No News is Good News

I’ve been stubbornly following the Nicholas Kristof controversy, even though I don’t enjoy the helpless anger it provokes. If you’ve missed this somehow, he wrote an Opinion piece in the NYT, claiming that Palestinians in Israeli prisons are being raped by dogs. Even though he admits that he has no proof, and his sources all have strong connections to Hamas.

Now I know this accusation is easy to believe, since we Jews drink the blood of Christian babies when we’re not using it to make matzoh. And we harvest the organs of Palestinians to make space lasers.  At least Kristof’s piece proves that The New York Times isn’t run by wealthy Jews. We are too busy running all the banks.

We’re always hearing about the death of reality in this age of fake news about fake news. I always thought I could trust the NYT but clearly newspapers have biases. TV news is also suspect, even though I agree with most of the positions taken by MSNBC. Sometimes I listen to Fox news in the car just for a laugh, because whatever awful crisis is afoot, it’s still Biden’s fault.

Friends send me Instagram posts by  influencers divulging conspiracies or just commenting on current events. Why do I want to listen to some random person purporting to give me the inside scoop when I know nothing about their background, agendas, or sources? I don’t even believe their pitches for hair products.

So I’m cancelling my subscription to the NYT and have no idea where to find news that isn’t slanted, written by AI, or delivered by earnest and defensive Substack journalists. Remember the conspiracies about Hilary Clinton and Huma? The best one was that they killed children and tore off their faces to use as masks. Several snuff film aficionados  posted links to it with a warning that it was disturbing. How could it not be? And how do you tear off someone’s face?

I’ve been forcing myself to avoid TV news by turning all my attention to Court TV and murder investigations. I’m aware it isn’t good for my psyche but it has given me a deeper understanding of white trash, if I may be so elitist. The stupid names they give their children, like Brantly, Ariah, Alexavier, and Major (and that’s just one family.) The drugs, the abuse, the guns, the grammar.

But sometimes you want to know what’s going on in the non-murder world. CBS is out, because Trump. BBC news seemed legit until I learned about its bias against Israel, which I had to see for myself before believing. CNN is out because I can’t stand any of the anchors. I really don’t know where to turn.

Meanwhile, I just read an essay about our predilection for believing idiotic myths like the one about gerbils and that Jamie Lee Curtis was born a man. Back in the day, these rumors were fun to believe (unless you were Richard Gere or Jamie Lee Curtis.) The fake news and blatant lies we are told today are more serious and malicious. I mean, it’s fine to believe that J.D. Vance fucks couches, but Somalians eating their pets and dog rapists are a bridge too far.

It’s bad enough that our President lies to us all day, every day. The institutions we once believed in now say “people with vaginas” instead of “women.” Jeffrey Epstein did or didn’t bury dead girls on his New Mexico compound. You get to the point where nothing matters when you’re gaslighted from all sides. One’s best option is to just believe what you want to believe but be prepared for impassioned rebuttal.

Or just turn your life over to the murder show of your understanding.

image (c) Daniel Martin Diaz