What does the media let Bush get away with?

I was feeling lazy last night, so I plopped myself down in front of the news for a couple of hours. Most of that time was spent watching Dateline, and boy did I learn a lot. The story they based their entire hour long "news" magazine around was how beautiful people are more likely to be accepted in social situations, as opposed to normal joe's and jane's. Well, duh. When the premise of the story is basically a rhetorical question, why pursue the story? Not only did they pursue the story, but they couldn't even report it right. To anwser their rhetorical question, they sent four people into the streets of NYC: two reasonable attractive normal folks, and two models. Then they based the whole show around the fact that the models were treated better than the normal folks, like this is a surprise. They didn't just send out beautiful people, they sent out models that you see in magazines, that you hardly ever get to see in real life. These people looked like celebrities. Then the reported acted surprised when people, shockola, flocked to the models!

Hard hitting media like this explains why the whole world think that us Americans area bunch of braindead fucking morons. It's not like this past week was a slow news week: there's the war in Iraq, a presidential campaign, Paul O'Neill's book revealing just how things work (or don't work) in the Bush administration, O'Neill's book also revealing that Bush wanted to attack Iraq immediately after he got into office; jobs aren't being created, people are in more debt now then they have been in at least the past 20 years (if not ever), etc. That's all I can come up with after thinking about the past week for a minute, and those should be huge stories. Looking at the assortment of stories that reporters could have touched over the past week, Dateline should feel ashamed for the story that they choose to air.

If that's not bad enough, they had a preview of their next show: the Trial of Michael Jackson! Ooooh! You know what? Fuck Michael Jackson. Fuck'em straight in the goat ass. Did he molest a child or not? I don't know and I certainly don't give a fuck and a half about the matter, or about Whacko Jacko in general. What happens in this man's life has absolutely no bearing on my life, so why should I care? Everytime I turn on the TV now, it's all Jacko all the time. Jackojackojacko. It's a big jackoff of Michael Fucking Jackson. What about all the news stories happening within our borders that need to be reported on, not to mention all the international stories that we are missing? Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the journalism industry, these stories used to be called "scoops." Now it's just ignored. Real news? Fuck that! Give America an ejackoulation of infotainment.

How is our democracy supposed to function if voters are not properly informed of the issues and the real stories that should be in the media? Don't tell me that political stories sell less then infotainment, because to that argument I have a one word reply: Clinton. Scandals in the White House are huge, and the papers will sell accordingly. But no, we don't see any stories about the Bush scandals, all we ever hear about is the fact that Clinton committed the high crime of getting sucked off in the Oval Office.

Some of you might be asking the same question I'm asking myself right now: "Clinton's scandals involve sex, which sells. Maybe the Bush scandals aren't reported because they don't involve sex?" That's not entirely true, though. When the right accused Clinton of murder and rape, that sold papers. But the woman who accused Bush of rape, Margie Schoedinger, is now dead. Supposedly it was suicide, but the media has compeletely ignored this story. And when I say completely ignored, I mean completely ignored. I conducted numerous searches through Lexis/Nexis database and all I could find for her was a death notice in a Houston paper. I was shocked and had trouble believing my results, so I had a friend do his own independent searching on her to see what he came up with, and his results were the same as mine: zilch. Not one major or minor US daily, news magazine, or wire service in America has touched this story. That's amazing, because whenever here were unfounded accousations against Clinton, the media was all over it like a stain on a dress. I don't know if Ms. Schoedinger's accusations are true, but the fact remains that they were not reported, and her death, a gunshot wound to the head that was ruled a suicide, was also not reported. What I do know is that this woman filed a lawsuit against Bush and soon after she died. Back when Clinton was president, this would have been a story. But with Bush as president, the only things the media seems to be focused on is how we want to talk to beautiful people and Whacko Jackoff.