Reply #29: Understand What is Happening, First, then [View All]

address what to do about it.

We do not yet have anything close to a consensus, even at places like DU, about what the Ann Coulter phenomenon means. I agree with the original post and the Tom Tomorrow strip that the only real significance of this gargle of piss is that it is on television at all.

She is not really a "writer" or a "political commentator" -- she is a bad taste comedian like Andrew Dice Clay, making outrageous jokes for the release of nervous energy it gives to stupid white adolescents. That is what the micro-mini skirts are about, by the way.

Even when the Diceman had a huge and lucrative audience, however, he was never put on the Today Show to talk about the political implications of his fag-bashing jokes, not even to put the snub to him.

No, Annie Dice Clay has built up a cottage industry that relies upon the complicity of the TV networks and other mainstream media outlets for the promotion of her toilet bowl full of shtick. And there is nothing comparable from the left that can even sniff the inside of a TV studio.

The complicity of the editors and publishers of the "respectable" mass media is the real splash of cold water in the face that this latest wave of Anthrax Annieism should provide.


So much of the material you read on DU and on other lefty venues in cyberspace amounts to either:

1. Criticism of "the dems" for their failure to have good enough television material, or

2. Advice to "the dems" for how to make a better presentation on television.


There seems to be a massive reluctance to face the horrible truth about the concentration of communications ownership in the USA -- the fact that the editors and producers consciously create a cumulative "reality" show of political "debate" that bears the same resemblance to reality that "COPS" does to criminal justice; that "Fear Factor" does to human psychology; that "The Apprentice" does to business and finance; or, that "Survivor" does to social relations.

In all of those "reality" shows, the producers take exquisite care to select the characters who will act out a "story line" that serves the interests of the commercial sponsors who pay for the whole production.

A freak show character like Annie plays a vital part in telling the story of American politics, and you cannot go on the "show" with her and beat her at her game, because she is not supposed to win. She is just supposed to be there -- showing her legs and doing her noxious act.


We cannot beat television from within television. I don't care how frustrating or depressing this reality is -- unless we collectively wake up to it, we will continue to get our collective asses kicked over and over again. Or until we wake up one morning on a reality show called, "Concentration Camp."

The irony is that once we all realize that TV is a show, it is by definition no longer Reality.


For now, you get dismissed, even here, as some variety of naif or loon for obsessing on this topic.

In my opinion -- it has to be the Number One concern: understanding how television really works in the 21st Century.