This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

It was just 24 hours ago when I mentioned, “In any other campaign someone would be getting fired.” I turn on the six o’clock news and the rumors are rife, somebodies getting fired. It wasn’t a scoop or a prognostication. It was only a lucky guess with a certain degree of probability. When the team is losing you have to do something, and you can’t fire the team.

In this case, Donald Trump was left to his own devices. The campaign manager is the “manager,” but he doesn’t tell the boss what to do. Knock it off! Scuttlebutt says Gramps doesn’t like that message very much and so suggests changing the management.

As these things sometimes seem to happen, I had just been asked in a pointless job application for three scoops I had worked on. What I do is more analysis. Trying to prove the world is just funny enough so that you’ll want to hang around for another day just to see what happens next. They asked, okay, what’s your analysis? I answered, let’s leave my drug test out of this. You see, I can’t really help myself.

Since childhood, that is the way my brain works. There are only two things I’ve ever really been any good at, trivia and sarcasm. Mark Twain said, “Write what you know.” John Lennon said, “you’ll never get anywhere trying to sound like someone else.” I was taught by learned professionals the fine art of 1970’s style radio news writing. I can be odorless and colorless! Just the fact’s ma’am! But why? What fun is that? You must be at least this high in A.P. style and have a Chicago style manual too.  

I can say Mr. Trump, or I can say orange Grandpa or orange Methuselah. But, but, but you must at least pretend to be impartial. Why? We’re all friends here. This is an old-fashioned 20^th Century safe space fast vanishing from the Internet landscape. You can say bad words here or smoke a joint and I won’t tell.

Elon was suffering from money toxicity, so he bought Twitter because why? He was trying to make a lot of money? Twitter has never made a dime. Elon only wanted to control the venue. The Huffington Post sold out and the New York Times too. Because Liberalism is on the march? Politico sold out to a billionaire.

 “And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.” ― Woody Guthrie

We are fast approaching the narrow end of the media horn of plenty. The Internet wild west is fast becoming tame and homogenized. No room for gunfighters, railroad gamblers or midnight ramblers! There was a time children, long ago. When the Rolling Stone was actually cool. Hunter Thompson, Abby Hoffman, and John Lennon too! Then the shirts took over and we get Justin Bieber. You’ll like him! He’s really far out! You’ll dig him or whatever you pimply faced little pricks say these days.

So, I ask, Is that truth or hyperbole? Does the medicine go down any easier in an AP style? In Donald Trump’s first disastrous news conference. I was surprised when no one else mentioned Trump’s pale complexion. It looked like he’d seen a ghost or been smoking crack for three days. And when your trademark color is orange, that should be newsworthy or is that somehow off the edge of the paper? I’m no genius, I can’t be the only one who noticed. But I’m the only one who mentioned it! I don’t consider pointing out the obvious to be a scoop. “Hindenburg Return Flight Delayed!”

Why hire me when you can get six college students for a quarter? Not 25 cents, but an actual school quarter. They are trained and with enough of them chained to enough typewriters for enough years. Might someday write the great American novel! They have AP style all out the ass and are completely interchangeable and you never would ever notice any difference between any of them.

Clean copy guaranteed to be a little bit true and totally unoffensive. See? Just don’t mention it. So, what! His fly was open or he’s wearing a snake on his head. Big deal, act serious and write spurious. Remember what is important here, your pay check.

Donald Trump’s latest attempt at word gargling was billed as a serious intellectual discussion on the economy. It fell apart rather quickly, and the economy was little mentioned along the way between Trump’s more of the same, rambling angry Grandpa trip down Grievance Lane. So, do you know what happened next? The story largely disappeared from the news churn. “Poof!” They also lie who say nothing at all!

Orange Big Brother picking his nose live on camera or scratching his ass, isn’t news! Just say the news conference was poorly received. That way, it’s partly the audience’s fault. Better yet! Don’t mention it at all!

Sarcasm is truth wrapped in humor and cynicism. You can no longer get hired by telling the unvarnished truth. It must be sanitized for your protection. Comedy is comedy and politics is politics, and never shall twain meet. The press is free, but the distribution will cost you! Do you know what I really think? Yes! Yes, you do! How rare and unique.

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain