MAYBE POSSIBLE ART
MAY 13, 2011. This is part of my flood. The flood that says: other people are imagining reality for you, so why not invent it for yourself THE WAY YOU WANT TO?
Contrary to popular belief, this shift doesn’t involve going crazy or finding yourself in a deserted cosmic bus station at 3 in the morning, unless that’s where you want to be.
Today, I do a little more dissection on the corpse called Media.
In particular, what passes for medical reporting.
I’m motivated by my radio interview this week with Becky Estepp, who is the project director of a lawyer-group called EBCALA. Becky explained that, although the federal government has quietly paid out $$ claims to parents of autistic children, who were damaged by vaccines, publicly the government asserts there is absolutely no connection between the vaccines and autism.
These payouts are done through a federal agency called VICP. VICP puts parents through a lot of red tape, and denies most claims.
Well, VICP was originally set up when big pharmaceutical companies—losing huge lawsuits filed by parents of kids harmed by vaccines—approached the feds and said, “We’re in deep trouble. If these suits continue to be brought against us, we won’t be able to manufacture vaccines anymore.”
The feds and the companies then cooked up their plan. Create a new agency, VICP, and mandate that ALL claims for damage must go through it. In fact, the US Supreme Court has decided that parents can’t sue vaccine manufacturers anymore, on the basis that their vaccines could have been safer. VICP is their only option. Thus, the drug companies are protected.
And as more states consider making it harder for parents to opt out of vaccinating their children, we have a potential situation wherein a product—vaccines—must be accepted…and if anything goes wrong, there is no recourse involving the maker of that product.
When mainstream medical journalists approach this subject, they invent a cozy little universe in which “everything is okay.” Actually, most of the time, that’s the universe they invent whenever a controversial medical subject comes up.
Conventional medical journalism is an art, believe it or not. It’s not a high art, but it still qualifies. Reporters learn how to use certain words and phrases, especially when, in the middle of an interview with a high-ranking researcher at a prestigious institution, they realize the researcher is straining, like a constipated blowfish, to inflate the importance of his own work.
The reporter slumps in his chair. He has no story. He has a deadline, but no content.
So he shrugs it off and gets ready to pepper his article with terms like:
“Could very well be a major advance on.”
“A possible coming breakthrough.”
“Glint of light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Evidence suggests.”
“The cutting edge of.”
“More research is needed but.”
“The future holds promise for.”
“A growing consensus that.”
“Are beginning to believe.”
“Strong conviction in light of.”
“In a related field, studies showed.”
“Colleagues agreed that.”
“Results never seen before.”
“Opportunities abound for further.”
“If this turns out to be.”
“Although there were side effects.”
“Hope is spreading that.”
“Never tried in the past.”
“In a few patients, we noticed.”
“Animal studies supported the idea that.”
“In his laboratory late one night.”
Look for these and similar plums in a medical story coming to your screen, TV, newspaper, magazine, journal soon.
Here’s one I found from today’s serving in about three seconds: “In detailing a new process that might someday speed the development of…”
Might. Someday. Speed the development of.
I’ll it file in the black hole I use for post-dated PR-could-be’s and check back with them in ten years.
And yes, this is art. Low-level, but art. It is literally the manufacture of reality—by the ton.
It’s a first cousin of the situation where, in a college fraternity room, a senior tells a freshman, “Now when you write the paper for Jones, use words like massive invasion, breached the boundaries, overwhelmed the civilian population, fire from the sky, surgical strike, heroic holding action. Jones watches a lot of History Channel.”
In the medical arena, the reporter needs to weld together a whole lot of vaporous bloviation to make the story stick together.
Whether he knows it or not, he’s inventing reality, and he’s pawning it off on the reader or viewer, who is supposed to take away a positive feeling about the researcher and his work.
Then there is the placement of subordinate and main clause, as in: “Although some parents are expressing concern, health officials assure the public the vaccine is completely safe.” Instead of, “Although health officials assure the public the vaccine is safe, some parents are expressing concern.” Depending on what editors in the newsroom perceive the “prevalent mood” is “in the community,” the clauses can be dealt out in either sequence.
As we all know, the reporter who interviews the self-aggrandizing researcher, Dr. Blowfish, needs to obtain a few supporting quotes from other experts. “I his work is an important step forward in the battle to conquer…”
Then, near the end of the art piece, there will appear a line or two expressing reservations:
“Dr. Forstskull, of the Bongloidia Foundation, was less sure of the results. “I believe, in the long run, we may find more thorough prevention in another form of the vaccine.”
Balanced. Fair. And completely meaningless.
Actually, the reporter also interviews a biologist from Stanford, who says, “This is by far the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever seen.”
He doesn’t make the cut in the article.
But you did make the cut. You’re the audience, and reality is being spooled out by the yard. Just for you and a few million other viewers.
Day after day, in many ways, they imagine reality. They drape it on your head. The accumulated coverage is supposed to convince you that inventing your own reality, in this or any other venue, is futile and impossible, and only a fool would try it.
That’s the whole point of the exercise.
And if you walk away and say, “I don’t believe any of that stuff they’re putting on me,” but do nothing, imagine nothing, invent nothing, create nothing, they’ve achieved their goal.
In the flowering of time, they don’t really care what you believe.
Prime elites only care that you don’t become prime mover of your own imagination, don’t walk through the door into territory beyond any of their systems.
Where, by the way, the magic is.
JON RAPPOPORT
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