Can’t remember the last time I saw a gaggle of reporters and news outlets overreact to a video. Wait, now that I think about it, they tend to overreact about a lot of things. There’s a missing plane! Let’s break out the super graphics and run with it non-stop until the ratings decline. A terrorist attack! Well, we have to be careful about where it happened, who claimed responsibility for it and does it fit into a narrow narrative that they’ve been running with. Hollywood hates this side or that side! Honestly, who cares what they think? Truth is that you really should since they create what you and your children watch and listen to everyday. Don’t mistake this as an attack on a particular news outlet or actor, but rather the entire news and entertainment operation as a whole. Yep, it’s about you, too!
You see, we are all put into little boxes so that others can make money off of us. Yes, money! The cynical view is that we are all nothing more than dollar signs to just about everyone. Everything that you do has a cost and almost all cases it has a monetary value. Let’s take air for an example. It is always the first thing that people mention as being free. It’s necessary to your survival to breathe in air, but is it really free? The action of breathing is strained in some individuals requiring assistance. That’s certainly not free. When you breathe in something that causes an illness, is that really free? The cost to heal can be quite lofty. Air, in some cases, can kill you, but lack of it will, too. You see, there is a cost to that air that you breathe in.
So what does this have to do with the overreaction we have seen in the last week? Perspective! The overreaction has actually laid bare the biases and sensitivities that these organizations and individuals have. As much as one may want to dismiss it, it also is reflective of how many still feel sore about the last election’s results and almost as many are ecstatic about it. Emotions are very sensitive in the country. It’s just very clear where those feelings lie when watching those that have the responsibility to inform and entertain us.
Many horrible things, some may even go as far as to say that they incite violence, have been happening in this country since the last election in this country. I’ll go even further to say that they have incited violence and even an assassination attempt on members of the U.S. Congress. When a play can go on depicting the likeness of the President of the United States being assassinated, musicians can shoot him in videos, comedians can hold up severed heads of his likeness and actors can question when the “last time an actor assassinated a president” and that “maybe it’s time,” we should all stand up and take notice. These are people that have influence. Now, there has been some consequence for some of those actions, but certainly not all of them. Maybe it began when a Broadway show decided to call out the V.P.-elect during a performance. Maybe it was the many actors and musicians that had thought “a lot about blowing up the White House” all while being given a platform on news outlets cheering the words spoken. Whenever it started and just like with anything else, prolonged exposed can cause serious damage.
Is the media responsible for some of this? Absolutely! Will they admit it? Maybe! Will they change it? If ratings decline, yes, but if not, why should they? It’s keeping those dollars following into their pockets and helping them to breathe, but at what cost?
Gina Olson 