News Is Too Important To Just Laugh At
by Danny Schechter

Could it be that humor about the news — the satire we see on Stewart and Colbert and in all the news parody videos — are actually legitimating the very news system that they claim to be challenging?

Of course we like to laugh at people in power — younger people who respond more to attitude than analysis do especially — but, in a curious way, laughing about the news often leads to a feeling of being superior to it, the mistaken belief of being uninfluenced by it, and also usually unwilling to do anything about it.

 

 

Making fun of those in power is an honorable sport, but it is often more recreational than political. What’s worse is that politicians tend to co-opt the humor and then take part in it in a self-deprecating way that is also self-promotional. That’s why President Bush was more than happy to make fun of himself at one of those atrocious Washington White House correspondent dinners. It takes the edge off his critics and reinforces the idea that he is just one of us, an ordinary guy, coping with the immense responsibilities of his office.

Recall that when Stephen Colbert actually used an appearance at one of these dinners to say something serious about the disgusting symbiotic relationship between the media and the mandarins of policy he was ignored by most in the room and booed, even if the video of his appearance was a big hit on You Tube. (That was before Viacom sued demanding it be taken down in the name of property rights!)

Just this past week, there was another one of these “family affairs” in Washington that brings the mafia of news and the mafia of politics together. It was the annual Radio and TV correspondents’ dinner. This is the same affair that Dick Cheney dropped in to back in 2003, to thank the news media for its shameful cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq. He was applauded for his deference, which was really a recognition that playing the press game is critical to managing public perceptions. The Bush Administration was proud at how skillful it was in turning the fourth estate into the fourth front of the war.

This year, this charade was even more obscene as John Eggerton described in a report on Broadcasting & Cable, an industry trade. The story of this party of the like-minded boggles the mind at a time when the war is being debated and scandals seep out of the sewage of Beltway politics. Now we have politicians trying to one-up the comics.

“White House adviser Karl Rove boogied, backed by NBC’s David Gregory, Brian Wiliams burped the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and the President cracked wise, all to the general delight, and occasional gales of laughter, of journalists gathered for the Radio & Television Correspondents Association dinner in Washington.

Rove was a better sport than a dancer, tapped by the surprise entertainment–Whose Line is It Anyway’s Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood–for an improv rap number featuring ‘MC Rove,’ with Gregory as one of his backup dancers, and based on information supplied by Rove that, among other things, he collected stamps and liked to ‘tear the tops’ off of small animals.

Rove got into the spirit of the bit, though when President Bush was asked to supply a rap nickname for Rove, his response was ‘Your Fired!’ Sherwood then suggested Rove had offered his resume to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of a host of legislators in attendance at the annual dinner at the Washington Hilton.”

Isn’t this just more of what the late critic Neil Postman called “Amusing Ourselves To Death.” His still relevant book is about “Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.”

My desire to raise questions and speak out about the tendency to substitute satire for substance comes as a response to the new JIB JAB video about a news biz that is now integrated into show biz.

It is very clever… as you will see in a second.

There’s a disturbing note from its creators that came with it. I hope you will see the problem I am having:

“My brother and I just had the incredible honor of premiering our latest video in front of President Bush as well as thousands of journalists and politicians at the Radio-Television Correspondents Dinner in Washington, DC….

Rather than making fun of the President (which, to be honest, is like beating a dead horse) we decided to turn the tables and make fun of the press. We hope you enjoy our latest effort!

Adios Amigos, The Brothers Spiridellis”

So here they are, on the one hand, dismissing Bush as a “dead horse” while at the same time reveling in his presence. Oh, how seductive is the proximity to power.

Yes, these jibjabbers are good at making fun—but don’t we need to go a little further and a little deeper? While we are laughing, and having our own attitudes reinforced or massaged, and while our funny bones are tickled into a good “hehe” or “haha,” we’re not doing much more than shaking our heads before sending the video around to friends and family to show how cool we are.

I am not anti-fun, funny or humor. I include articles from The Onion in my MediaChannel.org blog along with other humorous putdowns of the really deplorable situation we are in. Their latest takes a much-needed wack at all the stupid commentators on cable TV

By all means, lets all have a good laugh—it’s better than crying. But also let’s get involved in a campaign to challenge the absurdity that passes for news and is doing such a disservice to us and our country.

Aren’t you angry about the degradation of the news and those family type dinners in which journalists amuse and salute politicians they should be trying to put in jail? I used to think journalists are supposed to have an adversarial relation with powerful pols, not become their friends.

Let’s call for an end to the travesty of journalists in black tie sucking up to criminals posing as politicians. Collusion and complicity is obscene in an industry that is constitutionally protected as our watchdog.

And also, let’s try to get more substance on the airwaves so that the 69% of young America that can’t find Iraq on a map can learn something, as opposed to laughing themselves into unconsciousness.

– “News Dissector” Danny Schechter is blogger in chief of MediaChannel.org. His latest film is “IN DEBT WE TRUST.” Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org 

 

 

source:

http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress

/2007/03/30/news-is-too-important-to-just-laugh-at/