DEATH KNELL OF THE FOURTH

Sarah Palin appears on The O’Reilly Factor

This debut was certainly not unexpected. I am surprised, however, that it wasn't sooner, given the unreasonable popularity of Palin. In all honesty, every conservative I’ve had the opportunity to ask about Palin has a nearly identical response, she sends a chill down their spine. None of them have anything really positive to say about the former Wasilla emperor.

Chills? Yes. Surely you jest? No. It is not that there’s anything within her own individuality or her phantom power for them to fear, but the conservatives, the rational, level-headed conservatives, know that, if she is ever to become even more polarizing of a political figure than she is now with an R attached to her name, even remotely, her phantom power will become a wrecking-ball and spell the destruction of the GOP.

The only way this could happen, they surmise, and rightly so, is if she runs for president or vice president again on the Republican ticket. (If she runs with Glenn Beck as her VP nominee, the GOP will unreservedly implode.) Some progressives might cheer such an outcome, but not me. We need to maintain the two-party system, for that matter, we need more than two viable parties to vote for, to balance and check the other(s), to help bring us out of the tail-spin of corruption and end the media's love affair with candidates that they should be holding accountable for past and present wrongs.

The line between entertainment and news, between the windbags and bobble-heads sucking on the corporate teat and true journalists has never been so thin. I mean thin to the point of the line being almost non-existent! This must change! David Mamet wrote in his book, Writing in Restaurants, that the difference between entertainment and art is (and I paraphrase here), “Entertainment’s accessible and art… is necessary.” How true this is when one considers journalism an art form.

We've nearly lost the fourth estate to corporatism. And Palin's appearance with the king of crap and the public's and the media's inane focus on such, somewhat proves my point. Of course I would never consider either of those two, O'Reilly or Palin (or ninety-eight percent of FOX News programs for that matter), to be anywhere near the actual "fourth estate", but, if FOX gets its way, as it appears to be doing, this country will never be able to figure the accessible estate from the necessary estate and that will most certainly be the death knell for these United States of America.

We don't need anymore damned entertainment, we need art. We need our fourth estate to be strong, willing to stand up to any and all corporatist thugs including their bosses. We need to take our estate back; rip it from the hands of entertainment and return it to its rightful place, within the clutches of necessity.

© 2010 by mark prime