The Turd In The Media Punchbowl (A Parable Of Sorts)

Imagine your shock and horror if you were at a fancy party and someone stood up on the table, undid his belt, dropped his trousers, squatted over the punchbowl, and dropped a deuce in it. Imagine your further horror when, after an initial reaction of disgust, the other guests soon started refilling their glasses from the punchbowl and drinking.

If this scene were not absurd enough, imagine you fill up your glass with tap water and they look at you with scorn for doing something so completely unacceptable. You are not part of the in-crowd, who sits empirically in judgment of you. How dare you not imbibe of what was so extravagantly prepared for you? “The turd is on the left side”, says one guest, “drink from the right.” “The turd is on the right side,” says another, “drink from the left.” All the while you see little chunks of brown floating in the ladle they are using no matter which side of the bowl they scoop from.

They speak to you in disdainful tones as though you were a 3rd grader. Behind the superficial sweetness of the punch on their breath is the unmistakable stench of shit. Their lips are stained red but brown flecks are on their teeth. They think you are an idiot.

I feel this way every day. The punchbowl, in this case, is corporate media. The turd was WMDs, and the gentleman who did the unthinkable was Colin Powell. Though it could have been any number of people who befouled the media, treating it like a toilet. Times beyond count have the establishment media permitted themselves to be used in such a manner. Russiagate was one prolonged bout of diarrhea by the intelligence agencies and Adam Schiff. By this point, the media’s been abused more than a toilet next to an all-you-can-eat taco bar at the Super Bowl. And never once does anyone attempt to fish the turds out. The same people who indecorously squat over the bowl are invariably invited back to the party.

But the people keep drinking from it.

When I am listening to Garland Nixon, or Revolutionary Blackout Network, or Glenn Greenwald, or Lee Camp, I pause it when a friend or relative gets too close. They would not merely not understand, they would be upset should they hear someone utter an opinion or truth that is non-canonical. They would tell me with a certainty only reserved for fundamentalists that the information they receive from the punch bowl is not to be questioned. Even though they were there and saw what Colin Powell and a parade of others with irritable bowel syndrome did to it. Then they would sip from their fine crystal glasses with gold trim and the letters NYT or WaPo etched into them, and I would be forced to watch as the brown chunks slid from the bottom of the glass to their lips.

I have found it easier not to argue, but instead offer to refill their glass.