We open this tale with Ken, a naïve middle-schooler who likes to keep to himself. His teachers love his tenacity, how his work, while not the finest in quality, is always timely, dependable, and thorough. Often, Ken lingers after school. He likes watching the 7th grade boy’s basketball games because no one bothers him there. Ken is content; he knows things around him are changing, and he’s okay with letting his adolescent bubble adapt and form to the constraints of the times.
On a day like any other, we find Ken in the gym, catching another basketball game. In strides our antagonist, Bull, a junior in high school with a leather jacket, a fast car, and no business in a middle school gym. But truthfully, his business is the middle school, as the the crowd there represents the largest chunk of his drug sales profit. Naïve Ken doesn’t know Bull—he’s never seen him, in fact.
Bull strides along the out-of-bounds line and steps up into the bleachers and sits just a few feet from Ken. He breaks the proverbial ice and, before too long, wraps Ken around his finger with promises of popularity, girls, and exposure. Never before considering these things available, Ken is dazzled like a customer in a magic shop.
After a taste, Ken is hooked. His work struggles, strays off topic and reads in a rather pedantic tone. His teachers note his increased isolation, but they’re so busy accounting for their other students and duties, they figure he’s just "finding his way."
This goes on well into high school. No one seems to know what Ken is saying when he speaks. They’ve seen him off with Bull—who dropped out during his senior year to sell drugs professionally—throwing and crashing parties with all too confusing enthusiasm.
Flash-forward to adulthood, and while all those who grew up with Ken rush off to their jobs and families and busy schedules, Ken is apart--off in his own universe, feeling self-important and necessary. He’s ultimately ignored now since the masses around him have seen and heard it all before. So Ken, wallowing in the false hope that opportunity knows his address and might one day ring his doorbell, sits and spews his nonsense for any who will listen. Only no one does.
---
And here we are, at the end of a familiar allegory, and even I'm wondering if I've lost you.
As my eyes bounced between the glowing plasma screens at the gym last night, I started thinking about my previous blog concerning the Olympics, the finger-tip accessibility of technology and information, and all the televised news falling in a constant, muted rain on the exercise equipment. I went home and fired up the computer. My handy MacBook dictionary widget defines "news" as newly received or important information, esp. about some important events. I wondered if the definition is modernly true?
Print news, in the traditional and tangible sense, only gets one shot, so the relevancy must hit the mark. Newspapers and weekly magazines find themselves bound to the presentation of information and important events in a self-contained, limited body. And though some might find the black and white print the dying Dunder Mifflin of the news industry, there's still reason to value such a restricted model in an otherwise unrestricted universe.
So I'll fess up. Ken represents CNN, a nice little news organization working hard to present the textbook definition of the news. (Of course, Ken represents all major news organizations, but Ken/CNN is too get to unlink.) Bull stands for cable television(pronounced kay-BULL), a player who convinced Ken and his other newsy buddies they'd be better off with their own channels, 24-hour news desks, and pundit-punching programs.
We all used to like Ken and his kind; before we realized drugs were ruining him, we thought he was pretty cool. He had it going on. We'd turn to him when we needed a dependable fix, some of the good shit. Now we'd rather not, as the ranted puking and mewling is fraught with frivolous polls from countless correspondents adding opinion to open-ended promptings.
So much attention is given to the irony of reality t.v. that conversations about modern news coverage remain silent. We all know that so-called reality television isn't actually reality, per se, but clever editing, handpicked story lines and home-brewed drama. (The paradox of it all is that it's become our reality--but I'll leave that for another time.) But anymore, the televised news isn't giving us important information as much as its documenting the happenings of people for a flickering public spotlight.
I love how old the idea of boring and fabricated news is. I marvel how entertainment value, ratings, and dollars somehow craft what we see. I even like watching the Daily Show every night just to count how many major cable news telecasts Stewart's production crew splices together to compile the repeated "something" made from nothing. I love the fundamental contradictions, how even those camping with attention seekers are contrarily calling for reprieve.
The news-driven political arena and all its gladiators like to think themselves mightier than the nonsense of popular reality-based television programming, despite how recent slandering paints it all the same color.
So Ken is just another burnout reeling in too much Rick James and Miami Vice. Cable news channels are just reality shows set in a studio with a three-camera format.
You thought the allegory was familiar? The moral is worse: "Say No to Drugs."
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