My Abandonment of Mainstream Media

I've stopped watching and reading the news.

Canadian, American, European...all of it. I went cold turkey after the American election.

You have to understand how difficult this was for a news junkie.

I'm tired and simply haven't had the emotional bandwidth to deal with so many world issues cascading simultaneously. 

So, I've hidden. I've cocooned.

That isn't to say that I don't know what is happening. It is impossible not to. We are all standing at the precipe of something very dark and dangerous. To stick my fingers in my ears and scream la la la isn't an option. But, I have given up on traditional media. 

Major Canadian media is owned by a small number of companies. Did you know that the Canadian Press is owned by the Globe and Mail and owned by the richest family in Canada? Did you know that Postmedia, which operates the National Post, the Financial Post, and Sun Media newspapers, are two-thirds owned by American hedge fund Chatham Asset Management? Bell, Rogers, Corus, Quebecor, and the CBC control every over-the-air channel in Canada. Every single one. The Toronto Star is owned by Nordstar Capital, a diversified holding company owned by billionaire Jordan Bitove. Your local paper? Controlled by wealthy people with very specific agendas. Your local TV stations? The same. 

Watching the once proud and independent Washington Post dismantled by a billionaire owner has been soul-crushing. (I gave up my subscription following the mass exodus of gifted journalists.) My New York Times subscription has been reduced to a word game URL. I am sickened by the idea that new-age journalists think creating stories is more important than covering them. The Post even has a new slogan: “Riveting Storytelling for All of America.” What the actual fuck does that mean?

We, the world populace, are being ill-served by most major mainstream media. Of course, great reporters are doing great work at every single one of the institutions I've mentioned, but they are writing and reporting at the whims of billionaire owners. Watch the coverage of the upcoming Liberal leadership race very carefully. The smear campaigns have already started. Who leaked the story about a limo showing up to Mark Carney's launch to the CBC? Who put the story of the hecklers up front in the Star's coverage of Chrystia Freeland's announcement? We are being manipulated by our press coverage. I'll bet you know all about Doug Ford's stupid blue hat but nothing about Karina Gould and her quest for the leadership.

We have become lazy news consumers who desire stupid headlines and easy solutions. We are being mass-manipulated and we are doing nothing to stop it. 

The process [of mass-media deception] has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary.~Eric Blair.

Do you know who Eric Blair was? That is the given name of George Orwell, and that quote is from 1984. Blair wrote the dystopian book in 1949, almost eighty years ago. He foresaw a lot of what we are going through today with our siloed media experience and our bending the knee to totalitarianism, oligarchies, and kakistocracies. We have forgotten how to think because our news consumption has become pablum for the masses. I simply couldn't take it anymore, so I went into hiding.

Social media? I shut down my Twitter account. The Nazi circle-jerk created by the richest man in the world can happen without me. Meta? I love the photos and reconnection with friends, but I refuse to allow them to dictate my news diet. We have to become better consumers of our information. We have to do the work to seek out the truth. We can't allow Elon, Bezos, The Thompsons, and Zuck to feed us their versions of it. We can't allow ourselves to be consumed and subsumed by the richest people in the world who want us subservient for their benefit. (And yes, I note the irony of you finding this on Facebook. There are good and bad with all of it.) It is incumbent on all of us to question our leaders, to ask ourselves why we hate this one as much as we do and love that one for no good reason. Are we being manipulated by our information choices? Are we victims of a mass-media deception? I think if we look at it critically, the answer is yes.

There are many great independent news organizations out there. It was the independent journalism at The Narwhal that saved Ontario's Greenbelt from the greed of Doug Ford. The Tyee is doing yeoman's work diving into issues that matter to all Canadians. Haaretz and The Guardian are still independent sources that will tell you what you don't want to hear and challenge authority. Good journalism should make the powerful uncomfortable. It should challenge your embedded viewpoints. It should make you think. If it isn't, you are doing it wrong.

I know it's hard. Looking elsewhere takes work, and who has the time. The Orange Stain resumes his chaos today precisely because of this lazy attitude. “Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.” Orwell gets tagged with this one, too, but it is a misappropriation. I'd like to think he believed it, though. We can take a news hiatus, as I did, but we cannot forgo our responsibility to seek out the truth and hold our leaders accountable when they trade in bullshit and three-word slogans. Democratic societies are only as strong as their weakest links. Right now, those are the ignorant, uninformed, and misinformed. 

We can disagree, but we don't get to make it up. "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”~Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan 

Strong societies take work, and every citizen is responsible for putting in the effort. Don't allow yourselves to become corrupted. Think, read and then do it again and again. Doug Ford may be wearing a blue hat with a slogan you like, but don't forget that he has gutted health care and education. The smear campaigns aren't coming for Doug from the mainstream media in the way they came for his predecessor. Why is that? Who stands to benefit?

Here are two more from Orwell's 1984 to scare the shit out of you. 

"If all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth."

"And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested."

I have decided to continue my media abstinence for a while longer. (I miss Rachel Maddow, but I am holding fast.) I am dipping my toes into BlueSky and a bit on Threads, but I am mostly lurking. I promise that as this very important political year in Canada unfolds, I will point myself in a better direction for information consumption. I will share those spaces with you when I find them. In the meantime, do the work. Be a better citizen. Ask questions and ask yourself, does this make sense?  If you can't find an appropriate answer, be skeptical. It is up to all of us. More news, less noise.

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."~George Orwell 1984

 

Where The F*** Are My Scissors

I lost a pair of scissors, yesterday.

You can stop reading now if this feels too banal for your tastes.

It was a bizarre happening for a really unremarkable household item, and it is really pissing me off.

I have had the same pair of scissors for forty years. They were gifted to me as a bridal shower gift. The gift giver has long been forgotten. Henckel's. They are truly the best. The lesson here is to always buy the best you can afford because cheap garbage simply doesn't last. (I also have been using the same hand-held can opener for four decades. Sometimes, you can't go wrong with quality.) I love these scissors so much that I bought an identical pair for The Southern Home twenty-five years ago. 

The scissors hang on a knife rack in the kitchen of The Southern Home. The only time they have been moved to a different location was when we renovated the kitchen. When we reconstructed, the scissors found their way home to the knife rack above the sink. Yes, I am a creature of habit. Yes, I like order. Yes, I suggest that until you have walked around my addled brain, you shouldn't judge me.

Yesterday, the scissors went walkabout. 

I didn't notice their absence until I went to make dinner. Some items require a scissors instead of a knife. There was a hole on the knife rack where the scissors previously were. 

I queried The Husband. He looked perplexed. He remarked that he thought he heard something fall a few hours prior, but would have noticed the scissors in the sink had they tumbled from their lofty perch. 

We employed a cleaning woman yesterday and wondered if she might have borrowed them to open a package of cleansers. Before you all go accusing this lovely woman, stop right there. She is someone I have known for decades. She is one of the few people on the planet shorter than me, (not really relevant, but a fun fact) and she has no problem helping me practice my ugly Spanish. I do the same for her in English, and we meet somewhere in the linguistic middle. She is a trustworthy human and I will not hear one word against her character from the nattering nabobs of the intertoobs. We also pondered the possibility of her nudging the scissors with a duster or a cloth. It would explain the clatter The Husband heard, but the logical conclusion of that scenario is that we would have found them in the sink.

We embarked on a fruitless search. This place isn't that big. There aren't a lot of locations a scissors could decamp to for a rest day. Drawers were emptied, shelves were scrutinized, and garbage was sifted, all to no avail. We are without answers and without shears. The only possible answer we can come up with is that they bounced out of the sink and into the cleaners' open trash bag. It would have been a bank shot worthy of Minnesota Fats, but even a one-in-a-million carom is still achievable. She probably never noticed, and she tossed the trash when she left. Until the f***ing things reveal themselves, I am going with this storyline.

As angry as I am with Jeff Bezos, Amazon is still a wondrous thing. A replacement pair will be here today.

So, why am I boring you all with this insanity? It really isn't important at all. Nobody died or got hurt, and the world is certainly suffering from far bigger issues right now. You might even call this a first-world problem, although I sincerely hope you don't. God, I loathe that phrase. I realized yesterday that I was happy to have a small anxiety. I live in a world of enormous stress. I worry a lot. I sleep very little. My therapist has gifted me many relaxation exercises and tools to curb my disquietude. When they start working, I will let you know. I'm not there yet. I cannot simply move through life without worry, but I have learned that I can't control all the world's ills. I am learning to better compartmentalize. The world is a scary place right now, but wouldn't it be great if the biggest problem we all had was a lost pair of scissors? 

The lost scissors were like a paper cut. It hardly merits a bandaid, but holy shit, did it irritate me. It was like a raspberry seed in my tooth. Sometimes, when we focus on the little stuff, the big stuff evaporates into the background, even if for just a few minutes. For just a small scintilla of time yesterday, I didn't think about my parents, my kids, the environment, politics, angry humans, my friends in Los Angeles, or the Middle East. I was laser-focused on a lost pair of kitchen shears.

When the new pair arrives today, they will assume their position on the knife rack above the sink. The big problems will still be there, but the paper cut will have healed. For a brief moment, my world will once again have equilibrium. 

Welcome to the Internet in 2025

Today, I told a complete stranger on Threads to mind their own damn business.

They passive-aggressively discussed how sad they were to see people still wearing masks in 2025. I passively aggressively suggested that my resolution for the new year was to mind my own damn business. And then, I aggressively, without a hint of passivity, blocked the miserable prick.

The Husband has a wonderful mantra, which he reminds me of often. You don't have to have an opinion about everything, and even if you do, you don't have to publicly express it. Yes, the irony of me and my forceful opinions being married to this man is not lost on me, but he does have a point. There are many times when expressing my opinion is not only cathartic but necessary in order to keep the world spinning on its axis. The Husband would be the first person to agree with me on this point. That said, as I get older, I better understand when it is and isn't ok to express those perspectives. I do it here, in this safe space I've created for myself, and I will, on occasion, share them with the world. All pronouncements that derive out of these scribblings (is it still scribbling if I am using a laptop?) are mine and mine alone. You, the reader, can either agree, disagree, or be totally agnostic. I really don't give a crap. But I will not...repeat...WILL NOT judge someone else's behaviour unless that person is: 

1. Engaging in self-harm

2. Readily harming, either physically or emotionally, another person or persons. (This includes unjust laws, rules, and made-up bullshit that can put someone in danger.)

3. Not competent to make rational decisions.

Politicians are not exempt from judgment because they willingly put themselves into the eye of public judgement and have it in their job descriptions to accept the feces along with the flowers. (Also, there is a special place in hell for the current management team of my beloved Blue Jays, but that is a rant for another day.)

When is it ok to express your opinion? Here is a quick user's guide to minding one's own business.

It is never ok to comment on or engage in gossip about a person's physical appearance. I don't care if they are celebrities or garbage collectors. Tattoos, piercings, weight gain, weight loss, clothing choices, hairstyles, or colour is none of your damn business. It doesn't matter if Oprah lost weight on Ozempic or if she wore her knees to the cartilage in the gym. It's her business. What is ok to comment on is if Oprah was trying to sell the public her Weight Watchers products while slimming down on GLP-1 drugs. That is as close to a scam as it gets. Her physical appearance? Mind your own damn business.

It is never ok to judge any person or couple for remaining childless. I shouldn't have to say this, but telling someone they will regret their own choices is staggeringly arrogant and intrusive. You have no idea why or how they came to those decisions. Mind your own damn business.

I am sick and tired of people telling me they know how a celebrity feels about anything or everything. These people have publicists and teams of people who craft their image. You know what they want you to know or what their enemies want you to know. Stop acting like you really understand Brad and Angelina's divorce or how the King feels about his wayward son and daughter-in-law. Mind your own damn business.

You can never know what a person is going through or what is happening in their lives. There is sickness, stress, children, financial worries, and family interactions that factor into everything. When you tell a person to stop wearing a mask because it offends your sensibilities, you are telling the cancer patient to play Russian roulette with their lives or the senior citizen to pass on diseases to their entire residence. Grow up and mind your own damn business.

A person's health situation is theirs alone to share. Mind your business.

It is always ok to call out misinformation and disinformation. No, the earth is not flat, no matter how many million-dollar basketball players say it is. Raw milk is dangerous for human consumption. Louis Pasteur was a genius. Covid is not over. Vaccines work, and measles and polio are terrible and deadly diseases. Jonas Salk was a genius, too. Abortion is healthcare, and health insurance is not healthcare. These are not opinions. These are facts. This IS minding your business. 

I have much more to say on this topic, and I have a feeling I will get the chance as 2025 unfolds before us. My Sister/Cousin asked me if I was going to have a New Year post, and I honestly told her that I doubted it. It only took one asshole this morning on the intertoobs to get me going. 

Happy 2025. Mind your own damn business, and don't make me come back here to tell you why you are doing it wrong. (See what I did there?) It's going to be a helluva year.