Were a legacy American of the Walter Cronkite era (not a perfect era for journalism by any means, but infinitely superior to what the corporate state media has now become) magically transported through time from 1963 to 2023, he or she would not believe what passes as news programming these days.
Some producer at failing CNN sent a camera crew out to a local Subway to seemingly spontaneously catch Special Counsel Jack Smith — who is currently building a prosecution case for the state against Donald Trump and ipso facto a press darling — walking out of the restaurant with a sandwich. Dana Bash then discussed the development with a panel of other news actors.
“New and exclusive CNN video of the Special Counsel at Subway, declining, though, to respond to reporters’ questions about today’s big news: a target letter sent to the former president of the United States,” Dana Bash leads in.
Exclusive video of a guy buying a sandwich! The stuff of Emmys.
Longtime news actor and consummate company man John King chimes in, “Jack Smith going to Subway today is a message to Donald Trump. Donald Trump tries to intimidate people. He tries to bully people. He tries to scare you away. That was Jack Smith with no words, a simple $5 sub in his hands, saying, ‘I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.’”
Purchasing an overrated sandwich from a multinational corporation in broad daylight surrounded by a team of staff and bodyguards with a camera recording all of the events has never been so brave or stunning.
Related: WATCH: CNN Pressures Cornel West to Drop Out, Return to Democrat Party Plantation
A lot of this, of course, is simply a structural problem with the modern news environment. These cable news outlets have 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to fill up so they can collect advertising revenue night and day. The machine never stops.
Another factor is the groupthink mindset that has overtaken the incestuous liberal managerial class. They are the Capitol of Panem inhabitants from Hunger Games fiction, decadent and totally detached from the sprawling masses they rule over, obsessed with frivolity.
But most importantly, even if such actors as Bash or King were inclined to stray from the plantation rhetorically, they are not at liberty to do so. There are clearly defined — if not explicitly then surely implicitly — confines of accepted rhetoric. The soft, implicit bans on broaching certain topics are only there to discourage such acts before other suppressive measures become necessary.
Notice, for instance, how little attention is paid to the fentanyl crisis, the rampant homelessness, or America’s crumbling infrastructure that gets a C- rating from the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Imagine a C- rating on infrastructure in the wealthiest nation in world history, and it never makes the news!
Such concerns, of course, are not the priorities of the corporate state media and the ruling elite they represent. Who needs a road in working order in Nebraska, after all, when the technocrats gallivant across the globe on their private jets?
The media’s job in this climate — at least captured, state-sponsored media — is to distract the serfs with the culture war and the whole spectacle it begs. Bread and circuses. Modern politics is a soap opera with fugly actors.