The Stalin in the Soul
The other sort of censorship is harder to spot and much more cruel. It’s a matter of which stories get told or noticed in the first place, rather than fussing about the language in which they get told. Put it this way: how many things happened yesterday? and how many of those things made the nightly news? For starters, you probably didn’t. Yup, if you’re reading the eXile, it’s a good bet that nothing you did or ever will do made the news.
Your story is just too depressing. To make the news, your story has to be one of the consoling lies that a culture, any culture, tells itself to make the ordinary suckers’ lives seem bearable to them. If your bike is rearended at a stoplight and you spend the rest of your life tetraplegic, it’s not going to be on the news. It’s a big story to you, and it’s the kind of story total strangers enjoy hearing, if only out of morbid curiosity, but it won’t make the news. It’s too true. It’s not an exception.
But if you suddenly regain the ability to walk after years of lying there paralyzed, that’s news. The TV crews will film your every wobble. Not just because it’s unusual, but because it’s a consoling lie. Don’t think so? Try calling those same news crews a few months later, when you slip back into paralysis. See how many of them show up to film that big story.
Your surprised ?
If it bleeds it leads, thats the news.
Lazarus probably made the 6 O'clock and 11 O'clock feeds.
Would that we lived in a perfect world.
Posted by yo fodder on September 18 2004 10:45
No, not surprised. Just passing on an essay I (mostly) liked. I like what it has to say about societal consoling lies more, but that was harder to excerpt.
Posted by Zed on September 20 2004 09:15