Sam Smith – I thought about not posting anything today because last night I watched the Oscar winning film Everything Everywhere All at Once which told me that that in life these days there are no rules and nothing matters. Then I remembered that this wasn’t the first time show business had derailed the better aspects of humanity, including decent politics. After all, in my lifetime the worst presidents – Reagan and Trump – had repeatedly demonstrated the dangers in using show business as a useful guide in exercising constitutional democracy, and repeatedly the public had responded warmly.
We tend to blame the news media for many of the current failures of our system, but the far less noticed fact is that politics has become a form of show business. As just one example, a Pew Research Center survey found that about ten percent of US adults get at least some of their news from TikTok and for those under 30, the figure is 26%.
Because I have few other skills, I shall continue to practice journalism as best I can but I do so in recognition that it has lost much of it status to the art of performing fantasies and providing fictions and fibs. If there are no rules and nothing matters, facts are a pretty dull alternative to show business.
2 comments:
Oh Sam! I couldn't agree more. Years ago, my neighbor, Binki Dennett, used to take great pleasure in watching TV as she talked on the phone and knitted lovely things with patterns. She was the original multi-tasker in my books. But this movie? Well, the expression used to be mind-f*ck, but I think even that isn't sufficient.
Practice on Sam! Words and the turn of a phrase can often be the trigger which inspires them mine and body to change,
Semper Paratus
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