Tonight at Eleven, Fear Mongering and the Mongerers of fear...
Not to get all Dennis Miller on you, but when did we trade the Cryptkeeper and Evil Ernie for Glenn Beck and Brian Williams? Today's media and news coverage is more frightening than the prospect of another frickin' zombie novel! There are more doomsday barkers and naysayers on the news now than there are standing on the street corners with apocalyptic signs
hanging from their necks. The only difference is we pay heed to the talking heads on the TV, and we typically turn a
blind eye to Crazy Larry, the schizo that stands on the corner of Third and Peoria.
Whether its earthquakes in India or negligent baby sitters, it seems these days all the news anchors want to do is scare the crap out of us. From the local to national news, it's story after story about murders, rapes, babies being tossed from cars, bridges collapsing, flu epidemics, lead paint on children's toys, contaminated meat, e-coli on veggies, obesity, terrorist attacks, global warming, inflation, unemployment -- There's no wonder most of us are wandering around with that glazed look in our eyes like one of Britney Spears's kids after being left locked in a parked car in summer with the windows rolled up.
And don't give me that crap about it being a liberal media. The
majority of what comes across the news is not biased. It's not like Big Al the sportscaster blamed Dick Cheney for
the Patriots losing the Super Bowl! Besides, having an entity that points out when the government is up to no-good like
a snotty fourth grade tattle-tale is a good thing. You know which country
had a media that was forbidden to report negatively on its government? Germany, back in the 30s. That didn't turn out too good, did it?
The thing is this: Fear is a powerful emotion, perhaps even the one emotion that all others derive from. What is depression but the fear of things never being good again? Anger is having what we fear actualized. Happiness is the absence of fear. And even love could be construed as a reaction to the fear of being alone. Fear has an evolutionary advantage; it contributes to the fight or flight instinct, it generates adrenaline, and it increases the amount of oxygen that gets through the bloodstream. Survival depends on fear. If it wasn't for fear, early man wouldn't have run away from the saber-tooth tigers like Wesley Snipes runs away from his taxes. If it weren't for fear, there would be no heroics. There would be no revolutions. Fear is powerful.
And the media is manipulating us through fear. And why would they do that? Money. The folks at CNN, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh - they're all in it for the money. All of them except Bill O'Reiley. He's just a douche bag. Look, the media makes its money from advertisers and the more viewers a particular channel or program can generate, the more one will pay to have their products advertised on that channel. In a world of 24-hour news, where you have a dozen channels to choose from, talk radio, and the internet - news execs have to figure out ways to keep their audience glued to the screen. Personally, I thought having the newscasters read the news topless would keep most people attentive, but then I imagined Larry King's floppy man-boobs and had to check myself into a psychiatric clinic for PTSD.
For all of you Chicken Littles out there that sit in front of the TV and bemoan the fact that the world is going to hell, guess what? It's always been going to hell. Even Ug, the Neanderthal man would shake his head when he'd see his son take a stick burning with fire out into the darkness (if God meant for man to see in the dark he wouldn't have hidden their eyes in the dark shadows of their forehead). For all of you that think the world has turned to shit - did you know that in 2005 there were more than 17,000 murders in the United States alone? Sounds like a bunch, huh? Did you know that there were 300,000,000 people living in the U.S. then? When you crunch the numbers - that means almost 94% of the population survived the year. Ninety-four percent! Do you have any idea what I would have done for a 94% on anything in high school? And speaking of high schools, did you know, in the United States there have been 62 notable school shootings since 1966? Sixty-two schools out of 13,500 high schools have had someone pull a gun and begin blowing people away. You know what percentage of schools that is: .004% . You have a better chance of getting pregnant while wearing a condom than you do of getting shot in a public high school. There's even a slightly better chance of all of you Dr. Who fans out there having sex before the age of 30 (sorry Dr. Who fans; I had gone too long without a humorous pop culture reference, and that one was too easy).
My point? Yeah, the world sucks - but it sucks a lot worse when you listen to the news. The news is using fear to manipulate you in the hopes that you'll buy more dish washing soap! As horror fans, you'd think we'd be better apt to ignore the crap that is slung around on the 24-hour news networks, but from what I can tell across the internet, that's not the case. Look, being scared is a good thing; it's what makes reading scary stories and watching horror movies so much fun. But it's not fun when mothers are scared to let their children go to school. It stops being fun when a family cancels their vacation to New York for fear of another terrorist attack. Bad stuff happens, and it's going to happen regardless of whether or not we're sitting in front of the news. We're all going to die; some of us in our sleep, some from disease, some from violence, and there will probably even be a few who buy the farm due to a bizarre accident involving peanut butter and a panda bear - the point being, we've all got a limited amount of time here. Why waste it living in media-generated fear? Turn the set off. Go outside. Look both ways before you cross the street, and seize the friggin' day, will ya? Just be sure to use some hand sanitizer along the way; you don't want to die of a cold, do you?
