A Scammer Darkly

Juan Williams...

...by day, straight-arrow member of a venerable institution fighting a rear-guard action against a sinister and secretive alliance that seeks to destroy civilization.

...by night, a fully-paid-up member of that sinister alliance.

And then one day he starts to lose his mind because a human being cannot exist in both worlds: cannot stay sane as a committed defender of society, while at the same time collaborating with those committed to obliterating that society.

Why does this sound so familiar?

Oh yeah. Because it is a novel by Philip K. Dick written 33 years ago called "A Scanner Darkly":


If Mr. Williams wanted to work a day job managing an IHOP, and a weekend gig making balloon animals at children's parties, no one would have given a damn. But instead, Mr. Williams wanted to make a living -- a very handsome living -- working for the NEWS and the ANTI-NEWS at the same time.

666 years before Dick, Dante Alighieri wrote about such people in Canto III of "The Inferno". They were the "trimmers" (as they later came to be called): those who are condemned to eternity in the Vestibule of Hell for spending their lives changing or modifying their positions or beliefs for reasons of expedience:

Inferno: Canto III

...
And I, who had my head with horror bound,
Said: "Master, what is this which now I hear?
What folk is this, which seems by pain so vanquished?"
And he to me: "This miserable mode
Maintain the melancholy souls of those
Who lived withouten infamy or praise.
Commingled are they with that caitiff choir
Of Angels, who have not rebellious been,
Nor faithful were to God, but were for self.
The heavens expelled them, not to be less fair;
Nor them the nethermore abyss receives,
For glory none the damned would have from them."
And I: "O Master, what so grievous is
To these, that maketh them lament so sore?"
He answered: "I will tell thee very briefly.
These have no longer any hope of death;
And this blind life of theirs is so debased,
They envious are of every other fate.
No fame of them the world permits to be;
Misericord and Justice both disdain them.
Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass."
...

Mr. Williams' real problem is not what he did or did not say; his real problem is that, after years of being permitted to romp around the American media paddock free and unfettered, he finally ran into one of the last intact sections of the rusty, run-down fence-line that once delineated the boundary between actual journalism and the farce of Fox News.

Because Fox News is not a news organization. It is -- quite openly and unapologetically -- the propaganda wing of the American fascist movement.

It is performance art on a global scale, designed to constantly push-push-push a radical political agenda and lie to the American people by extruding a hard-right-flavored news-looking product 24/7/365 directly into the skulls of the Republican Base.

Think about that for a minute: every single fucking day, the agenda for the entire media-political-economic engine of the last superpower on Earth is prodded along by a single corporation dedicated to perpetrating one, massive, toxic lie after another.

And everybody knows it.

That's the thing. That's what makes it so sickening; the simple, observable fact that, deep down, the Big Murdoch Lie Machine really fools no one at all but hardcore meatsticks of the Republican Party base. The rest of it -- its day-to-day operations -- is all kabuki, depending entirely on the consensual collusion of thousands of media bean-field hands like Mr. Williams who make their daily bread oiling the cogs of the terrible machine, and who, in turn, depend on the rage and savage ignorance of millions of bitter Pig People who will pay any price to have someone in a suit on teevee tell them that they're actually insightful patriots.

It is a great, reeking crack-house which pays Mr. Williams very well for deejaying in the living room. And because -- like far, far too many of his colleagues -- Mr. Williams clearly believes this is all just a game, he can see no reason why he shouldn't be able to work six days a week for a cut of FoxNews' crack-and-hooker trade, and then duck around the corner just in time to strap on a collar and make another few dollars preaching High Church Journalism from the pulpit at NPR.

But this is not an academic debate over journalistic methodology, Juan.

This is a war.

And in this war you have to pick a fucking side.