The latest updates on the “new normal” – chronicling the lies, distortions, and abuses by the ruling class.
From the 2002-03 Iraq war lies to the more recent Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax to MSNBC’s Ali Velshi’s “not, generally speaking, unruly” BLM riot coverage next to burning buildings, credulously and reflexively repeating fake news talking points to promote a narrative has been in fashion among the corporate press for decades.
By this point, it’s as American as apple pie.
As depraved as America’s Fourth Estate has proven itself to be, though, the corporate media’s excesses have gotten weirder and faker over the past year and a half. In fact, they’ve reached Twilight Zone-level surrealism. The COVID reality-reengineering is the apex — the Michael Jordan of corporate-state propaganda.
Here’s what the Most Untrusted Names in News© have been up to recently.
Documentary, by definition, implies the act of documenting: “using pictures or interviews with people involved in real events to provide a factual report on a particular subject.”
The North Korean government doesn’t produce “documentaries.” In the same vein, neither apparently does National Geographic, at least not anymore.
The shameful outlet – which, at some point in the last several years, shifted from nature documentaries about lions hunting gazelle or whatever to Deep State propaganda – released a truly bizarre, vomitous worship-fest appropriately titled ‘Fauci’ in which Bono, Bill Gates, George W. Bush, and Anthony Fauci himself talk about the God-like work of Anthony Fauci, Anthony Fauci’s martyrdom for the COVID cause, Anthony Fauci’s benevolent wisdom, etc.
If you read the vaunted critics’ reviews via CNN, The Guardian, et al. on Rotten Tomatoes, you might come away with the impression that ‘Fauci’ was a smash hit with the people.
But what did actual, normal people (the non-CNN critics) on the very same platform, Rotten Tomatoes, think of the documentary?
The corporate reviewers gave it a 91%; real people gave it a 2%.
Like you would expect from a pink-haired millennial New York Times op-ed writer, Van Badham went super-heavy on the quippy, pseudo-edgy bullshit to put the filthy MAGA rabble critical of the COVID police state in their proper place:
“We have mostly spent pandemic lockdowns alternating between boredom, frustration, wine, a lot of Netflix and trying to locate our trousers before Zoom meetings. Recently, we’ve also become aware of a disturbing myth that appears to be enthusiastically fostered on the American right: Our experience of the pandemic, apparently, has been that of a violent police state. We must have been too busy taking out the bins to notice.”
In Melbourne, even under recently “lifted restrictions” – the carrot dangled in front of the COVID slaves/former citizens’ faces to get them to submit to the shot – they still:
In their mercy though, the Victorian authorities will allow weddings and funerals for the slaves (with reasonable limitations, of course):
“An outdoor wedding can have 50 fully vaccinated people, or 20 with an unknown vaccination status, while an indoor wedding can have 20 fully vaccinated people, or just 10 when the vaccination status is unclear.
The same caps apply for both religious gatherings and funerals.”
The New York Times guest op-ed pink hair wants you to know all of this is totally normal. Funeral attendance in the Land Down Under has always hinged on counting how many guests are properly injected with the right Big Pharma formulation.
Aussie cops have always inspected a random pedestrian’s coffee cup to see if it’s cool for him to pull his mask off (temporarily, of course; it goes back on when the slave has finished his drink).
Fresh off his paternity leave after adopting two children with his husband, Mayor Pete (now Transportation Secretary) hit the corporate airwaves to declare that the supply chain crisis, rather than being an unmitigated disaster, is actually a good sign of a healthy economy thanks to the deft leadership of Joseph Biden.
*No one in their right mind would believe that 78-year-old Biden’s handlers would actually let him be shot up on live television in front of dozens of news reporters and cameras.
No worries, though – trusted authority PolitiFact is here to assure you that nothing was “fake” all at about the staged, obviously fake event because, as they explain, the same stage had been used for a previous fake news event:
“The backdrop behind Biden as he was getting his booster shot wasn’t ‘created’ for that event — it had been used five days earlier for a global coronavirus summit.”
A mea culpa from CBC (released under pressure):
“On October 1st and 2nd, CBC Edmonton ran two stories describing the realities of being in an ICU ward…. Unable to bring our cameras into a hospital ICU ward, we shot footage at two training facilities which was then used for illustrative purposes… it was not clearly identified as training footage and it should have been.”
CNBC via Twitter:
Somehow, despite the White House’s professed obsession with combating “fake news,” the corporate media (and all their good-boy-and-girl Twitter Blue Check sycophants) get to keep their social media accounts and clout and access to Reliable Sources© while their rivals fall prey to unprecedented Big Tech censorship.
What dissidents can expect in America in 2021:
Above: an actual non-satirical tweet from CNN’ Brian Stelter, Sept.11, 2021 (the audacity!)
Pictured Above: Mr. Potato Head Tries PCP, Goes Horror Punk, Attends Award Ceremony
Isn’t that weird — how only the media outlets and personalities that push the same neoliberal narrative don’t get censored and, in fact, are lauded as paragons of morality? As literal heroes?
How weird.
It’s almost like gaslighting the public on behalf of the ruling elites (their sponsors) is the corporate media’s true job – not delivering facts.
Ben Bartee is a Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via his blog, Armageddon Prose, Substack, or Patreon.
