re: #13 freetoken

I suppose I could chalk this up to some post-modernism creep into our public discourse, but that seems too easy and trite.

Post-modernism actually provides a framework for describing what you’re talking about, but it didn’t “invent” it. In spite of its boogeyman status as the hippy “nothing means anything, man” philosophy, po-mo actually does a great job of breaking down the gulf between the object and the perception of the object.

Basically, people perceive A to be A because it performs A-ness. Thus something can be sort-of A, or “A, but a crappy version of A“—and furthermore, the criterion of A is A has a subjective component. My understanding of “chair-ness”—what is a chair, what is a “good” chair, what kind of chair I want—might not be exactly the same as yours. That subjectivity creates things like aesthetic distinctions, personal “style,” and—when stretched out to the level of culture—of cultural misunderstandings and biases.

This does not result in nihilism or intellectual Floyd holes. It just means that human communication is filled with nuanced details. Sometimes the listener won’t get the full meaning of the speaker…and most of the time that’s okay, and when it’s not okay, it’s just extra work.

What you see on FOX News and wingnut sites is basically the inverse of the po-mo “A is sort of A” subjectivity: there’s a denial of subjectivity that is intentional and often cynical…A is A, and can only be A exactly as declared by (pick an asshole). The dissolution of the distinction between fact and opinion is intentional. FNC and “news” websites exploit flawed human heuristics: if something looks about like A, we assume it’s actually A. The po-mo framework is just the kid pointing out the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Look at FNC shows: the layout of the set, the wardrobes, the makeup, the camera angles, the reading and the “casual” talk of the announcers, the various tickers and scrolling text…there is a conscious attempt to echo the design pioneered by CNN and HN. It looks like a news show, as an American of a certain age would assess such things (because of culture.) Fox News does “news” like Brian Williams does “truth”: the exterior performance does not guarantee a deeper level of veracity…but the exterior triggers the heuristic “X looks like A, it should be A.”

Yellow Journalism was working the same corner before the Electronic age. FOX News arguably is an alloy of the TV news format and the tabloid rhetoric shit-raking. In your statement, you placed at the center of the concept “news” the premises that it was emotionless and reported events factually: what you’re up against is a conscious construction of news as opinion-that-is-fact.

Earlier I said that subjectivity is normal, and there’s just a communication gap that people can bridge with extra effort…but what if the gap was being widened on purpose? Because that’s what we’re looking at these days. Much like when I try and talk about epistemology, I’m a bit out of my depth, but the rolling transformation of meaning on the US reactionary right is fascinating and spooky. Colbert’s invention of “truthiness” was supposed to be satirical, but it’s actually pretty chilling when you realize it amounts to gouging out the core of the concept of veracity (as understood by everyone except Thulsa Doom and perhaps some really intense Maoists) and replacing it with self-serving subjective impressions while denying that very subjectivism.