#posttruth & the #media

This is a bone I'm nowhere near ready to give up.

There will always be some
seeking knowledge, tradition,
meaning, & even #truth.
I'm with you.

The article in today's Guardian newspaper is the type of violently patronising shit we've unconsciously become accustomed to as being proper UK journalism, yet itself flies in the face of many of the qualities of the industry's self appointed standards of definition of "decent" journalism (also known simply as "journalism").

Having been post-school educated by renegades & mavericks, such as the movement known by some as "the Norwich Bastards", then onward, through the rejection of quantitative bollocks by a school of research we just uncritically branded "postmodernism", I've always been scathing of people who present themselves as academics, or thinkers, without doing the work required to be one. However, what the real academics & thinkers have firmly convinced me of, is that education and truth are a matter of perspective, and that everything is up for discussion, as long as deductive processes are applied.

Simply, knowledge is a pursuit, and this pursuit is less reliant on the presentation of dead answers, as it is on the positing, discussion and answering of questions.

A psychiatrist with whom I once worked suggested that nothing of any real importance had been given to us by the so-called "social sciences", compared to the "pure", or "hard sciences".

He surprised me by his assertion, because he appeared to that point to have dedicated his life to his self-confessed futility. I was saddened, one year, to return from college term recess to be greeted at the train station by the Dean, who told me my psychiatrist friend had died  at the age of only 39, on the last day of the semester, from a sudden heart attack.

Once we've dug ourselves out of the manufactured media "truth" hole, we're finished if we think we should sit back & permit those who manufactured & perpetuated these falsehoods in the first place to now explain them to us.

The truth is, they can't, because they don't understand them.

Read the Guardian
newspaper article

Ass Bitten Max Clifford

The British nation rejoices with more closure on its institutionalised-paedophilia past as it publicly punished paedophile, sexual predator and world leading PR guru, 71 year old #MaxClifford. I'm sorry to have had to unmask him as a disgusting PR fiend, but the truth is the truth. 

Long standing gonzo-learners may recall I wrote a piece some years ago (see "Jaded") which talked about how Clifford had managed to turn fairly loathsome, racist, pseudo-celebrity Jade Goody into a poster girl for cancer prevention and the nation's (the working class, South of Watford, big brother viewership demographic part of it anyway) sweetheart. He's certainly got skills of such a phenomenal transformation as that is within his seemingly limitless powers.

However, like his fellow entertainment industry luminary, Jimmy Saville (see "TheJimmyRiddle" previous post), it turned out Clifford had been using his power and influence to seduce (basically rape, under current legislation) and otherwise sexually assault females, some of whom were as young as 12. 

However, this previously untouchable, powerful man fell hard today after TV reporters harassed him outside court where he was sentenced to 8 years in prison for 8 assaults on 4 women. It also seems he wasn't prosecuted for indecently assaulting a 12 year old girl in Spain because he's being charged & sentenced under the old rules. 

Certainly in the current public atmosphere of societal redress where the people publicly punish such wrongdoers in the press, on talkshows and in their minds, allows people to do think the nation is worth something in terms of its moral fibre. We're not animals, yet. That is the disgrace, the public loss of face, the exposure of the hypocrisy we see and know exists absolutely everywhere in our nation and is endemic to the operation of its systems. 

Thus, what struck me as equally hypocritical was how enthusiastic the Sky reporters laid into Clifford outside court as he stood alone, waiting to be sentenced. He looked like shit and as if his minute (apparently, very small) tail was firmly between his legs. 

I've never liked the guy at all. He's always smelled vaguely to me of sulphur. What amused me was how the sky reporters fed on the guy that helped build their business from the ground up. 

It was like watching a snake eat its own tail.