Cyber Sleuths Checkmated Rove?

[mojowork_n]

49. Yup. Teachable moment there.

When "The Onion" (excuse me, "America's Finest News Source") and professional Funny People, like Jon and Stephen and countless others -- are 80 percent more likely to be less full of crap than a lot of professional News People -- what does that say about the state of news and journalism?

The Funny people are alternately snarky and serious and they score zinger after zinger.

But they're just comedians.

How many viewers call their congressional representatives the day after a particularly scathing Colbert re-Pore and demand to know that representative's position on something? Are they more or less likely to go out to stand at a vigil or protest, or engage in any other ...s e r i o u s... activity?

....When I was much, much younger I remember taking a little side trip one spring to Franco's Spain, between terms. Goons in shiny hats with machine guns all over the place. But they were sort of like Latin Buckingham Palace Guards. You could tell jokes about them behind their backs. (Just not in public, where the wrong sort of person could hear you.) Not too much later, on the other end of the continent and the other side of the ideological divide, people passed along zingers -- the same way they passed around and shared smokes -- to reassure themselves of their own humanity. That they weren't too cold inside.

Is that where we're heading?

I wish I could remember where I read it, who said it, in what publication and what year, but in the early to mid-90's there was some news empire mogul who went on record saying something along the lines of .... 'we're creating a new fusion or synthesis. The news division and the entertainment division. A seamless confluence of streams, generating revenue...' Like water (news) and some other catalytic liquid (entertainment) driving the turbines at Hoover Dam. A dynamic paradigm shift to electrify the whole continent. And generate Megawatts of Profits.

It was before the Telecommunications Act of 1996, I think.

So what's real any more? Is there any serious difference between what happens when massive profits get funneled to a few corporate overlords, and what happens when (an admittedly thin, permeable to zingers) curtain of silence insulates a real dictatorship?