to Ron Paul, America, and remember what he says next time Obama or any other politician talks about Ukraine and Russia:
