The Media Bias Wars: Can't We All Just Get Along?
by John Kendall Hawkins
Ever since the world ended
There's no more black or white
Ever since we all got blended
There's no more reason to fuss and fight
Mose Allison, "Ever Since the World Ended"
The Kyle Rittenhouse Saga: It's enough to make you crazy. I myself have been going around the house spinning my rally cap and in a lip-doodling frenzy for weeks now. Incensed by the coverage veering off yet again away from the shooting of another unarmed Black man caught on video in the act to the relatively silly plight of some junior vigilante and the question of fairness at his trial, out of which he recently emerged victorious and "Free as f*ck." It looks like along with the rolling pearlharbors we'll have to deal with, media-distracting rolling georgefloyds are also on the bill. I can't breathe, democracy is suffocating.
The Kyle Rittenhouse Saga. What happened? It's easy to get lost in the Minotaur's Maze that the MSM's coverage of any important national topic of public interest turns into these days. But, nevertheless, here's a succinct recounting of the shooting of the 29-year-old Jacob Blake, front of his children, followed by predictable marches and protests by Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporters, followed by the Rittenhouse shootings. It should be noted, as it was in court, that the 17-year-old Rittenhouse crossed from Illinois into Wisconsin with a gun because of the protesting he knew to be going on there. Here's how the timeline went, according to ABC News in this brief video recounting:
None of the shootings are in question. They happened. The motives are still outstanding.
But the coverage of Rittenhouse's trial and the aftermath of his acquittal seems to have opened the Nutty bottle for folks to swallow wholesale. The Left, we're told by the Right, has painted Rittenhouse as a "white supremacist" vigilante who went looking for action in Kenosha, where days of protesting had grown the police presence and led to the introduction of National Guardsmen to help quell the situation. From the Right, we get 'extremists" accusing the Left of reporting that Rittenhouse had slain Black men and that they were intentionally amping up the racist angle for political cachet. Suddenly, says the Right, people on the Left were fainting in the streets after Rittenhouse was acquitted. They threw rocks at us, says the Left. Yes, says the Right -- rock smelling salt. Oy!
Matt Taibbi called it correctly back in 2019 in his book, Hate Inc., whose tone I described in my review of the book goes like this:
...This is the state of affairs in national politics today - a Spectacle of bizarre performers flipping each other in the public arena, to the titillation of the rabid masses, like some scene from the classic movie, A Face in the Crowd. They are divided Left and Right, polarized bears wrassling over baby seal meat on the world's last floe, united by their choreographed hatred for each other. The End of the World as Reality TV. Great ratings.
It just seems to be getting worse: The impeachment; the pandemic; the vaccine; the election; and the bizarro events of January 6, which induced the nutjobs to invade DC on Electoral College Vote Certification Day.
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