Well, that did not last long

 You can't make me do it, Matty. I'm not writing about any topic twice in a row, let alone that one.


The reason I still like to check in on drudge is that he, if somewhat more obviously taking sides than in the past, still seems to have a great barometer on what is news worthy, and will link to a handful of non-AI slop stories about it.


I looked around at a handful of other news sites I frequent on occasion to see if there was anything worth teeing off on. They were all 'problematic' in the same kind of way, and now I'm going to tell you how in a characteristically rambly way.


Beer, Brats, and Bride is a peculiar event; a camp festival where we all revel in gathering around a cult classic that we have seen too many times. The camaraderie is strengthened by the shared knowledge that we are doing something very silly. Lines are recited aloud, laughter, hoots, and screams come from the audience as if scripted.


Every single year, unfailingly, I look forward to watching this film with tepid enthusiasm. 


I say to myself "Camelot is an awfully silly place" "The Princess Bride is an an awfully silly movie. It really is not that good. Why do I have to watch this every year again." And then the festival begins, and I watch it, and I enjoy it more than expected. I'm really pretty dumb that way; I will experience the same thing many times and then be stunned when future repetitions yield the exact same outcome.


My exceedingly practical brother-in-law, who has excellent taste in many things--chiefly eldest brother's in law and film--finally helped me understand this phenomenon.


The Princess Bride is a good movie.


Hey Now! Stop throwing things and hear me out. There are several things going for it:

  1. Good (genuinely funny) dialog
  2. It manages to be a funny movie that builds to dramatic moments that you actually care about
    1. Good character development, which goes back to good dialog
  3. Excellent pacing--there is no dead time. They story advances constantly and keeps the viewer engaged
Now, where the old BIL opened my eyes to something was that what allows for the pacing to keep the plot driving forward is that the film does not show us everything. This is really a lost art in an era of focus groups with 6 second attention spans who help spawn bloated scripts with contrived dialog about things that every Comm major knows go in the appendix of the PowerPoint deck, but hey, somehow they are still in the middle.


With The Princess Bride, the audience is left to imagine and fill in the blanks on all kinds of things. The film is fuller and better for the things it leaves out. Your brain is actively engaged in filling in the pattern. They have not pre-chewed your food; they have given you the tenderest morsels and allowed you to imagine the gristle.


But I am talking about Matt Drudge and the news.


The great sin of all modern journalists, Drudge included, is that they cannot resist the urge to chew your food for you. I went to a handful of sites looking for a suitable headline, only to find articles that were less interested in what happened than in telling me exactly how I was supposed to feel about it.


We live in a Ganges style garbage river of hot takes, Jeremiads, and bombastic titles that make OG buzzfeed look Pulitzer worthy. I'm do not need to be constantly told to be alarmed, to be angry, or to be shocked; I am reasonably sure I can get to each of those on my own where appropriate.


As a result, I moved on from drudge to several other options that also proved unedifying and exhausting.


Perhaps there has never been some golden era of news where well written, objective, reporting of fact was the norm, but it is damn near impossible to find today. In my last post I alluded to people needing to wait for a signal, for intellectual leadership to react to a complex moral and political moment. This moment was as yet unchewed. Whole food not suitable for minds used to processed foods.


I have no aquifer of untainted fact to draw on. Just the frustrated certainty that it could be better, and it should be better, and that imbibing this sensationalist pap is bad for us. In film and in the news, this trend is an infantilization of the audience.


I'm still going to check the news every day, because I want to keep abreast of what is happening in the world, but I really wish there was some way to tap into some old-fangled news in the same way that we can tap into old-fangled cinema whenever we choose.


The good news is that I have a suggestion. Nothing makes a bad movie better than engaging your mind in identifying all the ways in which it is bad. So also, we can enjoy looking under cruddy journalism through a microscope, and observing how the organism is attempting to inflame our righteous indignation, give us a call to action, and actually provide relatively little substantial information in the process.


Sorry you got this rant, but Matty D really had to still be out here talking about yesterday's news and sending me out to plow the shit and try to scare up something usable. I will take suggestions of more varied places to draw on for headlines that are not major news outlets or political op-ed factories.

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