The See-Saw of Bias: or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the Liberal Media

Watching Fox News at the moment is like watching Napoleon desperately trying to command his armies from Elba. Beaten and bruised, they scream from their once-gilded, now-tarnished soapbox that the End is Nigh, gather the faithful. We Shall Overcome.

Seems a little dramatic. And yet that's what the news cycles have become: A dramatic plea to the public at large.

"Pay attention to us, John Q. Public! We've got the most comprehensive coverage on a plumber from the middle of nowhere!"

Recently, Fox News guest Bill Burton -- Obama spokesperson -- had to defend himself against the accusations of a liberally-biased media, candidate stroking, election manipulation -- virtually every possible complaint a conservative can have about a group of networks that employ people like Keith Olbermann. But why Bill Burton? Why should he have to answer these questions? He's not responsible for the media's full coverage of Barack Obama. He's responsible for promoting the man, sure, but is he really the one pulling the puppet strings over at MSNBC? Is he the one that rings the red phone over at CNN? No. He probably spends a good six to eight hours of every day eating Apple Jacks in his bathrobe, while DVRing every news program on the television and watching Lifetime TV. Because by this point in the campaign, he has likely gone insane.

Nonetheless, one of the shrill banshees that serve as daytime programming for Fox demanded to know why he call Fox News "biased," then launched on a diatribe asking him to answer for every liberal media bias in the known universe. Were I Bill Burton, I probably would have walked out of the via-satellite set, but he didn't seem to want to do that -- I can only assume he wasn't wearing pants, and thus couldn't stand up in front of the camera. It's probably the only reason I would have taken the beaner pitch to the right temple that Burton took from Fox.

Let's get something straight here, Fox. You aren't just biased -- you were biased FIRST.

Jumping on the W. Bandwagon (actually, probably a hayride) first, Fox gives fair and balanced coverage from their legion of pundits, creatures spawned after the 2000 election to do Karl Rove and Hillary Clinton's evil bidding. These barely-conceivable lumps of flesh do nothing but speak directly into a camera or microphone for several hours a day. The misshapen forms of Wolf Blitzer and Brit Hume seem human enough for the average person, and so use this to feed their message into the airwaves constantly, like a rusty metal splinter giving you blood poisoning. Their sole design is to pump you FULL of bias -- give you a message as slanted in their personal direction as possible, so as to bring your undecided beliefs into line with their own. Lou Dobbs spits more vitriol towards a hockey-mom governor that nobody cares about than WWII vets do towards Hitler. And he has a right -- it's a right to free speech and the power of opinion. They all, unfortunately, have this right, semi-human physiology notwithstanding.

But long before CNN was acting like a 24-hour campaign ad for the democrats, Fox News spent hours and hours extolling the virtues of President Bush, a man who by all rights may not be able to work the TV when there's more than one remote control involved. They excused every mistake, backed every decision, and brushed away every far-right decision as "neccessary" in times like these. Every scream from the masses below were silenced, because the Conservative Media Machine was biased -- a bias so strong it kept a man who would have failed Clown College in the presidency for 8 years.

So I say, bring on the Liberal Media Bias. Fox has had its eight years' reign over the news cycles, and as the ship pulls away from their isolated little island, they can't help but scream for it to come back. The Republicans had their chance, and used it to elect someone little better than a stuffed animal with a pullstring voicebox. But Fox, willing to support the decision from the get-go, doesn't want to go down with them -- and yet refuse to go Left, either. If Fox wants to stay around, we may see something truly awe-inspiring come out of this election, out of the complete ousting of the conservative government. If and when that happens, Fox might have no other choice than to change -- and become the most Fair and Balanced network of the 24 hour news cycle.

And isn't that really the scary thought?

Job"less"

So yes, I am currently employed, and yes, I make enough money to eat, sleep, and drive to work. It's a humble existence, but existence nonetheless.

That said, I've been looking for real, adult, grown-up-full-time employment for a while now, and I'm thinking I may as well start a blog. That's what writers who don't write for a living do, right? Blog To Be Discovered. The hopes that your five-to-seven-hundred word composition will somehow make it to the far reaches of the internet, the one that's available in Hollywood or something, where the websites are made of gold and Google filters out all of the negative hits when you search your own name.

I need a webcam, and have no money: Here comes the jury-rigging.

The Crazynets

I spend quite a bit of time on what you would call the "Crazynets," a dungeon-type section of the internet populated by conspiracy theories, shaky-UFO videos and enough animated GIFS to rival a 14-year-old girl's myspace page. The Crazynets have always been there, a sub-level of the mainstream web get Google hits popping up far beyond the third "O" of the 'Gooooooogle' search results. They are loud. They are mad. And they're largely... ignored.

The reason the Crazynets appeal to me is the massive population of people who not only have some of the most insane stories you have ever heard, but also expect to be believed. As if the claims originating partially from them and partially from the tenth planet in the solar system HAVE to be geniune.

If we're all so sane, why aren't these people publicly ridiculed? Lambasted as frauds and fakes and phonies as opposed to being forgotten and largely irrelevant? They aren't exactly a small population -- so what if they live in the center of the Mojave desert, off the grid, with satellite phones? They're people too.