What the hell is wrong with the media? The long answer is that they're a bunch of second-handed sell-outs who don't possess the brains capable of making a single value judgment about what matters in the world. The short answer is: it's your fault. Or if not you, people like you. The media doesn't just produce some product called "news" and force-feed it down some bed-ridden person's throat with a turkey baster. They sell it. They offer the newspaper for sale or the 10:00 news on a turnable TV dial or a website amidst a slew of competitors, from Bigbreastedbimbos.com to the free online guide to building nuclear-powered space stations for beginners dot org.
The media sells. Which means somebody buys. People used to buy a lot more horse-drawn carriages at one point. But then something happened. One man decided that three days a week looking at his mother-in-law was enough, he didn't have to stare at a horse's ass, too, every time he went for a goddamn drive in the park. People back then had a choice: go to work in style - in your very own three-mile-an-hour speed demon complete with crank starter - or stare at a horse's ass. Most people chose the former. They chose it because they got some value out of it. So what pseudo-value do people now get out of the sodomizing of the day report or the allegations of the alleged affair by the alleged actor in the alleged film about real people who do really bad things and then live to get away with it?
There are two motives, depending on the individual or how John Q. Nobody happened to get out of bed in a given morning. The motive for the interest in sodomizing isn't so bad. Yes, that may be surprising, but John Q. Nobody isn't all that bad. Not yet, anyway. When Mr. Nobody actually enjoys the combination of sodomy, nuns, and pitchforks, you'll probably notice that the local grocery store is now the friendly neighborhood gas chamber.
But for now, Nobody watches the tragic stuff because that's what Nobody thinks is important. He thinks the world is a gas chamber, and any story about some new robot that can vacuum your bedroom is just some speck of rose-colored shit on his rust-colored glasses. Nobody thinks it's an insult to the sodomized nun if you even mention the mother effing walking dirt devil. It just so happens, Nobody forgets one thing: human beings actually have some limited number of moments while they're alive when they're not getting their colons ruptured by farming tools. And god dammit, knowing about a new metal eunuch butler that sucks dirt just might come in handy.
