It really is amazing how popular media can keep up this blunt, simple message of praise for the powerful—well, their owners, I suppose—even as that message seems to get bigger, louder, and more monotonous every year. It is like a vast brass band that keeps playing “Yackety Sax”, and no one else can get a note in edgewise. And why is this? Well, who doesn't like “Yackety Sax?” Meanwhile the only place to find real news or information is some website or blog somewhere. You have to collect various sources when you find them.

At Firedog Lake there is a well-reasoned summation of this problem: Welcome to My Nightmare.

I've no idea what could be done about this. I think it's even bigger than it looks: mindless PR jabber is everywhere. Every sort of institution now seems to devote extraordinary efforts to the promotion of some kind of fantastic public identity, to the point where the actual business of getting anything done is secondary, even rather humdrum and viewed with condescension. It could be that soon no politician, CEO, or whatever will do anything other than encourage staff to think of new ways to brag about the company, never mind what they're supposed to be doing. I used to think I was witnessing the bieth of some new hysterical religion, and now I see that it is in its toddlerhood, and there is no stopping it.

So perhaps, of the defensive possibilities on offer, I would praise the value of “meltdown”.

Labels: Meltdown, TV