for 13 February 1998. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Believe It or Not

Subject: Superb, but
confusing

So, newspaper details can't
be trusted, but the headline
can?

True, we are passive
consumers of news. But we
have more options available
than either believing the
whole thing or believing none
of it. I am blissfully
unaware of the the
agenda-setting nature of
"facts" (killings in Algeria,
weapons in Iraq, Clinton in
Lewinsky). But thank God for
the details that I can
critically assess.

Corpse-yourself!

Patrick Raymond
<praymond@ogilvy.net>

Well, no. Many details can be
trusted, but some can't; many
headlines can be trusted, but
some can't. Oh, she's a
subtle little vixen, this
confusing world of ours. This
is one of the reasons why
it's helpful to get news from
several reliable sources
(Rush Limbaugh, The Onion,
Salon); it's like fixing your
position by triangulating
stars or landmarks.

Oh, and never trust email
from Suck contributors.

Ambrose Beers

You're absolutely right:
People who believe the media
are wholly corrupt and
deluding themselves
conveniently. Is it
realistic, though, to say
these folks are a percentage
of people worth Sucking
about?

The problem, I think, many
people have with the media is
their products' slant or
presentation, not their
whole. At issue is a
sentence-part like the
following:

"... Iraq, a country that has
lost thousands of its
children to a years-long
embargo ..."

Is it the embargo that's lost
Iraq's children, or its
leaders? The author of this
obviously thinks it's the
former, and so has colored
the rest of the article with
this belief and its
implications.

Like people who dismiss them
en toto, those who think that
the products of a (mostly)
human media are objective are
conveniently self-delusional.

Steve McNally

Steve, Steve, Steve. Sigh.

What do you make of the fact
that, in the same sentence, I
refer to Iraq's "dictatorial
government," and the
"abundant evidence" that the
same dictatorial government
is "building (and hiding)
unbelievably dangerous
chemical and biological
weapons"? I know you know
this, but here goes: A piece
of writing isn't a bunch of
random sentences stacked up
in random order for no
purpose; a statement is
colored by, is meant to be
colored by, the statements
that come before and after. A
writer who believed that
poor-sweet Iraq was just an
innocent victim of
big-ol'-meanie-Amerika
wouldn't finish the sentence
with those
dictators-and-germ-bombs
parts.

So, yes, the rest of the
article is colored with my
beliefs and their
implications - but there are
more beliefs and more
implications than you think
you've spotted. It's a little
like "Where's Waldo?" but
with extra Waldoes.

But, then, the point of your
message is - well, the whole
point. You don't have to
agree with each sentence; you
can read critically, reject
and question pieces, and
still participate in the
conversation. Oh, hey - I
just thought of a terrible
analogy, which I will now
gleefully trot out for your
consumption: You can push the
lima beans off to the side,
but still eat the rest of the
dinner - and come back the
next night for the next
dinner. We slave all day over
a hot stove for you, Steve.
Do you feel the love?

OK, this is long-winded, but
one more. This is very much
not the first time I've
written something that all
but had "opinion piece"
stamped on its forehead, only
to be criticized for not
being "objective." I actually
have never for a moment
believed that such a thing as
"objectivity" can or ever
will exist in the news pages,
but, for the record, Suck has
never really purported to be
a part of the objective news
media. It's, you know, called
Suck.

Ambrose Beers

Beers,

You make a good point, but
the bigger parallel in the
Wag the Dog flog is A) Larry
Beinhart's excellent novel,
American Hero and B) that
novel's screamingly
believable parallels between
Hollywood desires and the
needs of the Bush
administration. The punch
line of Beinhart's piece is
not that it's a giant
conspiracy theory, but that
entertainment and reality are
both so highly produced (to
meet the media requirements
of TV and film) that we
really wouldn't be able to
tell the difference even if
we did get all the facts.
Filtered through the
production values of
Hollywood, even real news
takes on the slick appearance
of a made-for-TV special, and
the viewer usually concludes
that this is one of those
"based on a true story"
stories that ultimately only
means "embellished to
perfection" to fit within the
dramatic necessities of a
commercial break every eight
minutes.

More lite beer, but less lite
Beers.

Cheers,
Read M. Schuchardt

More lite beer, but less lite
... Mom, Read Mercer
Schuchardt's being mean to
me!

Haven't read American Hero,
but it sounds like something
worth reading.

And now, the third paragraph.
This one will be longer than
one sentence. Ahem.
Entertainment and reality are
both highly produced, but 1)
the producers of reality -
Michael Deaver, Lee Atwater,
Dick Morris, Bill Clinton -
are actually pretty clumsy, I
think, and can usually be
seen moving their lips, and
2) this has to be a question
of which media, and which
media organizations, we're
talking about; not trusting a
single source helps - sort of
a process of averaging out
the slants to try to approach
reality, and 3) (which is
really just more of 2) not
all news is television or
television-infected
newspapers.

There are huge problems with
our news media, but the truth
- television -marketing slogan
coming - is out there.

Ambrose Beers

Fahrvergnügen

Hi there.
You wrote (in today's Suck):
"And not because it was the
only car besides Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang to star in
its own film." The Trabant
(an East German car no longer
in production) was featured
in a 1991 German language
film Go Trabi Go.

Regards,
Tom Ace <crux@qnet.com>

Hi Tom.

Thanks for your note. The
Trabant is another classic
old four-banger. I'm
surprised we haven't seen
more of them in this country
since the end of communism.
Um, I guess I'm not,
considering the fact that
East Germany's working class
is preoccupied with beating
up foreigners just now.

Probably, the most we'll ever
get to see of the lovable
little wreck is in Levi's
commercials and on U2
albums....

Thanks again,
E. L. Skinner

I'm just waiting for the
VW-sponsored Phish/Widespread
Panic/Rusted Root/any other
patchouli-wearing stinky band
tour! I'm laughing my ass off
as the baby boomers' precious
little Bug is turned into a
symbol of new hip
consumerism.

Love,
Ironclad Bastard

Dear Mr. Bastard,

Thanks for your note. I love
the idea of a stinky band
tour, and you may have struck
on another ingenious design
element of the Bug: It's one
of the few cars you can
actually drive with your head
out the window.

With a 100,000 new bugs on
the road, "head-on collision"
may take on a whole new
meaning.

Best wishes,
E. L. Skinner

Believe It or Not

Subject: Isn't she ironic?

I saw Wag the Dog in a fairly
normal (i.e., not terminally
hip) Sony multiplex in NYC.
The theater was packed;
absolute sell out. And the
audience loved it, laughing
at all the jokes and in all
the right places.

This was the same audience
that also laughed
enthusiastically at the
hip-hop singing grandmother
in the trailer for "The
Wedding Singer" that ran
during the interminable wait
before the movie. This was,
in other words, a pretty
typical American movie
audience.

In short, average America was
cheerfully laughing in a
superior way at the idea that
average America was composed
of mindless morons. We are
all now hipper than thou ...
and who is left to be thou, I
wonder?

I rather liked the movie, but
I left with a sour taste in
my mouth. Thanks for helping
me understand why.

Alan Kornheiser
The Doctor Is
Tired of Being IN

Amen.

And then there's this: The
movie begins - remember? -
with that great thing about
why the dog wags the tail,
and notes that, if the tail
was smarter, the tail would
wag the dog. So that the
movie is a nice bit of
Hollywood fretting that it's
smarter than everybody else,
and oh goodness me what could
it mean? Love that arrogance.

But yes, yes, yes: Everybody
else is a fool, pal, except
you and me. That'll be $7,
please.

Ambrose Beers