“Rabble Rouser” by Paritosh Sen
rhetoric devolved
flippant glib partisan hacks
whip into frenzies
hot-buttoned constituents
bloodsport provocateurs
(originally posted November 2013)
Television
All posts tagged Television
“Fourth of July 1916” by Childe Hassam
I thoroughly enjoyed the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and I fully expect I will also enjoy the Democrat Convention in Philadelphia next week. For political junkies and public policy wonks (and I’ve been something of each over long stretches of time in my life) these quadrennial events are analogous to the Olympics or the World Cup. They show the American political process of selecting our principal Presidential candidates at its ultimate frenzy, in all of its glory, its hokey pageantry, and all of its travesty. It is a thing both beautiful and ugly to behold by the truly objective eye. Principles, promises, and puffery all choreographed to ostensibly inform and deliberately incite potential voters. Of course, for committed partisan viewers, only the convention of their affiliated party will likely be appreciated, the other being despised as so much deviltry.
But what I didn’t enjoy was the TV news coverage itself. I tried watching them all, flipping the channel at every commercial break in the broadcast: the major networks of ABC, CBS and NBC, as well as the major cable outlets of CNN, FOX and MSNBC. And in one conspicuous regard, they were all disappointingly alike. None of them faithfully aired all of the speeches. Instead, they ignored many speakers, in whole or in part, and used that air time to feature their own talking heads with their own points of view, via a seemingly endless array of roving reporters, analysts, commentators and so-called expert panels.
But it was the speakers I wanted to hear. All of them. Not just the ones the news folks deemed worthy. I’m perfectly capable of coming to my own conclusions and value judgments about what the speakers have to say. I don’t need some third party interlocutor or interpreter to help me understand what’s going on. At the very least, they could have waited until each speech had concluded before strutting their stuff and spouting their opinions.
The fourth estate just ain’t what it used to be.
“Talking Heads” by Joshua Oliveira
talking heads at their mischief
poking rude digitized fingers
in everyone’s eyes
acid viper tongues slither
toward everyone’s ears
pseudo-intellect trash-talk
combustible commentary
sucking the air from the room
all it takes to defeat their agenda
demote their celebrity
steal all their power
take aim at their pixel heart
zap the remote
change the channel
rebreathe common sense and
replenish the lungs of the mind
From my book Human Waters
Bill O’Reilly
Caricature by Rodney Pike
From newevolutiondesigns.com
O’Reilly fights the culture wars
And says the spin stops there
But he can be a boor and bores
When he goes on a tear
We often hold the selfsame views
And share disdain for guile
As practiced by the network news
But I don’t like his style
We both enjoy the oddball words
But using them is iffy when
The other guy has brains of birds
Or attitude Pecksniffian
Judge Judy
Photo from retiredindelaware.blogspot.com
acerbic grande dame
martinet with a gavel
fifty million a year
Still shot from “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”
At huffingtonpost.com
mindless captives
cringe helplessly
caught up in tasteless
trite freakishness
bleak sordid precincts
that no self-respecting
observer would visit
yet nonetheless crowded
with wide-eyes and slack-jaws
transfixed and afflicted
dipped in disease that
no popcorn or lemonade
ever could medicate
turning the TV screen
in on itself where gray
worms of inanity
slither toward ears
that give access to
dormant unseasoned
delectable brains
with a craving for
artless crude slices
of sad pointless lives
called reality even though
all that is real is their
sickening stench of a
decomposed culture
Cartoon by Chris Madden
at chrismadden.co.uk
useless people
leading meaningless lives
in sad seedy margins
of tabloid culture
forgettable vignettes
of regrettable behavior
unwholesome relationships
menaced by ego
look-at-me prurience
conjuring vacuous
unlovely appeal
to unwashed masses
Poesy plus Polemics 