“Our Stupid Infantile Press”

Bill Maher's recent reference to “Our stupid infantile press” has stuck in my mind during the past week since he said it. I immediately feel skeptical these days of harsh words like that but I also felt immediate agreement with this thought.

I can not now remember the writer's name but I also recently read a journalist's defense of the “despicable press,” using the phrase sardonically. His reference was to Patrick Kennedy's famous indictment, “The press is despicable.” I remember our stupid infantile press responding to it at the time with “Patrick has a drinking problem” and I thought they had forgotten it, but I now see they have not forgotten it.

One of the reasons this has been in my mind so much is the perspective that comes from being near death, from which you can more easily see the trivialities for what they are, since acknowledging them as trivialities and idols of the tribe no longer endangers your ability to survive.

I've also just read Nicolai Gogol's Dead Souls, which seems more annihilating of such things than anything else I've ever read.

You read Gogol, then flip through the TV channels before you turn out the light to go to sleep, and you're struck by the stupid infantile newscasters trying to appear as if they  were otherwise. It's really draining just to watch them try to do it. It also seems as if every other, non-news, channel at that time of night has films with a lot of murders and gun-fire and pointing of guns at people's heads.