journalism

Bringing Some Mania To the Media, Gushing With Gallows Humor

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It’s no surprise to anyone who has worked in Journalism (or had loved ones who have) that people working in the Media either develop a dark sense of humor over time or have one to begin with. Gallows humor isn’t uncommon in people who experience physically or psychologically stressful and challenging situations in their line of work. It’s something that research has consistently shown to be true for Medical Professionals, First Responders, Veterans, Journalists, and others who regularly encounter difficult and unpleasant things in their line of work.

This makes perfect sense, considering the well-established connection between humor and stress reduction, as well as the impact it has on depression and irritation. Dark Humor is, for many people, a Coping Mechanism that helps to stave off depression and distress in response to traumatic experiences, and not exclusively those associated with one’s occupation. It’s been compared to “whistling past the graveyard” by some.

Several studies have been conducted on the correlation between Dark Humor and Trauma, available from organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and the American Medical Association. The overall effectiveness of this kind of outlook (as far as catharsis is concerned) is debatable, but the prevalence is undeniable.

That being said, my tendency toward Gallows Humor can run a bit darker and deeper than most. Some of that could be related to my secondary career as a horror author and a certain desensitization that goes with intentionally exploring some truly taboo and horrific topics, as well as the worst aspects of my own human nature. It could be a result of Childhood Trauma combined with my career choices. It could be something in the way I’m hardwired. I do know that my greatest enjoyment concerning jokes and comedy has always leaned in that direction, at least as far back as I can recall. My suspicion is that (at least in my case) it’s a combination of all of the above that influences my brand of humor as it stands today.

One of the ways my humor manifests in my career as a Journalist is in a fascination with both alliteration and rhyme, especially in places where it’s thoroughly inappropriate. Some of my colleagues can appreciate my perspective, and even the inherent humor behind my statements and suggestions, while others find it perplexing and in poor taste. I suspect some of the latter individuals would find themselves less shocked by my occasional outbursts and the like if they’d been working in the industry longer than they have.

When I was still working in Western South Dakota, during the late summer of 2022, there was a murder that took place at a mobile home in Box Elder, the town that is butted up against Ellsworth Air Force Base. I typed up a quick Limerick and sent it via text to my News Director so that it would be the first thing she’d see when she woke up for work that morning. I received a one-word response a short while later, “No!”

Naturally, I wasn’t sincerely going to incorporate anything like the following rhyme into my scripts for the Newscast, but that didn’t change how amusing I thought it was to imagine doing so.

There was a middle-aged man in Box Elder.
He hated a woman and felled her.
He’s under arrest.
Despite his protests.
He was caught trying to run from the trailer.

In May of this year, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek declared the month to be Wildfire Awareness Month. When we were covering the story, I suggested a poem for the reporter we were assigning to it. I don’t consider the following poem to be particularly dark, but I understand how and why it was nevertheless unacceptable in practical terms.

Top fire officials share an outlook that’s quite concerning…
Offering tips to keep Oregon’s forests from burning.
Governor Kotek signs a new declaration.
Wildfire Awareness Month is her creation.
The fire cache is stocked up with much-needed supplies.
What you can do to avoid a scorching surprise.

There are several more incidents of me attempting to insert levity where most people would insist it does not belong, and I suppose I should share a few more examples. Some of these may be a bit grim, while others (I insist) are simply funny.

It was May of 2024 when Washington’s former Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, was campaigning for Governor. A Republican activist recruited two men, also named Bob Ferguson, to campaign as Democrats as well, going so far as to pay their filing fees and handle the registration of their campaigns. Those two fraudulent campaigns were ultimately withdrawn from the race because it’s a Class B Felony to intentionally mislead or confuse the election as they were. I put the story together for my Newscast and suggested that I should use a graphic saying, “Two Bobs, One Gov.” The way I looked at it, anyone who picked up on the reference to “Two Girls, One Cup” wasn’t likely to complain about it.

In October of 2024, one of our reporters provided a multi-part explainer on how the new Ranked-Choice voting process works because Portland had implemented Ranked-Choice for the Mayoral Race. When he was delving into how tabulation of the results would be performed, I opted to tease the story with, “What to expect when you’re electing.”

That same month, there was an Officer-Involved Shooting in a Taco Bell drive-thru, and I suggested we should lighten the tone by saying the individual who was shot had been trying to make a run for the border. I wasn’t alone in making bad jokes associated with that particular incident. Things like Glock-o Bell may have been tossed around for our amusement.

In November of last year, I found a story from Alaska about a beached fin whale near Anchorage. Part of the story focused on a mother who homeschools her children, and how she used the carcass as supplemental material for biology lessons. While putting the story together for my Newscast, I added a graphic that said, “A Whale Of a Lesson,” and I’m still pretty proud of that.

In April of this year, we were discussing updates to the police investigation of a mother and her children who were found hanging in their home a couple of weeks earlier. It wasn’t a quiet environment when I muttered (thinking it was only to myself), “I’m just hanging with my family this weekend.” It was, however, quiet enough that one person did hear what I said, and their response seemed to display both appreciation and shock at what I’d just said.

There is a walking trail near where I live in Vancouver, featuring various gnome figures and fairy gardens, because several children use that path to get to school. It provided a little bit of magic as kids made their way to and from school, and the nearby community put a fair amount of time and effort into contributing to those additions to the trail. People being who they are, it’s no surprise that someone came along and started destroying the gnomes, and I proudly wrote a script that said the community intended to fight back against the “gnome wrecker.”

It wasn’t long ago that we learned of a sperm race taking place at the Hollywood Palladium in LA, complete with a tiny racetrack and high-resolution cameras monitoring the speed and motility of the sperm cells facing off head-to-head. We chattered about that on and off for a couple of hours, leading to a deeply unserious environment. One of our photographers said he could fly down to LA to shoot the event, and I asked if we could refer to that as a new form of “skeet shooting.”

From what we were seeing, the main event appeared to be a contest between sperm from a white man and a black man. I asked how long it would take for the racists to start in with accusations of “fast-twitch flagella.”

Some of these are dark, and some are inappropriate, but they’re also emblematic of what it can be like to work in the field that I do. This may go some way toward explaining my attitude at times when I’m discussing politics and other topics as well. Combined with my deeply-rooted cynicism, my tendency to find humor in things that might not be inherently humorous occasionally causes issues for me in my personal life, more often than my professional one. There’s a degree of amusement to be found in my professional environment being where some of my least professional comments are the most acceptable. But, the reality is that we understand one another there, and we understand how some of the things we expose ourselves to would wear us down far more quickly if we didn’t find a way to laugh through the pain and whistle past the graveyard.

Adding Some Identity To Identity Politics

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I would like people to dedicate some time and energy to self-reflection and evaluation of what they sincerely believe, as opposed to what they’ve been conditioned to accept. It would be unfair of me to ask that without sharing some things I’ve managed to discover in my own extensive intervals of self-assessment, if only because I suspect more people see things similarly to how I see them than I’ve typically assumed to be the case. I’ve spent a fair amount of time discussing diverse aspects of Politics and the shortcomings of various Political Figures as well. In doing all of that, I’ve still provided little regarding my own Political Ideology. Some elements of it, of course, are clear through inference, but to engage in any kind of authentic and intellectually honest discourse, I need to provide something more than I have already.

When I turned 18 and registered to vote, I did so as a Communist. I thought it was amusing, considering the lingering stigma still prevalent in America during the late 1990s. I registered as a Communist despite not being a Communist. I’d read the works of Marx and Engels; I was even familiar with the philosophies of Antonio Gramsci and Vladimir Lenin. I had read the work of Noam Chomsky and thoroughly agreed with much of it. But still, I was not a Communist when I turned 18 and registered to vote as one. I agreed with the underlying philosophy, but I considered it to be hopelessly naive. I was raised Catholic, and was familiar with many of the major writers from Church history, and Communism, to me, resembled Sir Thomas More’s Utopia in many respects. Much like More’s Utopia, a Communist Society struck me as being a fanciful thing that could exist only in fiction. Capitalism, after all, is not going anywhere.

Years later, I changed my voter registration to Independent.

Yet again, years after that, I switched my registration to Democrat, which is where it remains. Much like when I was registered as a Communist, I’m not really a Democrat either. Of the two major parties in American Politics, I feel that the Democratic Party more closely aligns with my personal politics, but it also ranges far afield in several ways.

I’ve cast my ballots for Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Green Party Candidates, and Independents over the years. I rarely based my decisions on Party Affiliation, but on the individual and what I could discern of their platform and previous voting record (if available). This is to say that I’ve never been one to assume that one’s Political Party is the best metric by which to judge them.

Personally, I think that (as a whole) we need to stop thinking of everything in terms of Left or Right, Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Liberal. Breaking away from the illusory binary system of partisan politics would benefit us all. We could focus on the issues that matter to us individually. and the individuals who align with us on those issues, as opposed to the Party that we believe will align with and uphold our personal political ideals. Partisan Politics forces people to adhere to monolithic thinking as opposed to independent thinking. Partisan Politics encourages groupthink and “in vs. out group” mentalities that are ultimately more harmful than they ever could be beneficial. That way of thinking erases Cognitive Processing from the voting process. It nurtures the laziness required to simply look for a candidate conveniently marked with a D or an R, and to put no further thought into the consequences that might be tied up in blindly endorsing someone based on Party Affiliation.

In my ideal version of the American political system, individuals seeking office would need to provide a detailed checklist: indicating where they stand on the most salient issues, how they intend to act on behalf of the interests of those who support them, and what their priorities are. They would have to actively think about the issues, arrive at solutions, and propose those solutions as a platform. You see, it’s not simply the voters who have checked their brains at the door when it comes to American Politics; the people we’re voting for are guilty of doing the same thing. Politicians assume (often rightly so) that their Party Affiliation will guarantee the votes of a particular cross-section of the voting demographic.

This, I must admit, is one of the reasons I’ve remained registered as a Democrat for the last few years. The Democratic Party, more so than the Republican Party, is a large tent. There’s none of the blind obedience to Party Affiliation that we see on the Republican side of the American Political Spectrum. That’s why “Vote Blue, No Matter Who” became a rallying call from the establishment Democrats, because they knew it wouldn’t happen. The problem with having a large tent is that there’s more diversity in not only cultural and ethnic backgrounds, but also in political ideologies. There are Democrats who are barely distinguishable from Republicans, and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, there are Social Democrats (or Justice Dems). This leads to a dichotomy within the one party that is actually greater than the dichotomy between the two major parties. Republicans, of course, should be thrilled by this. It gives them an advantage that they otherwise don’t have. As far as voter registrations are concerned, there are roughly ten million more registered Democrats than Republicans. If Democratic voters and politicians were as willing to conform to the will of party leadership, there would quite possibly never be any Republicans in the White House. The same would be true if the Electoral College didn’t exist, which gives voters in Wyoming more individual weight in their votes than those in California. If we’re being honest, it’s the equivalent of DEI Policies (as Republicans have misunderstood them) applied to rural voters.

I don’t believe either Major Party in America is anywhere near upholding the basic standards I expect from a Democratic Government, and the smaller parties are ultimately non-entities (with ineffectual leadership) that have no chance of overcoming the chokehold the Republicans and Democrats have in place. So, while I am most assuredly not a Democrat, it just so happens that Democrats more closely align with my principles and acknowledgement of our shared reality. The importance of a shared reality is something you’ll see again.

In an ideal America, it wouldn’t just be the Political Parties that disappear. There would be no more campaigns and no advertisements. We could host public debates wherein the contenders could challenge their opponents, and they would be forced to defend their premises. They would be moderated and fact-checked, and intellectual dishonesty (as well as the more traditional dishonesty) would not be tolerated.

When it came time for the election, the voting public would be provided with a list of candidates and their platforms, and they would use ranked choice ballots to cast their votes. There would be no Electoral College to manipulate the outcome in favor of land over people. The people who express concerns over the Tyranny of the Majority never seem to have those concerns if/when they are in the majority, so what’s good for the goose is what’s good for the gander, as they say.

The Elected Officials would then be expected to act according to the platform they proclaimed, or they could be removed by a vote of no confidence. No more towing a party line and no more threats of being primaried, and less impact from gerrymandering bullshit. I’m sure it would be harder on all of us. We might have to become informed voters, and politicians might have to work for the votes they receive and display a little bit of integrity. But we would be a better and more functional society for it. For purely personal reasons, I would take delight in the fact that much of the perceived and actual bias in the Media would disappear because there would be no explicit party lines to adhere to, and we could expect the Fourth Estate to fulfill its purpose of holding those in power accountable.

My perspective on politics may seem complicated (even convoluted), but that’s a byproduct of navigating the needlessly problematic nature of our modern political environment and the dialogue surrounding it. Were we not forced to maneuver our way through a quagmire of obfuscation, double-think, manipulation, and outright fabrications, I suspect many of us would have substantially pared-down stances on most matters.

What I mean to say is that, in all reality, my politics are simple and straightforward.

My ideology boils down to one single principle: that the role (and purpose) of the Government in any Democratic Society is to provide for the Common Good and Common Defense of the People. I’m essentially a believer in Utilitarianism, in that I believe the Guiding Moral Principle of any Democratic Government should be, “The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number.” Hand-in-hand with that, I believe in minimizing harm at the societal level, with a focus on justice and human rights.

That’s it.

That is the basis of my underlying political identity.

How it manifests is just as simple. The Rights and Liberties of each Individual should be respected and protected, and it is the responsibility of the Government to guarantee that they are. And where Conflict arises between one or more individuals, it’s the purpose of the Government to ensure that the negative impact on the individuals and on society as a whole is minimized.

I recall a conversation with my oldest two children around the time Barack Obama was elected President in 2008. I told them that if they encounter a scenario in which one group is forcing others (not part of their group) to live as if they are part of that group, then there is a clear indication that they are wrong. Whether certain people want to accept it, that’s the most common method by which one group inflicts harm on others. I’ll return to the topic of inflicting harm again shortly.

If I do not believe what you believe, you do not have the right to tell me that I must behave as if I accept your beliefs in place of my own. I also do not have the right to impose my beliefs upon you. That seems simple enough, and one would think we could all agree with that as a solid substrate upon which to build a social structure. Unfortunately, there are large groups of people who believe they should have the right to dictate to others what they are entitled to think and how they’re allowed to behave, based on their beliefs.

This applies to many things in our current political climate, in which everything from science to math has been transformed into a political football. Belief in scientific and professional consensus is not a political stance, but a practical one based on centuries of methodology and increased understanding of the world around us.

When Law Enforcement Statistics, collected and collated from all parts of the Nation, indicate that Immigrant Communities (including those with large numbers of Undocumented Immigrants) are less likely to be plagued with violent crime, it’s not subject to interpretation. This is especially true when one considers just how entrenched White Supremacy happens to be. Systemic Racism is a thing, and decades of data back that up. So, even with an implicit bias against Ethnic Minorities, the numbers supplied by Law Enforcement Agencies across the board show that crime and criminality are not correlated with Immigration or the presence of Immigrants. You don’t get to say otherwise without supplying equally valid and unassailable facts to reinforce your statements.

How you feel about a topic doesn’t impact the reality of a thing. If you claim that reality is other than what has been well-documented and proven, you are either misinformed or lying. What you are not entitled to is a difference of opinion, because we’re not talking about opinions.

When the overwhelming consensus of well-educated and established biologists, doctors, and psychologists explains that biological sex is not binary and that it is not the same thing as gender identity, you don’t get to come back with what you learned in Elementary School as an equally valid viewpoint. You should know by adulthood that the deeper you look into a thing, and the more research and study you perform, the more detailed and complicated the picture of that thing becomes. That is true for every field of science and life in general. Whether it upsets your rudimentary comprehension of something is irrelevant.

Now, I suppose I am operating under the assumption that people have learned something throughout their lives, whether that was a foreign language or something relating to their career fields, but in everything, we begin with the simplest, surface-level knowledge, and then we drill down and expand on those things. People dedicate years of their lives to studying these topics for a reason, because the better we understand them, the better equipped we are to navigate the universe in which we live.

We inhabit a shared reality, and whether you like it or not, we are subject to all of the same natural laws and principles. The sooner everyone chooses to get back on board, the sooner we can begin moving forward instead of standing still and wasting time attempting to negotiate on things where there’s no negotiation to be done. It’s not elitist for an expert to state that they know more about a subject than you do. They’re an expert for a reason.

One’s inability to understand something doesn’t make it fictional.

It’s well past time for us to stop entertaining lies, willful ignorance, and outright stupidity as a valid point of view. All perspectives are not equal, and do not share equal footing.

A trained pilot is going to do a better job of flying a plane than someone who played Microsoft Flight Simulator a couple of times.

A trained surgeon is safer to have in the operating theater than someone who played Operation a lot when they were growing up.

A chemist is better suited to break down what a substance is made of than someone who spent a few years cooking meth in their kitchen.

A physicist can tell you more about the universe than a self-help guru who overheard some people talking about quantum mechanics one afternoon in a restaurant.

Teams of scientists from diverse fields studying the data are better suited to tell us whether climate change is happening, if it is accelerating, how much impact human beings have on it, and whether it is dangerous and potentially deadly than someone who watches The Weather Channel a lot.

The consensus of medical doctors and researchers, psychologists, and pediatric specialists is better suited to determine what’s in the best interests of your child’s health and well-being than you are. This is true, no matter how much you love your child. And that absolutely includes vaccinations.

I know a fair amount about a good many things. I’ve been an avid reader since early childhood, and that included college textbooks while my mother was studying to become an English teacher, with a minor in psychology. I read a lot, and I frequently go down research rabbit holes in the process. My career as a Journalist (and Author) requires that I dedicate time to researching even topics that aren’t of any particular interest to me. And yet, even with all I know, I’m inclined to defer to the experts on matters for which they happen to have expertise. I’m going to briefly dismiss some of my false humility and the tendency to second-guess and doubt myself for long enough to say that I’m probably smarter than several of the people who might read this. I’m not being arrogant or self-aggrandizing, and it makes me feel a little bit dirty saying what I just did, but it needed to be said, that (as smart as I might be) I still choose to trust the consensus opinions of experts unless what they’re saying literally makes no sense (and that is seldom the case).

It may hurt your feelings to hear that you aren’t some brilliant and special savant who knows more about everything than the actual experts, but there’s only room for one Donald J. Trump in this world. And he’s already certain that he knows more about every subject under the sun than anyone else ever has. And, unfortunately, like Mr. Trump, you aren’t Will Hunting, because he was a fictional character. Neither you nor Mr. Trump will be impressing the MacArthur Foundation.

And while your feelings and ego might be hurt by that, it’s nothing compared to the actual harm you cause when you refuse to accept reality and grow the fuck up. This is where the second part of my political philosophy comes into play. We must ask who is being harmed by opposing sides of any discourse that’s taking place.

Who is harmed by the respectful acceptance and freedom for LGBTQ+ people to be who they are or to love who they love?

I can’t think of anyone being harmed by those things, and especially not when compared to the harm that is done by ostracizing and taking rights away from them. Does it, in some way, hurt non-LGBTQ+ people that those people exist? Is their very existence somehow threatening to people who are not part of the LGBTQ+ Community?

Is it hurting children to allow books into our schools and libraries that provide representation that reflects lived experiences that are familiar to them? As a child, would you not want to see reflections of yourself or those you love in the media made available to you?

Does it harm our children to expose them to the reality that a world of experiences, both cultural and individual, exists outside of their limited–but expanding–worlds? I would argue that it’s far more harmful to insulate them and raise them in a way that they’re subjected to discomfort or cognitive dissonance when they are later exposed to people and cultures unlike their own. That primes them to cause conflict, intentional or not. And I have to ask, who does that conflict benefit?

Does permitting abortions hurt the people who oppose the medical practice?

I fail to see any way in which it’s harmful to anti-abortion proponents when a woman and her doctor (and sometimes her partner) make the decision to go through with the procedure. I do see a great deal of harm inflicted upon the women (and girls) who are forced to go through with pregnancies that are either unwanted or unviable. In this case, it seems like a clear-cut answer, that only one side is actively choosing to harm other people and infringe upon their rights. Using bumper sticker simplicity, if you oppose abortion, don’t fucking have one.

This same thinking can be applied to virtually every topic we think of as being Political, and the reality is that only one end of the albeit limited spectrum of American Politics is invested in harming other people. Mostly, that harm is focused on marginalized groups: women, the LGBTQ+ community, ethnic minorities, cultural minorities, religious minorities, and so on. So, while I don’t believe that either Major Party has our best interests at heart, I will say that only one of them is actively opposing our Freedom and the Rights we’re presumably granted by the Constitution, which is intended to enshrine them.

The Sins of the Media Are To Be Laid On the Masses

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I believe in the Fourth Estate. I’m passionate about that belief, and I’m passionate about the role the Press is intended to play in a Free Society. Journalists have to hold those in power accountable and provide for an informed electorate. My colleagues have heard my rant often enough that they probably want to slap me whenever they know it’s coming. I occasionally find myself struggling to remind the people I work with that our responsibility is to elevate the level of discourse. It doesn’t matter whether we’re reporting on Congressional Legislation, new medical procedures, or anything else. Our role isn’t dissimilar from that of educators. We have to inform the people who rely on us, whether they like or agree with the information we provide.

Somewhere along the line, we’ve forgotten how important we are in keeping corruption, abuse of power, and malfeasance at bay. Some of us have become puppets of the very figures we’re meant to guard against, some have grown complacent, and still others have pivoted from providing information to providing entertainment. I’m not saying that education can’t be entertaining, because I’m a fan of John Oliver, John Stewart, Samantha Bee, Michelle Wolf, Cody Johnston, and others like them. But it’s a fine line to walk, and few do it well.

I won’t place the blame squarely on the Journalists who have lost their way. It’s the audience that craves drama, conflict, turmoil, and childish or boorish behavior. It’s the audience that drives engagement. It’s the audience that ultimately determines where advertising dollars are spent.

But we do bear some of the blame.

I first started working in Broadcast Television (and specifically News) back in mid-2000, when I was 21 years old. I began with the basics of operating studio cameras, controlling the teleprompter, floor directing, designing/assembling graphics, and so on. I left the industry in 2010, not entirely of my own volition. Eleven years later, in 2021, I was back again, and here I am today. I’ve spent approximately one-third of my 46 years working in that industry, and roughly half of my adult life. I’ve witnessed several changes over the last 25 years, and not all of them have been positive. I’ve seen faith in the News Media eroded, sometimes with good cause and other times because the average person doesn’t understand what goes on behind the scenes and beneath the surface.

When I left the industry in 2010, it was close on the heels of the Station Manager passing along a mandate from himself and the ownership of the station (several wealthy and influential families in the region) that, if a story had a political angle to it, we were to lean right in our reporting. I wasn’t part of the Newsroom at that station, but I didn’t think that was at all acceptable. I admit my morale and overall attitude toward station operations deteriorated after that. Unfortunately, that trend of rightward deviation has only persisted. But if you ask people on the street, a substantial number of them will claim that the News Media are biased and promoting a Leftist Agenda.

Perhaps it’s the fault of American audiences that they’re unable to recognize that there’s no such thing as left-leaning Media in the United States unless we’re looking at publications like Mother Jones and The Nation. Since most people don’t know that those outlets even exist, it’s a fair bet that most Americans have no idea what they’re talking about when they insist on a Leftist Bias in the Media. At best, what they’re referring to is a Liberal Bias from Media Organizations like MSNBC or CNN. Of course, those same people are likely to refer to the Associated Press, Reuters, NPR, and other politically unbiased Media Organizations as being left-leaning. Ultimately, it comes down to either accepting Propaganda over Reality or having a deep misunderstanding of Political Theory.

At best, it can be argued that there are Democratic (Liberal) and Republican (Conservative) Media Outlets. But even the Liberal ones tend to dismiss and disparage any Leftist or Progressive policies proposed by Democratic Party members. They do as much harm to actual Progressive Ideals as the Conservative Media does. The Liberals and Conservatives have far more in common than they don’t, in that they’re both invested in maintaining the Status Quo and shutting down any attempts to question it. The problem is that the Politicians and the Media are controlled by the same interests, because they control the money.

Of course, money has always been the worst influence on the Media. The earliest Newspaper in America had an advertisement in the first issue. And Advertisements have followed News from periodicals to radio, and from radio to television. And now, advertisements have jumped from television to social media platforms and websites.

The first advertisement on TV was way back in 1941, and they’ve become increasingly prevalent since then. The growth of television as an industry, and Television News as a result, led to the Federal Communications Commission enforcing the Fairness Doctrine, starting in 1949. It was intended to keep the burgeoning Media Outlets from misusing their power and promoting biased agendas. The Fairness Doctrine required that Media Outlets examine controversial public issues and provide airtime to opposing viewpoints.

As with several major errors made in the United States, it was brought to an end with a poor decision made under President Ronald Reagan (and his FCC Chairman), who dissolved the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Of course, the Fairness Doctrine wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t perfectly implemented. But there’s no denying that the purpose was noble and good, to hold off the prevalence of echo chambers and purely partisan News coverage. Abolishing the Fairness Doctrine is seen by many experts as the biggest contributor to the fractured, partisan environment we have today.

Naturally, one of the other major contributors to the decline in quality of News coverage was the advent of the 24-Hour News Cycle, after Ted Turner founded CNN in 1980. Much like the Internet today, it fed a desire for immediate updates and instant gratification. People didn’t want to wait until scheduled times to learn what was happening, especially when major events were transpiring. This need to cater to an audience’s obsession with instant gratification promotes mistakes, the sharing of bad information, and a lack of proper vetting. The need to be “first on the scene” because the audience will tune in elsewhere has done so much harm.

We in the Media are at fault for much of the misunderstanding and misapprehension we witness in the world around us right now. As an industry, we need to both acknowledge that reality and actively work to compensate for the damage we’ve caused. Now, I’m not talking about the explicit Partisan Propaganda of organizations like Fox News and Newsmax or Huffpost and MSNBC, but the otherwise unbiased news sources that do their best to provide balanced coverage. It’s not entirely on our shoulders, but we do bear a substantial portion of the blame, if only because we’ve been too uncritical for altogether too long, and that willingness to avoid being openly critical of various subjects and stances has allowed us to be backed into a corner that we seem to be ill-equipped to escape.

Of course, the lion’s share of the blame falls on the increasing tendency of politicians to turn every social, medical, and cultural issue into a political one. The people who watch it happening, without questioning how or why these things are suddenly “political” topics when they never had been before, are also at fault. It has left even the most legitimate media outlets with no simple way to address any of these topics. Instead, we dance around the issues, struggling to find opposing sides and lending them credence by providing them with a platform that they don’t merit. We hold off on sharing critical information because we haven’t been able to obtain a statement from someone with a viewpoint opposing whatever it is we’re trying to share. If we neglect to do so, we get called out for being biased.

We risk losing advertisers.

We risk litigation.

But in failing to inform, we risk losing the credibility we have left.

Fringe perspectives should NOT be provided the same degree of coverage. That’s the simple truth of it. But when a topic becomes heavily politicized, it becomes more challenging to navigate what should otherwise be a straightforward assessment of data, statistics, and known facts. When people refuse to accept that what they already believe to be true is not, we have no easy way to address that flaw. The political figures who insist on turning everything into a political battlefield know precisely what they’re doing, and we know WHY they’re doing it.

They force a dialogue that shouldn’t be a dialogue at all.

We saw it repeatedly during the COVID-19 Pandemic. It wasn’t exclusively the News Media at fault, because Social Media was a major source of much of the misinformation that was spread, and attempts to provide Fact Checks were perceived to be biased.

There are still people today who believe that the medical field was pretty evenly split on the topics of Vaccine Safety and Vaccine Effectiveness. Globally, based on a study of more than 40,000 nurses across 36 nations, fewer than 21% of nurses rejected the COVID-19 Vaccine. The most pronounced interval was between March and December of 2020, when Pharmaceutical Companies were initially testing the vaccines.
As early as June of 2021, according to the American Medical Association, 96% of practicing physicians were fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and an additional 1.8% of them were actively planning to receive vaccinations.

Unfortunately, the way the media reported on the topic gave people the sense that a large number of Medical Professionals were speaking out in opposition to the vaccine. This is a negative side-effect of the overcompensation involved in attempting to provide multiple sides of an argument with equal coverage. If we intended to provide balanced coverage, we should have given the anti-vaccine proponents roughly 5% of the coverage, compared to 95% of the coverage focusing on the medical consensus.

This is something we need to address.

It’s something we need to atone for.

What would previously have been simply a matter of focusing on medical consensus became a partisan issue, requiring more even-handed coverage of opposing sides when there are not equivalent claims made by both sides.

This is, of course, not isolated to the COVID-19 Vaccine. We’ve seen this happen with topics from Abortion to Gender Identity, none of which are inherently political topics. And they should not be.

These are subjects best left in the hands of the relevant professionals and experts, not politicians.

Abortion didn’t become a political issue until the 1970s, and Gender Identity started down that path in the UK in the 1970s as well. But didn’t become a major political issue in America until roughly a decade ago. Vaccination (as a whole) was a largely apolitical topic until more than 15 years ago. But, as these topics went from being personal and medical decisions to political ones, the News Media was forced to adjust how it covered them. The number of lies, discredited studies, and hate-based propaganda talking points we allowed to slip through has been disorientingly massive. We were supposed to be maintaining the public trust.

I’m sorry to say that we failed.

But we don’t have to continue failing.

How the American Political Parties Shifted Platforms

/ MeltdownMessiah / 1 Comment

It amazes me that so many people still love to trot out the old–and I believed, sufficiently dismantled–argument that Democrats started the KKK, so they are truly the party of Racists and Segregationists…while Republicans are the party of Lincoln, and therefore must be the good guys who believe in Equality and Liberty.

I never can tell whether these people are making intentionally bad faith arguments based on disingenuous, and manipulative cherry-picked snapshots of party standards from a century and a half earlier…or if they’re sincerely so historically illiterate that they just accept this argument at face value from other people who presented the bad faith argument for them. It’s sad either way, because they either aren’t capable of thinking for themselves or they aren’t capable of intellectual honesty…and neither of those traits should be praised or rewarded.

I want to get one big fucking fact out of the way before I address the falsehood there. This one is going to be hard for some people to hear, especially some of us White People…but it’s something that needs to be dealt with before I even begin digging into the process by which the Democratic and Republican Platforms became what they are today.

First of all, America as a nation is absolutely built on a foundation of White Supremacy, and that corrupt substrate still exists at the core of our society (regardless of party affiliation). It’s like a poison in the bedrock that finds its way into our spiritual and cultural soil and groundwater, tainting everything we do…and until we actively work together to leech that shit out of there, we’ll never be clean of it. The fact of the matter is that neither major party (nor the vast majority of smaller political parties) has been particularly interested in putting in that work, because the bulk of American politicians still benefit too much from their (conscious or unconscious) privileged status. That is a truth we need to remain aware of and vigilant to acknowledge and address whenever and wherever we see it manifesting.

Now, onto the claims made by people who insist on tossing 19th-Century Party Affiliations around as if they’re relevant to the platforms we see today. Those people are fixating on the titles while intentionally ignoring the most salient detail, which is to address which group was “Liberal” and which was “Conservative” at the time of Lincoln.

Just answering that single question turns the argument on its head. But I don’t mind going further into how the party demographics transitioned from what they were in the mid-to-late 19th Century to what they have been during my whole lifetime, and I’m currently 46 years old.

It started to take hold way back in the 1890s, in large part thanks to a Nebraska politician, William Jennings Bryan, who became the Democratic National Committee’s nominee for President, in response to backlash against President Grover Cleveland and the Conservative Democrats that dominated the party at the time. Unfortunately for Bryan, he lost to McKinley…twice.

After taking a brief hiatus from Presidential Campaigns, Bryan lost the Presidential Election for a third time, this time to Taft. But his influence didn’t fade, and he became Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson (until he ultimately resigned from the position).

During his life, Bryan made huge tectonic shifts in the Democratic Party. He drew in people from the political left (progressives) while fighting against American Imperialism, the influence of men like J. P. Morgan and other members of the privileged class who sought to manipulate American Politics for their gain through Crony Capitalism, and many traditionally Conservative ideals. All of this, while also supporting Women’s Suffrage and the League of Nations, and being the first Presidential Candidate to receive endorsement of the American Federation of Labor for his unflinching support of Labor Unions.

He did oppose American involvement in WWI, supported Prohibition, and actively fought against the teaching of Evolution and Darwinism in the Scopes Trial. So, on several matters, he and I would not have been in agreement. He also refused to attack the KKK directly, though not because he supported it, but because he expected it to fall apart on its own. He had more faith in the spirit of the American People than he perhaps should have, in that regard…but that was who he was to the core. He was a man of faith, which largely influenced his decision to take on the role he played in the Scopes Trial.

He was far from perfect, but he was emblematic of what the Democratic Party was gradually becoming.

William Jennings Bryan was arguably the figure one can most easily point to as the origin of the shift in party alignments. But he was only the first set of symbolic supports in creating the bridge that spanned that gulf.

While the transition may have started a few decades earlier, it wasn’t until FDR and the “New Deal” era that we started to really see Liberals as the Democrats we see today and Conservatives as the Republicans we recognize. FDR was, in many ways, the apex of that shift in party dynamics and platform. I would love to see a single Republican today adopt a platform as progressive as FDR’s. Unlike William Jennings Bryan, we all know at least a little bit about FDR and the “New Deal.”

It started as mostly a series of Economic Reforms: offering relief for the poor and unemployed, reforming the financial systems to avoid future economic collapse, and building the economy back up from the dismal lows following the crash of 1929. Major changes to the Federal Reserve, combined with the establishment of the FDIC and the Securities Exchange Commission, along with other Financial Regulatory Bodies, were engineered under FDR’s guidance to restore consumer confidence and bring the U.S. back from the brink of full financial failure. And it worked.

Though ostensibly a response to the Great Depression, there was much of FDR’s “New Deal” that cemented the new bedrock for the Democratic Party, outside of the purely economic considerations.

While modern Libertarians like to pretend that Corporations should be free to act outside of Regulatory Space and that the Free Market will force them to behave ethically, there is no historical precedent for that being the case. It was, in fact, Federal Regulations (and the emergence of Regulatory Agencies) under FDR that brought an end to some of the most egregious examples of Corporate predation. The National Labor Relations, Social Security, and Fair Labor Standards Acts protected workers, ensured protection for the elderly, disabled, and unemployed, fought against Child Labor, supported the development of Labor Unions, provided the 40-Hour Work Week, established a Federal Minimum Wage, and otherwise made it safer and less oppressive to be a worker in the U.S.

It was Conservative control of Congress (including the presence of many Conservative Democrats) that kept FDR from going even further with his “New Deal” Policies. But, during that era, the Democratic Party was reshaped further into being the Party of workers, racial and ethnic minorities, intellectuals, and others who had previously been traditionally aligned with the Republican Party.

Then we come to the Civil Rights Era, where the party transition reaches the Third Act, and the Southern Strategy (that only those invested in a fictional version of history will claim is a lie).

While men like Bryan and FDR reshaped much of the Democratic Party, there was, unfortunately, still a great deal of the previous century’s delineation present in the American South. The Civil Rights Era brought this to a head, as was always going to happen. The Democratic Party and, to a lesser extent, the Republican Party suffered from a sort of Identity Crisis, wherein members of the respective parties were closer in alignment with their opposition depending on where they happened to be located geographically.

Unlike the previous two Acts of the Three-Act transition of party platforms and demographics, the Southern Strategy was the work of Republicans. It was their effort to obtain support from White Southerners who were still Democrats (though they had little in common with Democrats outside of the dozen or so states involved).

There’s a strange symmetry involved in seeing this from a remove, decades afterward. Where Bryan started the process of pushing the Democratic Party to the Left, it was the Southern Strategy implemented by Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater that shifted the Republican Party to the Right.

One could argue (and I think, accurately so) that this started with the Republican Party taking on the banner of “States’ Rights,” which was previously a Democratic stance dating back to the time before the Civil War. This was in direct opposition to the platform of Abraham Lincoln, whom Republicans still want to claim, while defying virtually every aspect of Lincoln’s stated beliefs. This was part of Barry Goldwater’s “Southern Strategy” which focused on courting Southern Whites and dismissing further efforts to appeal to Black Voters, which included open opposition to the Civil Rights Movement as well as to Kennedy’s platform promoting expanded Unemployment Benefits, increased Social Security and Minimum Wage, sending aid to Economically Distressed regions of the country (including cities with larger minority populations), increasing Housing Availability, and so on. But it was the opposition to Kennedy’s Civil Rights policies that was most important here.

Kennedy fought for Voter Education and the removal of the Poll Tax (in addition to further increasing access to Voting Rights for Blacks). He used Executive Orders to promote Equal Opportunity and Anti-Discrimination for Employment, Housing, and Federal Contracts…becoming a champion of Affirmative Action within the Federal Workforce and beyond. Kennedy also struck a massive blow against Jim Crow by making it illegal, as it concerned Interstate Commerce.

These were all policies that Barry Goldwater and Conservative Republicans opposed. One need look no further than the conflict between Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater leading up to the 1964 Presidential Election to see the massive fissure growing in the Republican Party under Goldwater’s influence.

It’s no wonder he lost to Lyndon B. Johnson, with his Regressive, Pro-Segregationist, and Anti-Civil Rights stances even revolting significant portions of the Republican Party at the time (the remaining Liberal and Progressive elements at least).

It was around that time when Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party and joined the GOP, where he helped to manage Nixon’s campaign in the South. He was far from the last to do so, followed by notable figures like Jesse Helms and countless numbers of formerly Democratic voters. Many Republicans remained with their Party, believing they could rehabilitate it or that this shift toward Racist and Conservative Values would be temporary…but it was no longer recognizable as the Party of Lincoln by that point.

I’d like to make note of one funny aside. As counterintuitive as it may seem, George Wallace famously refused to leave the Democratic Party like many of his like-minded peers (despite repeatedly being repudiated at the national level by the majority). He did gradually soften his perspectives regarding Segregation and White Supremacy. Whether that was sincere or a performative shift to better continue surviving as he had up to that point is anyone’s guess.

Richard Nixon took Goldwater’s playbook and ran with it far more successfully, and I don’t mean that solely in that he actually won a Presidential Election. He focused his platform on the Coded Language of “States’ Rights” and “Law and Order,” which might sound familiar to voters who have been paying attention since 2015 or so.

The Third Act really doesn’t conclude until Reagan’s campaign in 1980 (and the subsequent eight years he led the Nation down the toilet), where Lee Atwater’s assistance helped to shift the overt Racism to more Dogwhistle-Coded language, focused on Economic Policies that would transparently benefit Whites more than any other group.

And it’s not difficult to discern how I feel about Ronald Reagan and the absolute disaster he was for America and the U.S. Economy, creating devastation from which we’re still picking through the rubble today.

So yes, the Southern Strategy is a real thing, and one that was discussed openly by the Candidates and Political Advisers involved in both its development and implementation. It’s on record, and trying to pretend it’s some Conspiracy Theory is ludicrous, at best, and entirely reliant on people never fact-checking what they want to believe is true. This isn’t like PizzaGate or any of the subsequent QAnon nonsense paraded around by the least credible people on the Political Right in America. There’s actually clear, concise data and historical records that don’t need to be twisted and distorted into the most bizarre shapes, explaining the Southern Strategy and how it was done.

Finally, to the people who want to make these bad faith arguments, all I can say is that you should read a book or two, and take some time to learn about American History…because even our High School Textbooks would have provided sufficient evidence to counter most of these ignorant claims. It leads me to believe that you didn’t retain much during your education, and that’s all the proof we need that the Department of Education should be more involved (rather than less) in establishing nationwide standards that aren’t associated with Standardized Tests, but on different methods of teaching and diverse styles of learning, to ensure that our Natural Born Citizens know at least as much as Naturalized Citizens have to.

I know I could pass a Citizenship Exam, do you? When taking that test, there is no Participation Trophy (and no points awarded) for waving a flag and displaying performative (though ultimately false) patriotism based on revisionist understandings that you didn’t even come up with for yourself.

My Assurance To You

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The current political climate in the United States has forced me to address far more political misinformation than I naively expected. I should have known better, having made it through not only the first Trump Administration, but also the year leading up to that and the interval of relative sanity that followed. The difference now is that I’m working as a journalist and don’t have the luxury of stepping away from the constant barrage of false claims, bad faith arguments, cherry-picked data, and data being tossed around without either context or nuance. On the positive side of things, I happen to enjoy doing research, and I’m good at it.

I’ve recently found myself sharing long, detailed posts on social media (Facebook, in particular, due to the lack of character limits being imposed), and someone suggested that they’d subscribe to it if I had a blog. I suddenly remembered that I do indeed have a website available where I can post these things. I’d been primarily focusing on using this space for reviews of books and audiobooks that I’ve completed, but I haven’t been doing that lately. Since I pay for the privilege of having this space, I might as well use it.

So, here we go.

I don’t expect you to take any of the things I post here at face value. You have no particular reason to trust me over any other entity sharing their political opinions online, and I don’t expect you to place that kind of faith in me. I want you to question what I say, especially if it doesn’t make sense to you. But I will make an assurance to you that I will not be posting something unless I’ve done my due diligence. I have dedicated time and energy to researching whatever the topic might be, using sources that are nonpartisan and unbiased. This is not to say that I am impartial, because (like everyone) I most certainly have my own set of biases in place. In my career as a News Producer, I have to exercise great caution to keep any of my opinions from influencing the news I’m assembling for the gradually diminishing audience for local television newscasts. But I do lean heavily on facts over feelings, even when they’re my own. If the facts and data don’t support something, it won’t be in my newscast unless I’m also supplying the facts and data that counter whatever that thing happens to be.

You’re always encouraged to research these things yourself; the resources are all readily available, and I’ll even happily provide links if they’re requested. I know not everyone has the time available to do so, and most people don’t enjoy research and collating data…at least not as much as I do.

I may mistype something here and there, double up or miss a word altogether, and even have an error in my math (though I typically double and triple check all the numbers). I apologize for any of those errors that may slip through. I’m not a fan of AI, but simple spelling and grammar checking algorithms are in play…however, they are occasionally more incorrect than I am.

As I said, I don’t expect you to trust me implicitly. What I do expect is that you know I care a great deal about being right, even when it doesn’t make me particularly nice. I don’t like being wrong, so I prefer to keep my mouth shut unless I know I’m not.

I’ll gladly admit when I’m wrong about a thing, but I go to great lengths to verify my sources and check my work before I share anything. Not only do I enjoy it, but I’m good at researching things, which is why I’m good at my job (and somewhat okay at my far less lucrative career as a writer).

Sure, I’ll tell someone an opinion is wrong, but that’s just me being an asshole, and we all know that. Of course, some opinions are informed by bad/false data, and I will try to address that…but opinions are subjective, whereas facts are not.

Five of a thing is always more than two of the same thing.

The sky appears mostly blue because molecules in the atmosphere scatter the light from our star in such a way (based on wavelength) that it looks that way.

The Earth is not flat.

We have been to the Moon, and astronauts left things behind on the surface even during the earliest missions.

And so on.

Some things are simply not a matter of opinion, and about which there are not equally valid arguments in opposition.

One thing I ask, beyond your belief that I care too much about being right to waste my time on the long posts without knowing I am, is that you do not use Google’s AI or ChatGPT as a resource. I can’t tell you how many times I happened to glance at what Google AI provided as a response to a search inquiry and felt like it either did not have the slightest capacity to recognize what was being searched for, or that it hallucinated a response that fell far out of line with any legitimate sources. That being said, I will acknowledge that it was closer to accurate more often than it wasn’t…but this is neither horseshoes nor hand grenades.