The Bad News Media: Making Sure You Hate Who They Want You To.

Hmm, what to talk about.  Horrific killing sprees in England, in which a quiet but polite man went on a random killing frenzy…  Or maybe I could talk about the Israeli army who threw their weight about in full tactical gear after claiming they were attacked by passengers with sticks and catapults…  Poor little guys.  Or maybe I could talk about the devastation in the Gulf, and how I think that the heads of oil companies should be held captive, strapped to a bed where we can extract as much of their blood as we feel like, as often as we like and sell it on to fund similar operations all around the planet…  If our planet won’t miss the oil, they won’t miss a few gallons of blood.  It has been a terrible week, and the coverage on the TV will last as long as there is nothing else terrible happening…  There has been a distinct lack of good news lately.

So, good news…  Good news.  That could be difficult.  We aren’t allowed to view too much good news in case we stop spending money on things that make us safe.  Keep buying those products, and nothing you actually want or need, as that would be self indulgent…  There is a recession on after all.  The Pope has to scale back his World Tour, it seems that the recession has finally hit the bejeweled leader of the Catholic church.  Although, not too much as the planning has already reached the 14 million pound mark.

The Pope who, it is always prudent to point out, has had a lot of press this year thanks to his nonchalant attitude towards paedophilia in his church, will still grace us with his presence but will not make half the effort his predecessor did…  The reasons for this being cited as fear of terrorism, health and safety limitations, and the aforementioned rising costs.

Back in 82, not only could Uncle Rico throw a steak over a mountain, but health and safety didn’t really matter and apparently terrorism didn’t exist.  This is the word of the church…  The 500,000 “pilgrims” who turned out to see Benny in Portugal last month can’t be wrong, and if he was playing a show near me, and there was nothing on TV and all my friends were busy I would maybe go and see the show.

The fear of terrorism is something that bends my mind in a way I find hard to explain…  The fact that people live their lives in fear of something that will probably never happen to them is what really scares me…  The head of a religion shouldn’t voice fears of terrorism, it gives out the wrong signal.  By doing such a thing the church are simply adding fuel to the fire.  The last Pope got shot and still turned out for big events…  Albeit from the comfort of his armoured car.  By wetting his expensive pants about terrorists he is telling his followers that there are people of other beliefs that want him dead…  Leading to more hatred from a group of people who celebrate a peace loving, rich man hating, middle eastern man who they dressed up to look like one of us.  By taking the job of Pope you open yourself up to these dangers, and have no right to voice your fears to millions of people, particularly the type of people who are extremely open to prejudice.

Maybe I am lucky, while I do fear a few things I certainly don’t fear being killed in a terrorist attack as the odds of such a terrible thing happening are too small to worry about, it is in the same category of fear as shark attack and waking up in a bath full of ice without my kidneys…  I am far from fearless.  When I am in certain parts of town I fear getting my head kicked in, or worse.  I have had a few beatings and once had a knife pulled on me so I feel justified in occasionally fearing violence because it is a fairly common occurrence around bad parts of towns the world over.  Maybe if a terrorist pulled a bomb on me I would feel different, otherwise it is just buying fear from the media and, to an extent, expecting too much to happen in your life.  A life which will probably pass without too much fuss because you spent it sitting in your house afraid to leave because you’re scared of something that is less likely to kill you than drowning, driving or falling off something.  You are more likely to get shot dead by the police than dying in a terrorist attack.

There is a long list of things designed to scare the public through the ages, a prime, and not so old, example would be the Commies!  The fear of Communists was apparently very real before I was alive, as was the fear of nuclear war…  Which is basically the same as fearing “the Muslims” and a holy war.  While horrid bastards like Joseph McCarthy, who should have been smothered at birth, or at the very least set on fire when he started his campaign of ruining innocent peoples lives with his unique ability to convince idiots that he was not only a human, but one able to rid the world of communists.  Thankfully he is dead, so it isn’t like he is still stealing our oxygen.  I guess I shouldn’t be shocked that a country promoting capitalism should bad mouth communism, seeing as the two are basically the same, except with capitalism the people footing the bill don’t know they are being screwed, they think they’re awesome.  Blissful ignorance.  It worked for a while.  

 Despite it happening every day, all over the world to almost everyone at some point or another…  Good news doesn’t sell papers.  Fear, hatred, racism and celebrity scandal sells papers.  It is a roaring trade and people don’t seem to notice that every page is making them more and more paranoid and misinformed.  In Britain there is an overwhelming number of people who are scared of “their” country becoming a muslim state…  There are YouTube videos which throw statistics around to back up their argument, despite every statistic being 99.9% nonsense.  Really, the British are the last people who should have an opinion on other people  wanting to take over the world, given the bloody history of the Empire.  In any case, if people want immigrants out, then I can only assume they want all British ex-pats to return…  Unless the rules don’t apply in reverse?  Seeing as I’m not into the whole White Power movement I don’t know how it works…  Answers on a postcard.

We can’t even celebrate when a potentially bad event is turned around like the attempted bombing on Boxing Day, it was all ‘what if this happened’, instead of ‘some idiot tried and failed to blow up a plane, partly due to his own idiocy and the fact that the other passengers kicked his face in.’  That should have been a win for us, but we let the media-led fear take over and now it’s even more of a nightmare going on holiday.  Given that the two times this substance has been in the news both ended with no explosions and the terrorists in custody, you would think celebrating would be on the cards…  But the media doesn’t work that way.

I’m not saying terrorists don’t exist, I’m just saying that terrorist or not you are going to die one day, don’t waste what time you have fantasizing about how it will happen.

You should be scared, you should be paranoid, but not of people with different coloured skin or people who follow a different religion…  You should be afraid of the media telling you whom you should hate, or who your heroes should be, and you should be afraid that so many people buy it.

Henry Hunter.

Posted by henryhunter on June 4, 2010. Filed under Opinion Editorial,WorldNewsVine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.