Abesha.Com

Recycling the Buzzless Buzz from the Empire

Oh, if there is anything the glorious American media is good at, it's setting the buzz strong, even when there isn't a buzz. And no, I refer not to the Swine Flu, even if the story has the Globe & Mail's Margaret Wente "bored to bits." I typically reserve my cynicism for things that'll have little to zero chances of humbling me - like the piracy drama that had all of our media outlets taking us to the Indian Ocean,LIVE. So, I refer then to (firstly) the first 100 days of Obama's presidency - not the 99th, not the 101st - the first 100 days of Obama's presidency, which had every major network, newspaper and their spin offs and copycats buzzing all the way to Mars. Surely the Martians must have been rolling their eyes all week. Assuming they have eyes, of course... Apparently the randomness of the benchmark goes back to the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt who had used the first 100 days of his presidency as a timetable for measuring and addressing the enormous challenges of the depression era. But I think if he were alive to witness all the noise it's been garnering today, he'd gladly settle for a first term analysis. What's a measly 100 days after all? That's just 10 days more than what the average employer uses to evaluate her rookie employee. And as the almost 100 days trial period has proven not enough time to call an employee's bluff, some employers, rogue as they may be, are even extending the arbitrary firing period to 6 months. And with the president being the ultimate employee, of the ultimate office, of the ultimate state, I think 365 days might be a fair compromise. Dwelling on the first 100 days of a presidency is not only meaningless, but it's b-o-r-i-n-g. It's just not enough time for a major slip up, gossip or legitimate criticism to surface. The U.S. media needs to give the man, the job and his people some mistake room. And the rest of the media world - they need to stop buzzing up everything the U.S. media buzzes up!

And that means laying off the other empire buzz that's been circulating the universe: Obama has been blessed with the opportunity to appoint a new Justice of the Supreme Court. It's apparently BIG news - for the fun challenged, of course, but what's Paris and Lindsay got to do with this? Who says what's fun in one realm is necessarily fun in another? Indeed, as BBC's Katty Kay emphatically suggested a few days ago: such appointing power is an even bigger perk of the president's job than living in the White House itself! She must know something we don't know cuz it's been a story made for the stars, with news of the once in a lifetime appointing opportunity popping up everywhere. Or maybe she just feeds off the U.S. media indiscriminately, like we do in Canada. It 's a buzz there, so it's gotta be a buzz here, even if we're hearing about the retiring Justice, David Souter, and "quirky personality" for the first time. No different than the buzz that has surrounded the Republican senator, Aren Specter, I suppose, who crossed the aisle the other day to join forces with the radical left. That'd be the Democrats by the way. Specter's defection was major news with the U.S. media, so naturally, it became major news here in Canada when, really, he should have just been a footnote on some general analysis of U.S. politics to come. But no, Canadian media gives it equal importance, like with everything else the U.S. media sees as major news. They're shamelessly addicted.

When the news is big, and relevant, it makes sense to be all over them. They're our sugar mama after all... But when the U.S. media is buzzing up stories - stories really made for and recognized by their powerful elites, we need to seriously get a life and start investigating other stories. Stories involving the first dog, Bo, for example, have no business making news here. They have no business making any kind of news anywhere, but let the U.S. media worry about its reputation. This planet is huge, there are tons of other stories to investigate, and legitimate "buzzes" to pursue. Look at the Berlusconi comic opera, which the Globe & Mail's Philip Pullella was able to dish on in the Globe's Thursday edition from going outside the empire. You can have a read of the report yourself, but the short end of the story is that the Italian Prime Minister has an apparent eye for the younger woman, which the first lady has openly lamented on!

Sure, it's high trash, but it's at least "buzz" worthy story, which the U.S. media thsese days hasn't been able to offer us. But were are what we are: addicted to the empire, and its mouthpiece, so we'll buzz up anything they buzz up...

~Addis (apoliticalbeing.com)