Democracy Dies in Primetime

Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, tore into Jennifer Griffen, a former colleague of his at Fox where he was a weekend anchor, at a news conference about the bombing of possible Iranian nuclear sites. Now, she knows more about all this shit than Pate does, even though he's the guy that made the incredible leap from parttime anchor to underboss of the military, not her. That's the way employment works in politics, unfortunately, at least now that we have a president who himself was a former TV gameshow host. He's bigly on "Central Casting". 

What happened was, Jennifer asked Pete a question he couldn't answer and so he told her something like, she was the worst journalist ever. Maybe ever since him? I'm not sure. Doesn't really matter. The point is, he had set out to ambush her and she took the bait by being called on by him. I can't believe she fell for that.

Of all the insane reasons to vote for Trump, the craziest seems to be that he alone could be the one to rip the media a new asshole for all their previous crimes against the American audience. You probably didn't think we needed a guy who would stand up to the media, but Trump and his supporters in Appalachia knew. That's why he's president and probably will be for life. 

Under Trump's guidance, we are being trained to mistrust and hate *the media*. Apparently, all of it, even some of the folks at Fox, even the respected journalist who can pull of a crewcut better than 99.9% of the female population can. Fox is supposed to be state TV now by default. One would think they'd be exempt from such attacks, but one would be wrong. No one is safe from Trump's media wrath.

That is interesting because 90% of all media is owned by six corporations. I think it is safe to say that all those corporations are all in on Project 2025, which is in turn, all in on Trump. The Big 6 make billions of dollars (each) but, what is money without total control of people's lives? It is a void in their corporate hearts that only Trump could fill. 

Trump makes no bones about his contempt for the media. They've been picking on him all his life, pointing out how ridiculous he is in his persona and how foolish he is in business and handling money. It's a fact: he's an asshole and an idiot. You can kinda see why he hates the media. They've really been quite honest about what a shitheel he is. It's hard not to be because it's all right there in the open. Pretty obvious. Trump has worked hard all his life to combat that by saying that the media was {{{FAKE NEWS!}}} Slow-witted people who worship Trump take that as gospel, because he wouldn't say that if it wasn't true, because he's not that kind of guy, even though he is most definitely that kind of guy. 

So, why does corporate media- who need Trump so badly- often treat Trump so badly?

Because that's what they do. Media plays both sides against the middle. They do this for fun and profit. Mostly profit. I don't know that they did this before he came along, but I promise you they do it now. The difference is that now they have a guy who can take them to a fascist utopia they may have only masturbated to in the privacy of their corporate offices until this golden-haired hunk of man came into their corporate lives. This is their time to shine, and they will not be denied. They are breaking free of the chains of capitalism and embracing full fascism. Hear them roar, in numbers too small to ignore!

Is it going to work? To be blunt, no. How the fuck could it? Who takes a moneymaking machine like capitalism- in the greatest country in the world- and thinks they can do better in a fascist Gilead? Stupid corporate cunts do that. They may own the media, but they are also the fine folks who bring you toothpaste, cat food, people food, power tools- basically everything people use in their consumer lives. They want to give that up to subjugate women with those impractical red Gilead outfits and have all the menfolk mining or fighting forever wars or whatever they do in the book and series that I admittedly never read or saw. That doesn't seem like a good business model to me. But if I've learned one thing in my working life, it's that just because someone is in charge, it doesn't mean that they should be, 

So, yeah, don't trust the Lamestream Media. Cletus in Alabama is right about that, but he's wrong about why because he doesn't think Fox and Newsmax are part of it. Corporate media and their brands are more incestuous than Arkansas ever dreamed of being with their cousins. On Facebook I get regularly accused of being a CNN fan. I do not watch CNN, but I know who Abby Philip is because I see her in clips on social media like BlueSky. Oh, my goodness she is a fine-looking woman, but that is not enough to turn me away from a ballgame or my umpteenth streaming of The Sopranos. Truth be told, even the unrequited love of my television life, Stephanie Ruhle, does not command as much of my time as one might think. She's good and honest though, for how much longer I'm not sure. 

Corporate media is disparate in its views because currently market share dictates that that is what the bosses want. Abby and Steph may be legitimately independent in their views, but that is what is selling now. That independence ends when the guys who sign the checks say so. Absolutely distrust corporate media, but if you do so at the behest of a fat, stupid pretend billionaire, and can't see him for what he so obviously is and isn't, you are just a good little consumer, just like they need you to be. And that's the way it is.