Consider the Source

Over the course of the media feeding frenzy over Mel Gibson's leaked phone conversations, it is interesting how many stories have been using RadarOnline as its main source, quoting it verbatum if not copy/pasting it. This is a site that reports Gibson's fishing trip with the words "off galavanting." In challenging their lack of objectivity, I am told that the writers on that site are not journalists.
I'd like to know how it is then that journalists lap up whatever is dished out by that site.

Whether it's Oliver Stone's quip about Jews running the media, or Marlon Brando brooding over "Jews that run Hollywood," of course it's the sort of statement pounced upon as if it is newsworthy. But instead of stimulating discussion or investigation of who DOES run much of the media, it leads only to another inexactitude - the branding of the speaker as anti-semetic or a racist. In truth, from the days of Harry Cohn or Louis B. Meyer to the era of Steven Spielberg, Jews are included in a wide spectrum of races are represented among the rulers of Hollywood and the media. But that's a side note and not a news flash. Lobby groups however have an inordinate say as to how the reports a given story or what movies are allowed to get wide release, if any release. Right or wrong. Lobby groups exist mainly to justify their existence.

Most religions say "Only our members will gain access to heaven in the afterlife," the believers may get along fine with non-believers and wish them a good day and even mourn their deaths, but that belief ultimately seems a lot more racist that the use of a tabu word. I have nothing against the Chosen people, but I know I am not one of them. I pretty much let it go and don't take it seriously, because there are even avowed atheists whom I believe will have a pleasant afterlife if one exists. If someone states that yes it is likely Jews were not only present at the death of Christ but anyone who lived in Jerusalem at the time would have participated in public stonings and in routine floggings and crucifixions, that person is merely being factual not racist. But that doesn't mean they won't be called racist or anti-Semetic anyway, publically, over and over, by paid talking heads and prink hacks who do little else but pull off items from te modern equivalent of the news wire and copy it.

We are being fed a lot of nonsense. If someone uses the n-word in a private conversation, I don't assume he or she has prejudice against all black people. If a black youth behaves like a punk trying to provoke me the most I will say is likely, "Chris Rock said it best." I won't explain the quote. "I love black people; I hate niggers."



If I say faggot, that does not erase the fact that I am in favor of gay marriage and equality. If someone calls me a fat bastard that doesn't mean he or she has a prejudice against every overweight person. They are leaping for what they see that might be an exposed nerve.

It is interesting that Diane Sawyer, whose husband is Mike Nichols the excellent film director, questioned Mel's drunken remarks from 2006 as if they had been made soberly from a podium and as if "Jews are responsible for all the wars of the world" had never been said by anyone before. Mel could have said, "Jews were responsible for "War of the Worlds" being remade, and that might have been partially correct. Basically this was an exploitation of a nothing event and drunken babble to use as a springboard for straight-faced nonsense-talk. Jews - those concerned more than most Americans about Israel - do have a hand in at least one war and how it is paid for and how well it is armed. God bless Israel, but to hell with bullshit.

When TMZ published online the address book of a movie actor and many phone numbers were made public, I'm surprised that print journalists didn't snap it up and TV anchors didn't read aloud all of the personal information available. Because, after all, the public supposedly has the right to know. And if there happens to be a bank PIN number in there as a reminder it might be nice to know that as well. Stalkers and the drooloing masses of asses have a right to know, right?

So non-journalists "scoop" the big stories and sell those off to the professional and regulated news organizations, who feel their behinds are covered as long as they say "according to RadarOnline, TMZ or whateverCrap," and whatever speculation or accusation gets to be part of public record over and over again. This in a world where the average person who will claim to know as if it is fact how many times Mel Gibson caught his breath during a published rant may not know Hilary Clinton's present post in Obama's government. Let alone whose vote swings which way on the issues that concern their lives, or who runs the media.