Orlando
June 14th, 2016 | 
Author: Spurious drama.
Please.
Stop.
We are supposed to sit and lament with the talking heads that are even less connected to this tragedy than most of us? Cheap ass euphoric sentimentalism. Wholesale morbid exploitation of grief at its most circus. Whatever network does the best job at connecting with our horror and dismay. Whatever pundit or wannabe celebrity infotainer makes it the most tangible or visceral.
They all have heads too big floating above torsos waving us into their church of their cult of personality, to give the sermon, pass the collection plate and count the receipts.
Because it’s all about ratings baby.
I don’t give a shit what Trump or Hillary have to say about this abject tragedy. Neither one is any closer to this than the rest of us. Trump mocks Obama for not using “politically incorrect” terminology. Hillary ups the ante by saying she’s not afraid to and the media spews it all reflexively.
This asshole wasn’t an Islamic terrorist. He was a homegrown jackass. Born here, raised here and that’s it. He was a simple minded hater. Full of rage for reasons we’ll probably never understand that might have more to do with how jacked up we are as a society. Maybe it was Newt or Pat or Donald or Ted or the reckless “journalists” that breathlessly cover every word they puke. He didn’t even understand the difference between Al Qaeda and Hezbollah. Isis and Hamas. Sunni and Shia.
He was a bipolar, misogynistic, self loathing homosexual who should never have been allowed near a gun. That’s the goddamn story. Fisher Price. The rest is bullshit but they have to keep talking about it for the next three days because that’s just too neat. Too sensible. Not enough to enrage, confuse or distract.
I have gay friends. People I adore. Nothing would afflict me more than this obnoxious, cloying and insipid coverage were this to happen to any of them.
The proscenium the American media plays beneath is rotting.
Look in the mirror. Look at what we gulp and pursue everyday.
Maybe that sent him over.
Maybe it was the NRA doing everything it can to ensure a suicidal sociopath like this can light up a joint full of queers at closing time because the losers we elect and expect to protect us are too afraid of a worthless bitch like Wayne LaPierre.
Because the NRA has convinced about 20% of mouth breathing Americans that the 2nd amendment means they have the right to kill anyone that threatens their intelligence, sexuality or bigoted political views with a rifle designed for military combat. A rifle not designed for hunting. A rifle specifically engineered to be as lethal as possible in a theater of war. In other words, a “sport rifle”.
We are staring down the throat of the problem and arguing over the fucking teeth.
The way we keep this from happening, on this particular scale, is we stop selling these weapons of mass destruction to everyone, not just the developmentally challenged, but everyone. It just doesn’t happen in countries that they aren’t available for sale in.
Next.
Drinks for my friends.
Click to play.
*The band is Pretty Mary Sunshine. We made a record. I’m not sure why. She couldn’t sing. She was perpetually flat. There was no auto tune back then. We did vocal comps forever. This is the only song I think we were able to make work. It took forever. It’s good though.
Posted in Uncategorized
This excellent piece of writing mirrors the Frontline I watched tonight. Well, last night.
The NRA and its members were successful in stopping gun control legislation, after Sandy Hook.
I am heart sick that yet another person who should have never even been able to by a BB gun, slaughtered and injured over 100 people. 49 dead at the scene.
I could not get phone calls through, to any of my 3 federal reps. Republican assholes.
The NRA operates like a lobbyist. Almost like a corporation. What do they manufacture? Death. Wholesale death.
There are far more guns in America than there are americans, in America. There are more voters unable to cast votes, and far more votes cast not being recorded or assigned properly. Social media is abuzz with talk of primary election manipulations, and how Bernie Sander’s demonstrable favorability has been usurped and dismissed, as a result. How Hillary continues to be the object of ongoing investigation and how impending criminal indictment could be forthcoming. How the latest slaughter in Orlando reaffirms the overwhelming support for banning high capacity weapons. But you would never know of this powerful undercurrent from the corporate media, where if it doesn’t bleed it doesn’t lead and if it isn’t officially sanctioned it hasn’t happened and it doesn’t exist, and where media resources spent on pomp and circumstance of circus and spectacle bring the best return on investment. The mind numbing body counts, the critically wounded and forever traumatized can each be their own subset of the protracted story. The dead shooter’s life can be exhumed, autopsied, to provide the transfusion of daily revelations that can extend the life of coverage for a weeks, or until the next preventable tragedy unfolds. The corporate media is so attuned to conveying such sensationalistic and unspeakable transgression, there is no incentive for providing anything remedial or reformative, no insight into lessening the incidence of that which the industry so depends upon. Never will they bite the hand that feeds. Never will they expose the dire state of american democracy, still providing interminable horse race inanity and convenient sound bite headlines. They are perfectly willing to portray the DNC’s sleight of hand as the inversion of David and Goliath, and perfectly willing to proclaim the feigned victory of the giant. Never will they expose the NRA’s agency on behalf of the firearms manufactures to facilitate the sales of as many deadly weapons to as many mentally uncertain buyers as their incessant lobbying will allow. There is a symbiosis conditional to the state of dysfunctional democracy and that of marginalized gun control. The disempowerment brought forth by the former is partially restored for some by the embrace of the latter. For when the sum of personal confliction exceeds the capacity of the self, and innocents are transformed into the sacrificial, and public spaces reimagined as ritual alters — the act of misguided and misdirected vengeance can be facilitated by modern technology, to realize maximum collateral damage. (jz)