Because I Don't Live On Saturn -- UPDATE

This is a picture of a portion of planet Earth where I used to live as seen from low Earth orbit.  

This is a picture of our lovely, green and blue planet as seen from 

a distance of 10 million kilometers, shot by the Juno spacecraft en route to Jupiter.

As here is a picture of Earth as seen from 

behind the rings of Saturn.

You will notice that as you move further and further away from Earth, every meaningful, human-scale boundary is lost.  

From far away you cannot distinguish between Chicago and North Korea.

From even further away you cannot make out the difference between the Earth and the Moon.

So depending on where you plant your feet and how much geological time you choose to embrace you could write that the distinction between, say, the administration of Mayor Harold Washington of Chicago and the reign of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il were radically different in every meaningful way...

...or you could opine that all of human history is a mere tick of the galactic clock, and all human endeavors are the vain and ridiculous squalling of foolish species that will no doubt soon vanish, unnoticed and unmourned.

Which brings me to this column by Chris Hedges.

Which lays out the perfectly legitimate, detailed low-orbit slam on MSNBC for selling out Phil Donahue and muzzling Bill Moyers:

 ...if I had to pick a date when commercial television decided amassing corporate money and providing entertainment were its central mission, when it consciously chose to become a carnival act, it would probably be Feb. 25, 2003, when MSNBC took Phil Donahue off the air because of his opposition to the calls for war in Iraq.

Donahue and Bill Moyers, the last honest men on national television, were the only two major TV news personalities who presented the viewpoints of those of us who challenged the rush to war in Iraq. General Electric and Microsoft—MSNBC’s founders and defense contractors that went on to make tremendous profits from the war—were not about to tolerate a dissenting voice. Donahue was fired, and at PBS Moyers was subjected to tremendous pressure. An internal MSNBC memo leaked to the press stated that Donahue was hurting the image of the network. He would be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war,” the memo read. Donahue never returned to the airwaves.

No argument here.

Then Mr. Hedges takes it out to 10 million kilometers because what this column is really about is "they're all equally awful!" 

The celebrity trolls who currently reign on commercial television, who bill themselves as liberal or conservative, read from the same corporate script. They spin the same court gossip. They ignore what the corporate state wants ignored. They champion what the corporate state wants championed. They do not challenge or acknowledge the structures of corporate power. Their role is to funnel viewer energy back into our dead political system—to make us believe that Democrats or Republicans are not corporate pawns. 

And they all get paid too much:

These corporations, in return for the fear-based propaganda, pay the lavish salaries of celebrity news people, usually in the millions of dollars.

Then, suddenly, it's about Tom Friedman also too!

It does not matter that these celebrities and their guests, usually retired generals or government officials, got the war terribly wrong. Just as it does not matter that Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Friedman were wrong on the wonders of unfettered corporate capitalism and globalization. 

Because however legitimate the original argument may be -- and kicking the crap out of the lackeys who burned Donohue and smothered Moyers is entirely legitimate -- for the Purity Caucus it is vitally important to move every debate as quickly as possible from whatever the initial point was outward to the broader theme that there is absolutely no distinction whatsoever between, say, Fox News and MSNBC: 

The descent was gradual—a slide into the tawdry, the trivial and the inane, into the charade on cable news channels such as Fox and MSNBC in which hosts hold up corporate political puppets to laud or ridicule, and treat celebrity foibles as legitimate news. 

Vitall important that all discussion be limited as quickly as possible to only that which is visible from the orbit of Saturn:

They do not devote significant time to climate scientists to explain the crisis that is enveloping our planet. They do not confront the reckless assault of the fossil fuel industry on the ecosystem. They very rarely produce long-form documentaries or news reports on our urban and rural poor, who have been rendered invisible, or on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or on corporate corruption on Wall Street. That is not why they are paid. They are paid to stymie meaningful debate. They are paid to discredit or ignore the nation’s most astute critics of corporatism, among them Cornel West, Medea Benjamin, Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky. They are paid to chatter mindlessly, hour after hour, filling our heads with the theater of the absurd. They play clips of their television rivals ridiculing them and ridicule their rivals in return.

After which, for dessert, you can wander through the column's 244 (an counting) comments that  form the ever-widening circle of contestants playing the "Whose of conspiracy theory is bigger?" game behind Mr. Hedge's column and learn everything you ever wanted to know about:

• How Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes are just another set of tools of the empire.
• How Rachel Maddow's book might be interesting, but was just a bunch of stuff from ten years ago.
• How MSNBC is "just opinion not facts!"
• How Rachel Maddow is obsessed with divisive identity policies about gay stuff and abortion that is all designed by her corporate paymasters to distract The People for the Real Issues.
• Top!Secret! World Jewish Conspiracy Stuff.
• Top!Secret! Kennedy Assassination Stuff
• Top!Secret! 9/11 Truth stuff, and interplay during which several commenters turn on him for begin too big a pussy to Tell The Truth.  
• Why you should never, ever vote.

I hear the orbit of Saturn is a lovely place.  

There, with the Universe as your backyard, you have enough room to encompass however many of the widest, deepest and grandest conspiracy theories as may please you.  From there you can laugh and sneer at the pettiness and cruelty your entire species from safe, safe, safe distance and never have to trouble yourself with the actual concerns of our silly monkey-race or grubby little human details like the difference between the administration of Mayor Harold Washington of Chicago and the reign of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.

I hear the orbit of Saturn is a lovely place.

But I don't live there. 

UPDATE:  Welcome Crooks and Liars Readers.