I remember that the first time I read Marshall McLuhan’s famous discourse, one of those evolutionary bells went off in my head.  It was the 60s and color TV was still relatively new, radio was still more than drive-time ranters and ten-song, force-fed playlists, newspapers and magazines were mostly written and edited by real journalists, the movies were still cool dating destinations, (along with bowling and Putt Putt Golf), and politics was often about candidates whose message inspired hope and imagination for a better future.  Look where we’ve gotten to in a mere half century.

As a country, our BS meter used to seem better calibrated.  There were clearer lines between fiction, (purely for entertainment), and fact or opinion.  Today, everything, (thanks to the acceptance of ‘reality’ whatever), wears the loose mantel of being news delivered by evangelical rabble rousers.  Whether it’s sports, metaphor-ed by screaming panels of has-beens and wannabes replaying the players and plays of the day; Hollywood or TV gossipers dispensing scoops to enhance, embarrass or destroy celebrities in equal measure; Info-tainers who take their tainment a bit too seriously; news reporters who seldom take responsibly vetted ‘unbiased’ reporting seriously enough; or candidates and office holders whose soul objective is attaining or keeping their office, we choose the delivery of our information by our affinity to its messenger.  In the run up to this November’s election, there are countless candidates without the qualifications to perform simple household chores that are but a few uneducated votes from governing.  Should they succeed, they will have been whisked into office by amoral messengers whose agenda is simply seeing if they can make it happen.

The Limbaughs and the Becks and yes the Stewarts and Colberts of 21st century culture are the opinion-forming media of our day.  Sure, Katie, Brian, Diane and Wolf have their teaser-ridden, commercially loaded eighteen-out-of-thirty minutes to titillate and inform, (I suppose there’s someone at Fox News, but, although I’m not a misogynist nor a boob guy, I’ve never gotten past the cleavage behind the desk when I have inadvertently strayed to the dark side), but let’s face it, it’s really about the hair or the clothes or last night’s appearance on 30 Rock.  The Comedy Central dudes’ permanently planted tongues in cheek are a subtle nuance lost on the average basic cable viewer and, as it turns out, most members of Congress.  If, at any given moment, millions of us can be swayed by glib rhetoric in a believe-me costume, then is it any wonder that Scientology gets to be a religion or Christine O’Donnell gets to run for Senate?