By Mick Allpuff
Popular columnist
One day, God will deal with the screaming headlines of daily newspapers.
But until then, we’ll have to deal with them down here.
Which may mean changing laws, modifying laws and rewriting laws.
Doggonit, if common decency prevailed, we wouldn’t have to do it.
Gosh darn it, but there is nothing decent about the way the media in general carry on. There is nothing decent about digging up dirt and plastering it all over front pages or TV screens and making honest people look bad.
Don’t you agree?
Why should a few people be empowered to make fine, upstanding American citizens cringe with their tabloid screaming headlines about car wrecks that kill three, four, who knows, maybe 10 people and husbands who chop their wives into little pieces or beat the you-know-what out of them and stuff them in their basement freezer?
Murder and mayhem.
Tabloid garbage.
It may sell newspapers, but it turns the belly of a self-righteous, pompous, egomaniac popular columnist.
Know what I mean?
Decency is a struggle.
Good Lord, do I know it!
I wince when I read about scandals in government.
Why can’t we print GOOD NEWS?
The courts are no help.
They hide behind the First Amendment.
Free speech!
They offend me!
What about my freedom not to be offended?
Or have my feelings hurt?
Besides, I’m a popular columnist. I know which way the wind is blowing. People don’t want free speech. Screw the First Amendment! That’s what I’m hearing.
If I want to remain a popular columnist, by gumption, I gotta sing the tune.
Get out ahead of the song and pretend I’m leading the mob.
Did you know some newspapers let their best-paid columnists MAKE UP stuff for their articles?
OUT OF WHOLE CLOTH!!!!!!
The courts won’t help us stifle the media.
So we must.
Maybe the most offensive thing about newspapers is that they use our laws to protect themselves. The only thing protecting them is our laws.
If we can’t change the big ones that protect us all — such as the First Amendment — perhaps we can change some small ones that affect just them.
Why not a law that bans newspaper vending machines within 10 miles of gas stations, restaurants, saloons and convenience stores?
And how about this: No more news on television.
That may seem over the top, but no more so than letting newspapers and TV so-called personalities soil our minds with whatever lowdown, sleazy stuff they choose to pollute our streets and airways.
Come to think about it, why not just ban news entirely? They’ve been so irresponsible for so long, time to put and end to their shame.
Who would challenge such a law?
Next, we gotta do something about the Internet. Behavior has sprung up that our forefathers never anticipated. Common decency was common back then. It is in shatters now.
Who indeed would defend these cretins? Think for a minute about who they are. Media companies are owned by rich blackguards who milk the public of their hard-earned dollars by publishing ugly eye-catching facts in their tawdry screeds. At the same time they enrich themselves, they fire their workers, bust their unions, tear down the economic safety net of thousands of employees, all in the name of the almighty dollar — their dollar!
Who would give a rat’s ass about media moguls?
Why, we have one media titan, Mr. Rupert Murdoch, who so abuses his First Amendment so-called right that he finances right-wing causes like the Republican party in hopes of further enriching himself.
Who cares a damn about the First Amendment rights of a billionaire like Rupert Murdoch?
If I want to keep my popularity, I’m sure I don’t.
Rich swine like Rupert and the greedy top dogs at Gannett and other media conglomerates may, in our freedom-birthed society, be entitled to their opinions, but that doesn’t mean they get a license to express them anywhere.
I’ve got an idea. We can’t change the First Amendment, I suppose, because it’s part of our freedom-birthed society that we knee-jerkingly adore. But we could pick away at that First Amendment.
Let’s make a law that says that fat cat media magnates like Rupert as well as popular columnists like me can only express their views alone in the bathroom.
If newsies don’t like the taste of repression and censorship, why, by gum, they can leave!
Thanks to our laws, they are free to do that anytime.
