Category: Social Media

I’m Totally Tired Of Porn!

WARNING:  Opinions expressed on this blog are so cold you can skate on them.  Reader discretion is advised.

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I’m old enough to remember when journalism was an honourable profession.  (Yeah, I’m that old.)  In those days (and this isn’t just nostalgia) reporters reported the news, good reporters sought the truth and the great ones found it.  Even as I type this, it does sound a little corny and old-fashioned.  However, anyone, who was alive before Phil Donahue and his insipid brand of Jello Journalism f-f-f-fouled things up, will know what I’m talking about.  Edward R. Murrow’s boys (and more than a few girls) set the standard, and typewriters all over the world clattered away, trying to emulate them.  Unfortunately, those days are gone, and they’re not coming back.

These days journalists deal in porn.  It comes in many forms.  It wears many disguises.  But it’s always the same – an artificially arranged scenario whose sole purpose is to stimulate the audience — and any way you slice that, it’s porn.

Disaster Porn – Touring the wreckage has become de rigueur in television reporting.  Filming stunned survivors stumbling through the rubble is gold, and if you can get a shivering puppy on camera, you’re well on your way to a Pulitzer Prize.

Grief Porn – Shoving a camera into somebody’s face and asking, “Can you describe what was going through your mind when the police first told you your daughter had been eaten by cannibals?”

Poverty Porn – Camera crews and well-fed reporters, cruising through a refugee camp like it’s a guided tour of a human zoo of misery.  But the money shot is when they pull over and ask one of the locals just how horrible their godawful, wretched existence really is.

Ain’t it Awful Porn – This is when the downtrodden get an extra kick in the ass.  Journalists particularly enjoy empty foodbanks, old people who get scammed out of their life savings, and single mothers with cancer who lose their jobs a week before Christmas.

Trump Porn – OMG!  Look what the guy did, today!  LOOK!  JUST LOOK!  It’s way worse than yesterday!

It’s Not Really Porn Porn – No wonder feminists are pissed off all the time.  Believe me, Red Carpet cleavage, the wardrobe malfunction, the ever juvenile nip slip, and the full skirt caught by a random breeze are not actually news.  They’re occasions where polite people discreetly look away.

But the worst journalistic porn in the world is:

Inspirational Porn – Clearly, the only reason disabled people even exist is to demonstrate to the rest of us lazy bastards just how petty our problems really are.  Think about it!  The truth is, regardless of how talented, determined or resourceful these people might be on a normal daily basis — without their wheelchairs, journalists wouldn’t give them the time of day.

 

I’m An Optimist (2018)

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I’m an optimist.  I don’t believe life is “short, brutish and cruel” or whatever the hell Thomas Hobbes was going on about.  First of all, life is not short: it’s the longest thing you’re ever going to do (aside from eternity, and that doesn’t count.)  Secondly, nothing that offers over 20 different kinds of breakfast cereal (from super-nutritious to practically poison) can be called “brutish and cruel.”  Perhaps, at one time, Hobbes was money in the bank, but these days the poor guy isn’t even spare change.

The truth is, the only reason a lot of people think pessimism is such a profound philosophy is most of the great thinkers we hold so dear to our hearts (like Hobbes) wrote it that way.  Unfortunately, they were doing their writing (and their thinking) in a time when scullery maid was a legitimate occupation, a bad cold could kill ya and public executions were entertainment – for the whole family.  Not all that relevant in the 21st century!  And, quite frankly, neither is their dim view of the world.

We live in a world that is full of promise.  Okay, sometimes we get our priorities screwed up and try to feed the homeless, clothe the starving and tolerate the intolerant — but at least we’re workin’ on it.  And the fact is, we do feed a lot of people, we do clothe them, we educate them, offer them medicine, employment and safety.  We allow a cornucopia of gods, politics, ideas and opinions all equal billing in the intellectual feast that is Western society.  We show mercy, generosity and benevolence — even to those who wish to do us harm.  We do not live in a dark world because — quite frankly, folks — when our biggest problem is the Internet is slow, we’ve got nothing to be pessimistic about.

Big Dick Energy

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I think of Popular Culture as this great huge lake — and I’m a smooth, flat stone, skipping across the top of it.  Every once in a while, I touch the water and get a little wet, but by the time there are any ripples, I’m already back in the air.  Great analogy, right?  And this explains why, by the time I got around to Big Dick Energy, it was already passé.  However, after I saw it a couple of times in my Internet travels, I hit The Google to discover just what BDE was made of.  Total disappointment!  It turns out, according the Beeb (BBC) BDE is merely that intangible confidence exuded by the uber-cool.  Trust millennials to concoct a smutty genitalia description for something that’s been around since Cleopatra took one look at Julius Caesar and said, “I’d like one of those, please.”

No, for all their tweeting about Rihanna, Cate Blanchett, Idris Alba and Harry Styles, millennials didn’t invent Big Dick Energy – they just think they did.  However, it’s impossible to explain this to them because nobody has an answer for “What is cool?” and every generation has its own frame of reference.  Back in the day, my generation actually named Steve McQueen the King of Cool because – uh – he was.  Unfortunately, these days, poor Steve wouldn’t be considered the king of anything — way too much testosterone and too little angst.  The guy probably never had a panic attack in his life.  Believe me, his brand of man just doesn’t fit — in the land of the metrosexual.  Meanwhile, on the other end of the gender scale, my generation had a ton of uber-cool women – Julie Christie comes to mind, as does Diana Rigg and, of course, Ann-Margret.  These women didn’t have drama; they had hairstyles and sunglasses.  And they wore their sexuality like a tailored dress: it just fit them.  All of these women were simply too self-possessed to be “cool” in the 21st century.  For example, I don’t think any of them was ever slammed up against the wall in a fit of uncontrollable passion (a la Angelina Jolie in Mr. and Mrs. Smith) in any movie they ever made.  No man would have dared.

So, sail on, millennials!  There’s no doubt Cate Blanchett and Idris Alba have Big Dick Energy, but so did James Dean and Ava Gardner and before that Bogie and Bacall and before that … So you should remember that, in 50 years, your Big Dick Energy is going to be just as old- fashioned as I am, skipping across the lake of Popular Culture.