Great Piece on Narrative as News: Nothing Is Real
RUSH: You know, it reminds me, Sunday, I guess, in the New York Post there was a -- I don't know if it's a column or if it was just an essay. It was by Maureen Callahan, called, "Everything Today is a Lie." It's a long piece because it's filled with examples. It starts this way.
"We’re officially in the era of the epic troll. Let’s review the last week alone: Gwyneth Paltrow, high priestess of pretension, offers a $15,000 gold vibrator on her website, Goop. 'Sex toys have long since graduated from the floppy rubber things you hide in your bedside table to beautiful works of interactive art,' goes the super-literal copy.
"Gwyneth, who well knows what the world thinks of her, doubled down on her good friend Chelsea Handler’s new talk show, which, by the way, debuted last Wednesday on Netflix. 'We started talking about, "Is lube toxic?"' Paltrow said. 'We’re very conscious about non-toxic products at Goop, and we learned that lube is actually very toxic,' and so go to her site to buy $13 organic..." It's just absurd stuff. None of it true.
"On Game of Thrones, Jon Snow comes alive -- despite dying in last year’s season finale, despite multiple, HBO-stamped statements to incredulous fans. 'Jon Snow is dead,' said showrunner David Benioff at the time. 'Deader than dead,' said the episode’s director. In January, Kit Harington, who plays Snow, told the BBC that 'all I can tell you is Jon Snow is dead. He died at the end of last season.'
"On March 27, six weeks before Jon Snow came back to life, Harington told the Guardian, 'I’m really dead. I’m not coming back to life.' Last Sunday, Jon Snow was up and about, executing the traitors who’d killed him so poorly."
Not real. I mean, everybody's being lied to, is the point. And it goes on. "All last week, pop star Meghan Trainor claimed that she was outraged to see her latest video, body much thinner, go online without her approval. 'I was like, "Why are the fans messing with my waist?" And my glam squad was like, "That’s not your waist."' No mere pop star she: Trainor has much larger, more important concerns than 'the fans' and her glam squad. Concocting the ridiculous premise that a major record label would betray one of their top-selling artists ... Trainor elevated herself to solo feminist warrior, dismantling faceless, sexist, body-shaming executives in corner offices."
It turns out the whole thing was a publicity stunt planned from beginning to end. If you don't know who this is, it doesn't matter. It was a brilliantly conceived, flawlessly executed publicity stunt made to look like this woman had been betrayed by her own company with fake photos of her published and it was all a lie to sell whatever it is she's got to sell.
"Queen of the Anthems is, of course, Beyoncé, whose new album and accompanying short film, 'Lemonade,' strongly implies that her husband -- the equally private, micromanaging, business-minded Jay Z -- has been cheating on her with multiple women, including one she calls Becky. While the internet went crazy trying to guess who Jay’s 'Becky' was -- and beta celebs like Rachel Roy and Rita Ora inserted themselves in the mix -- the true point was lost: 'Lemonade' is only available on Tidal, Beyoncé and Jay Z’s flailing streaming service."
They're making up the fact that he had a babe. They're making up the fact that he had marital problems. The whole thing is a concocted PR scam designed to separate people from their money. Nothing is real. Substance cannot sell what needs to be sold, is the bottom line. People have lost faith that reality can sell anything. People have lost faith that reality can persuade, that substance has meaning, everything must be lied about, everything must be spun. In fact, everything is a narrative today. A narrative has become a substitute to the news. A narrative has become a substitute for substance.
"As of last Friday, the New York Times reported that 'Lemonade' has generated 306 million global streams, with 1.2 million user subscriptions in the album’s first week. In a soapy, concurrent Us magazine cover story, Beyoncé’s agony and artistry got six pages of coverage, with telling quotes buried at the end. 'Everything was planned, and they are both in on it together,' a source close to the couple said. 'Everything she is doing is to break records,' said another."
Everything they're doing is lying. Everything they're doing is misleading. They can't rely on the substance of her talent. They don't trust it. It's got to be spun.
"Sharon Osbourne, long-suffering wife of addled rocker Ozzy, leaked word that she was leaving him after 33 years of marriage after catching him with the hairdresser. On Tuesday, Sharon ... dramatically returned to her CBS daytime show, 'The Talk.'"
Remember who this babe is. She turned her family into the Kardashians before there was the Kardashians. When she got back to her TV show her agony and her hurt, "she shared her rapid emotional arc, from humiliation to fear to courage to independence, with her 2.9 million viewers. ... 'I can’t keep living like this,' she told her co-hosts, while simultaneously claiming she was 'empowered.'
"As she sat, emotionless, she sipped from a tall glass of lemonade, trolling us all. By Thursday, Sharon was photographed cuddling with Ozzy at a promotional event for his upcoming 'farewell tour' -- which, as his longtime manager, she oversees. 'Sharon is the queen of publicity stunts,' a source told Page Six last Friday."
Well, yeah, but these are more than publicity stunts because this stuff is now happening in politics. Look at Ben Rhodes, the New York Times story on the Iranian deal, and now everybody is being lied to. It's everywhere now. And Maureen Callahan moves on to the serious stuff from the entertainment stuff. I have to take a break here. But the point is, everything today is a lie, everything is spun, everything is PR, substance and reality, nobody has confidence to be persuasive or to be victorious.