Mideast by Midwest

If, like me, you believe that you can judge a people and their culture by the quality of their cable news, you have little other option than to believe that everyone in the United States has gone bouncing-off-the-walls batshit fucking crazy.

Having said that, it is great fun to watch. Glenn Beck in particular fills the hole left by the state of California's refusal to televise Charles Manson's future parole hearings. Manson and Beck are a lot alike if you listen to their theories and that makes for great TV.

There have been two major stories in the news over the last several weeks: the uprisings in the Middle East and north Africa and the concern about austerity measures in several states in the American Midwest, most notably Wisconsin. Because journalists are lazy and given to drink a lot, the 24 hour cable networks are equating the two, despite the fact that they couldn't be more different.

If you love weaponized stupidity as much as I do, watching Fox News and MSNBC over the last week or so has been an unmitigated joy. Both are running the constant comparisons between the unrelated protests that are occurring as much as ten time zones apart and it couldn't be more hilarious.

MSNBC frames the stories as ordinary citizens rising up against arrogant and hostile governments in a quest to save and improve their way of life. They see everyone involved as nothing less than Nelson Mandela. Fox, on the other hand, is spinning a paranoid fantasy of a growing conspiracy involving Ayman al-Zawahiri, Van Jones, Richard Trumka and the ghost of Leon Trotsky.

According to Glenn Beck and his cohorts, their ultimate objective is to establish either a one-world government, a caliphate, or a communist tyranny - despite the fact that no one but me seems to have noticed that those systems of government are all diametrically opposed to one another - that stretches from Islamabad to Madison. Because Brian Williams and the editorial board of the Washington Post hasn't told you about it, they're naturally a part of it.

Oh, and Beck wants you to know that he figured it out first. I'm always happy to accommodate Glenn.



Let me state this as clearly as I possibly can, okay? Wisconsin is not Egypt or Libya. How do I know this? Well, the fact that Anderson Cooper hasn't yet had his ass kicked by a Packers fan is as good a place to start as any. Yes, the state of Michigan voted yesterday to close half of Detroit's schools, but anyone that has spent any time at all in Detroit will tell you that it will hardly be transformative.

Look at Libya. I'm seeing pictures from there of people actually cut in half by what looks to be anti-aircraft guns (Note: Link highly graphic and not for the queasy. More here.) Because he so distrusts his own military and security services, Muammar Gaddafi has brought in foreign mercenaries to brutalize and murder his own people. Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana are merely examples of Republicans not liking unions very much, which should hardly be considered news to anyone who has paid any attention to American politics in the last century.

The people of the Middle East and north Africa are overthrowing tyranny at a rather impressive rate, whereas their American cousins are merely beginning to face the consequences of fifty years of fiscal insanity, and rather badly at that. Other than the timing, the two developments couldn't be more unrelated.

But without false equivalence where would cable news be?