The Bobcat works in an office where all dey he is bombarded by FoxNews’ hysterical right-wing lunacy. Cracking, he opined:
The Social Bobcat: i’m getting sick of seeing this alarmist news all day long
Steven: FoxNews: scaring you shitless so you stay at home, watching us
The Social Bobcat: Bird Flu! Are Stocks Next Target? How Will Inflation Affect The Cost of Your Ride on Charon’s Boat to Hades?
October 14th, 2005 at 5:25 am
All news channels are like that. Especially local news.
October 14th, 2005 at 2:47 pm
better that the avian flu get me before the world’s petroleum reserves run out and society crumbles while god sends wave after wave of natural disasters to herald jesus’ second coming to tell us that sexual predators might be moving into our neighborhood and how we can protect our children!
…etc.
October 14th, 2005 at 2:48 pm
i must say i despise the Fox Newt much more than the CNN Salamander.
[Steven:] I had originally posted this with the title of “The social bobcat lashes out agains FoxNewt.” This was humorous, but typographically incorrect. This having been corrected, I am making this note here so that The Social Bobcat’s legacy of fine humor is not sullied.
October 14th, 2005 at 7:08 pm
Let’s not make light of the natural disasters, okay?
October 15th, 2005 at 9:10 am
Jim,
I don’t think Sobby is making light of natural disasters, what he is maaking a point about is the continued manufacture of ttragedy on cable news.
October 15th, 2005 at 3:10 pm
For those of you who didn’t evacuate their homes for two weeks, I can assure you that Rita and Katrina “manufactured” the tragedy.
October 16th, 2005 at 8:28 am
James,
While I certainly understand that you, as an evacuee, were inconvenienced / displaced / saw your familiar surroundings altered irreparably by a natural disaster, you’re taking the discussion far too personally.
Fact: Natural disasters happen: Rhodes, Alexandria, Pompeii, Herculaneum, San Francisco, New Orleans, the Golden triangle. Humans, including bloggers, friends, loved ones, etc. run the risk of being affected adversely by them. For those not impacted by them directly to discuss them dispassionately or in the cold calculus of dollars and cents is natural. This is a point that Dennis Hastert was not allowed to make after his media gaffe of stating that perhaps rebuilding NO was not the best idea.
Your original claim was that sobby was making light of natural disasters. I don’t think that’s true at all. What he was making light of was the 24/7 barrage of tragedy and threat sold by cable news systems to keep butts in seats, and channels unchanged. That the sweep of events happened to include a hurricane that leveled your town is, actually, quite irrelevant. One must ask, would you have been so sensitive had it been “Tsunamis, Bird-Flu, Whooping Cough, Child Militas, and Rwandan Genocide” that were enumerated? I think not. For those you would view those as abstractions, as those not under world historical events’ boot have the luxury to.
Furthermore, an adept newspaperman such as yourself surely recognizes the difference between the manufactured media event of natural disaster X and natural disaster X in itself. Natural disasters are inherently tragic, the sanctimonious scavenging of anchors for puppies (as seen on “The Daily Show”) are the manufactured tragedy. You will concede there was a lot more manufactured tragedy associated with this storm than the inherent disaster brought. This is the same line of media event “happening” versus “actual” happening that led some postmodern critics to assert that the Gulf War / Holocaust never happened: the tragic / military events did factually happen, but the event, “The Holocaust” is a different event, a hyperreal corporation made by Stephen Spielberg, the media, the Shoa foundation, et. al.
While it’s certainly within your rights to be incensed or irritated to see third parties discuss damage and destruction to your locale, to use it as an emotional battering ram is certainly not fair. Further deliberately crafting such a battering ram while it deliberately missing Sobby’s point that agitprop (or tragiprop?) news numbs is intellectually dishonest. It is on the level of asserting that if I say the 24/7 tragedy watch post-9/11 was numbing, ridiculous, and designed to line the news companies’ coffers that I’m making light of the human loss. Or that James Dedman, because he is against affirmative action in his editorials at “The Daily Texan” and that I benefited from quotas, is against my personal well-being (a letter to the editor which I believe you must have seen once or twice). Or it is on the level of the speechwriting arm of George W. Bush whose every bumbling, fumbling poorly-executed decision was executed under the 9/11 emotional battering ram.
Perhaps your indignation at third parties’ cold discussion of damage to your home region could serve to be explained by Sobby’s key point: 24/7 manufactured tragedy (Scott Peterson, Michael Jackson Trials, Shondra Levy, Bird Flu, Stock Crash, Bad water, et. al.) numb people to actual tragedy experienced by you and your neighbors?
Steven
October 16th, 2005 at 12:38 pm
Whoa. I provoked quite a response. Yes, I played the tragipop card, but I have to admit, that I am growing a bit weary of commentators and the like using the hurricanes to advance whatever preexisting, pre-hurricane agenda they advanced, whether it be an anti-Bush, pro-Bush, anti-Dem, anti-Repub, anti-24 cable news network, et cetera. While you purport and sobbyatwork purport that the mass media “manufacture” tragedies, I see tragedies that these major news networks missed. Really, the stories of Rita (according to the national news) are that Houston was saved (though gridlocked), New Orleans got more flooding, and a myriad towns ofwhich national newsman had never heard took a slight beating. Two days later, there was no story. Cities such as Port Arthur, Texas and Beaumont were covered not very often at all during the pre-hurricane on the national news. Cities like Vidor, Jasper, Woodville, Port Neches, Groves, Deweyville, Mauriceville, et cetera, weren’t covered at all. Why weren’t they part of the manufacturing process? Where is the national news as Southeast Texas picks up the many, many pieces of itself scattered about the coast and beyond? They are gone, off to manufacture the next story, I suppose.
Now, you say, their negligene is just evidence of the manufacturing process, eh? Perhaps. But to say they “manufacture” news is to say that they distort, or twist, or sensationalize the tragedy. I don’t think they did that here. If anything, there was an underreporting of what happened.
The real fallacy of the Harmsian, or Sobbyatworksian, philosophy is that hurricane coverage is akin to Chandra Levy and/or Michael Jackson coverage. We don’t need to know about Chandra Levy or Michael Jackson 24 hours a day. HOWEVER, WE DO NEED TO KNOW SUCH INFORMATION ABOUT IMPENDING NATIONAL DISASTERS. Remember, not everyone has access to the news 24 hours a day, and so when they turn to a network on which they know they will find news, they may need information that has already been repeated. Evacuation routes, what’s going on, the path of the hurricane, the category of the hurricane, etc. This information is necessary and vital in a way that celebrity court coverage and such is quite not. Now, this information may not be of relevance to those sipping Starbucks and reading Wifi in San Fran coffeehouses, nor may it aide in the seduction of a cute record store clerk at the Amoeba Records in the Haight, but to the several million in Texas and Louisiana who were directly affected (and to their relatives afar, and to the citizens of Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma where the evacuees were to flee), it is directly relevant. I’m sure you see the distinction? So, tell me, if I am watching “manufactured” coverage to learn the fate of my home and my region, how is that akin to my watching the Jackson trial coverage, were I to choose to do so?
Then, of course, there is your singling out of Fox, a subtopic about which I will say no more. I am no fan of Fox, but surely all of the 24 hour news networks are equally culpable? This, methinks, is just evidene of someone using the hurricane to bash that which they already bashed.
I’ve written a bit without going back to reread the comment to which I am responding, so forgie me if I stray a bit off topic.
But the real question is, why did you change your post to read from the original IM names to new “manufactured” names?
More later when I am done packing for Chicago. Maybe. Don’t be so mad.
October 16th, 2005 at 12:42 pm
Oh, and nothing illustrates the under coverage of the hurricane more than this: “You will concede there was a lot more manufactured tragedy associated with this storm than the inherent disaster brought.” For each puppy saved, there was far, far more actual “inherent” damage. If only you could pry yourslf away from Feist long enough to read the local news websites (which, I suppose, the anchorpersons, and Jon Stewart, for that matter, did not do, either).
And where did Sobby make the point that the saving of puppies numbs people to the trees in their homes?
October 17th, 2005 at 8:06 am
steven summed it up correctly when he stated that the focus of my comments was about the pervasiveness of ‘scare tactic’ news; i had no intent to make light of natural disasters or those affected by them.
i live in houston so i stayed tuned to news reports about storm progress, city evacuations, etc.; those weren’t scare tactics as you note but helpful information used to educate the public and make preparations as orderly as possible.
my original sound-off wasn’t necessarily about disaster coverage but of the way Fox (and assumedly other networks) runs any stories into the ground (whether the latest disaster, court battle, or political scandal), most times with an alarmist viewpoint added along the way (here’s our report on Pat Robertson suggesting that the increased frequency of natural disasters may be heralding the End Times).
just give me Walter Cronkite reading the facts on the evening news, hehe. no fancy graphics, no talking heads yelling at each other, just the news.
October 17th, 2005 at 8:42 am
oh, and steve, with your editorial spelling fix to the original blog post my secondary “Fox Newt / CNN Salamander” joke in the comments section is rendered meaningless!