On the Transgression of the Unwritten Law

You all know about The Club, right?  The media club?  That self-protecting elite coterie of media creatures who dress up and play journalism in the nation's leading news organs and on high-end teevee programs?  

You can't miss 'em.  They're everywhere, and they can be easily identified by their cocksureness, by the fact that they're almost always wrong, and that their wrongness is never held against them.  This is most important:  being horribly wrong all the time never threatens their membership in The Club   

Also the contrarians members of The Club -- the "Yeah, but whatabaout..." Conservatives -- can always be counted on to serve up their contrarian garbage with a big 'ol smirk.  They play the part of the Heel in this performance, and they go about their business secure in the knowledge that, inside The Club, everyone knows the rules.  Everyone is aware of the Unwritten Law. that no Club member shall ever ask why another Club member is being paid to sit in a Club chair and lie into the camera.  

After all, it's just a show.  Everyone has their role to play, and as with any other staged performance, the continued success of the show depends on the audience's willing suspension of disbelief.  Consider that we can be moved by MacBeth or The Iceman Cometh even though we've already seen them a dozen times and know, in the end, no one really dies.  And we can get sucked in by The Hunt for Red October or Beverly Hills Cop because they're just so damn rewatchable.  

So just imagine the audience's disorientation if, when the ghost of Hamlet's father shows up to tell his son to avenge his murder, the Ghostbusters show up to capture it (note to self:  write up a story treatment of cinematic and stage ghosts suddenly becoming real.)    Or if real-life cops stormed the stage to arrest Hamlet after [Spoiler] he kills Polonius thinking him to be Claudius.  

Just so with the media Club.  The illusion must be maintained, and therefore anything that threatens that illusion -- threatens to jog the audience awake -- must be shut down hard and fast.  Yes, you can now freely bandy the word "liar" around, which, you will remember, was absolute taboo just a few years ago.  Back when grown men and women would contort themselves into all kinds of bizarre linguistic shapes to avoid saying the "L" word.  You could call someone a serial fabulist.  A known exaggerator.  A prevaricator.  Even a naughtybad fibber.  But never, ever flat-out call them a liar.

Well, that has changed.  The graphic at the top of this post is no longer true, which has its good points and bad.  It was exhausting and ridiculous watching adults trying to avoid speaking an obvious truth that was right in front of them.  OTOH, calling Republican liars "liars" doesn't faze them in the slightest, because Republicans no longer have a conscience.  They've long since taken Jiminy Cricket out behind the chemical toilet and put a bullet in his head.  

Instead, being called a liar is a badge of honor.  It proves they can go into the belly of the Liberal Media beast and Trigger the Libs, and do so with a big ol' smirk on their face!  Yay!

But one thing you still absolutely cannot do is question the corporate policy of paying the liar sitting next to you on teevee.  That will get you spanked.  Like so...

Kudos to George Conway for calling out CNN this morning saying why is this network paying (R)Scott Jennings for lying? host Kasie Hunt had to intervene telling Conway let’s not go there, Scott is our colleague.

Translation you just slammed CNN on live TV & I’m covering my butt.… pic.twitter.com/HqhIszYUIe

— ED Malik (@edmundmalik1) May 31, 2024

But don't worry, the Club has survived much worse than this.  The Club will shrug this off and move on  

The Club beareth all things and endureth all things.  

The Club abides.  

That's why it's The Club.

I Am The Liberal Media