Jeff’s post on St. Matthew of Wyoming got me to thinking about narratives, and how the MFM is incapable of covering stories that don’t fit the narratives they believe in.
In the Matthew Shepard case, the story went national because it fit a progressive narrative: the one that goes “Red state America is filled with bigots who hate and murder gays.” The near simultaneous rape and murder of thirteen year old Jesse Dirkhising by two gay men in Arkansas was not national news; because there is no narrative that permits gay men to be portrayed as sexual predators.
We see the same thing with the national coverage of the deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner. These stories are not only covered because of The Narrative, but have to be carefully shaded to fit The Narrative that racist cops kill young black men with impunity because America is a racist country where black lives don’t matter. Meanwhile, three white cops have been indicted over the last four months for shooting unarmed black men — in red southern South Carolina — but this is not worthy of wall-to-wall national media attention because it doesn’t fit the Narrative. (It will become newsworthy only if they are acquitted.)
And then, there is the University of Virginia gang-rape story, which has since been revealed to be a hoax (probably), but which gained national attention because, like the Duke lacrosse case before it, it fit a feminist-promoted Narrative of colleges as rape zones where privileged white males ran amok. In 2013, a thirteen year old girl was gang-raped by illegal immigrants. But The Narrative insists that illegal immigrants are victims, not perpetrators, so that story was not covered by the national media.
Above all the other Narratives is the one the progressive left believes above all the others; that middle America is bigoted, hateful, and potentially violent. For that reason, negative stories about gays, illegal immigrants, or Muslims must be suppressed; lest Middle Americans pause from raping their sister-cousins, pick up their AR-15’s, and begin shooting everybody who talks with a lisp or whose skin is more than a shade darker than Katy Perry from the backs of their pick-ups.
To paraphrase Joe Goebbels, the progressive left believes that if they create a Narrative and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. But The Narrative can be maintained only for such time as the Media-Government complex can shield the people from its political and economic consequences. It thus becomes vitally important for the Media-Government complex to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of The Narrative, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the Media-Government complex.
This last is why the Media-Government complex is so quick to attack those who dissent from the narrative as “Deniers.”
Nice post! Please re-read for typos. (last paragraph, first sentence?)
Big Media always has an agenda with the stories they highlight. Matthew Shepard was a gay victim during a time when homosexuality was beginning to become more accepted in the mainstream (Will & Grace just went on the air) who was killed and strung up in a most distinct, and “tabloid-friendly” kind of way. That angle is what played in viewership.
The big “missing girls/women” stories generally involve Caucasian women, like they’re the only ones that ever disappear. Tell that to the hundreds of victims of The Grim Sleeper.
Shrug.
I just posted this on the politico.com page where a current UVa student attempts to defend the “Larger Truth” behind Jackiegate:
I would refer the author to Barbara Mikkelson’s invaluable essays at snopes.com discussing the psychology of why people not only BELIEVE the stories about slutty snobby girls who hatch scorpions out of their face after over-doing it at the tanning salon (“She went incurably insane and has been in a mental ward to this very day!!!”), but they EVEN pass on these fourth-hand friend-of-a-friend tales as eyewitness accounts!
V’s “Narrative” defines the meaning of propaganda. Used by empty & repressive regimes since the beginning of time.
In America today, propaganda is a necessary prop to rationalize an ideology promoted by the Democrat Party, whose platform is based on non-individuality & the promotion of government overreach – as well, as tax & spend.
Google is your friend: “Frankfurt School,” “Cultural Marxism.”
Great post!!!
nope 2 — who want’s to be eaten alive?
http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2014/12/nope-2-who-wants-to-be-eaten-alive.html
Yes, excellent post. This is exactly how it has been ever since the last few years of the Clinton administration, and it all accelerated the day Bush was declared the winner in 2000 and the media was determined to bring him down. I’m sure it was that way for decades prior to that point, but it wasn’t quite as obviously recognizable for me as it has been ever since then.
Excellent Post. Thanks.
Lets not forget that 3 days after the liquor store robber was shot, that a white teen Dylan Taylor was actually shot dead in the back by a black cop, while listening to headphones in a case of mistaken ID. Two weeks after the black muslim Mohammad Ali Brown who serial killed gays in 3 states using grinder was caught & not even covered in most gay news. None of the black pack on white attacks since skittles2 have been reported on MSM not even the video of 100+ blacks attacking 3 whites in the Kroger’s parking lot with a 15yo boy identified as stomping on a white woman’s head only to have his mommy say “he a good boy”.
When the murders of the 2 white Bosnians pulled out of cars get avenged it will be conveniently ignored, just like the illegal alien rape of a 13yo was ignored in the “documentary” Shenandoah of the illegal alien that died after starting a fight and saying his gang banger buddies would take care of them(also not mentioned).
I linked before about how
thinkprogress linked 3 current gang rapes in support of the rolling stone story without noticing they are black on white gang rapes.