Events and Pseudo-Events
January 1, 2008 by pistolpete
It was the summer of 1988. I was in Amherst, Massachusetts waiting for the woman I mistakenly thought would be my soul-mate. Looking to escape the oppressive air of self-righteous liberalism, I ducked into a used bookstore and, right in the middle of a section on New Age philosophies was a book called -Seeds by Thomas Merton.
I knew Thomas Merton to be an aspiring poet/essayist who converted to Catholicism before being called to become a Trappist monk. A friend tried to turn me onto Merton’s writings in college, but I didn’t get much out of them. He seemed to use words more as rockets to escape from reality than shovels to dig down deeper. I’m more like Grapes of Wrath than Brave New World.
But I was compelled to pick up Seeds and opened it up to the essay called ”Events and Pseudo-Events”. Merton’s contention, as I remember it, is that what passes as “news” is manufactured by the media so quickly that it actually has very little to do with truth. Truth takes time to unfold.
Pressured by deadlines, reporters rush to say whatever can be said to seem truthful without genuinely reflecting on whether it reveals anything of value about the actual event (or events) that occurred (or is/are occurring).
The thought came as a revelation, or confirmation of something I’d suspected all along, finally impacting how I would live.
First, I broke up with my pseudo-soul-mate. As Thoreau would say, “The world was too much with her.” Our first date was a lecture by a German communist equating our capitalistic society with Hitler’s regime. Our second date was a student play with no plot, just speeches espousing social anarchy as an appropriate response to an oppressive university establishment. I walked out on the play and left my not-to-be-soul-mate the next day.
Upon returning home, I canceled my subscription to the Louisville Courier-Journal, gave my black-and-white TV set back to Goodwill, turned off the radio and listened only to a steady diet of John Prine and the early (pre-Sargeant Pepper) Beatles. I managed to stay ignorant of world events (apart from an occasional NPR segment) for nearly 20 years.
Then, along came the blogosphere. What to do? It was an opportunity to write without getting a rejection letter. A chance to write and be read. And it didn’t cost anything, like self-publishing would.
I did some mental gymnastics and came up with the solution. Since I’m aware the stuff I read in blogs has little or nothing to do with the truth, it’ll be like reading fiction. I could wallow in the pseudo-events that constantly come my way and even write about them as I felt so led.
So, I have. I’ve written on many things I know next to nothing about, like…
… a Supreme Court ruling on Partial-Birth abortion.
… celebrities drawing attention to pet conditions like autism.
… the life and death of Bobby Kennedy.
…. a theory of evolutionary morality.
And, much, much more. I’ve also found I can add these nifty “Google Images” and draw attention away from my words which could reveal just how little I actually do know about that which I write. It’s like having my own little “People” magazine. And I’m loving it.
{If you want to read more things about which I’m largely ignorant, as well as see some pretty nifty pictures, just look at the side-bar to the right under “unresolved issues” and click on whatever suits your fancy.}
I think it’s great that you have no idea what ur talking about. Just look around at the ones who claim they know everything there is to know. Thank god that im an ignoramus too!
The Pistol fires back: Thank you so much for writing in. Ignorance loves company. I love your site, too. A bit bawdy, but quite funny. Oh, and sorry for slightly editing your comment. I’ve been accused of being a religious bigot practicing unadulterated censorship, so I have a reputation to uphold. Hope you’ll come back soon and often.
If you’re going to write about things you don’t know about, you have to at least do it with panache, and you do, Pete.
I think Merton was right about the errors made in quick, deadline-driven analysis. Which is why I think you can find more truth in blogs, because bloggers have the luxury of time to reflect on what events really mean. They don’t always get it right, either, but I find more worth remembering on blogs than I do in the old media.
I think I may have dated your former soul-mate… or maybe her mother.
The Pistol fires back: You may be right about some blogs. I suppose it simply takes a discrimminating reader to know which blogs provide truthful information and which blogs just regurgitate much-chewed drivel.
You must have dated my pseudo-soul-mate’s mother. After me she became a lesbian.
I do think that “pseudo-events” is a good way to describe a lot of what happens in reporting.
I could rattle off example after example, but I think that I’ll work with something that we can each relate to — music.
A few years ago, our local country station had a “top 500 country songs of all time” countdown, voted by listeners.
There was some good stuff in there, but nothing in the top ten was more than 5 years old. (This actually prompted my comment to a friend of mine that Mary-Chapin Carpenter’s “Down At the Twist and Shout” is an okay song, but I could name 1000 songs that belonged ahead of it. It’s not as easy as it sounds. It took 2 months, and I wound up having to list them in Excel to sort out duplicates. … Was I saying something?)
Oh, yeah …
People have short attention spans. The immediate seems more interesting than the deep.
The Pistol fires back: Believing recent country songs are better than older ones is more than just an oversight. It’s criminal!
Coming to work this morning, I was jamming to Patsy Cline. Right now I’m listening to Conway Twitty. As I typed that, Bill Anderson just came on. Each of these (and hundreds) more could run circles around whatever passes for country music these days.
I stopped listening to Country music when they stopped playing Dwight Yoakum, who was about the only hope popular Country music had in the mid-80s. Oh, I guess something could be said for Randy Travis. But not much.
dude,
as above, your writing style indicates that in your wild manic genius you are going with at *least* 10 fake identities.
you have such gauche taste, though, that I am drawn to your sight like a rubbernecker who can’t turn away from a head on car crash.
may Christ actually give you a break, as you are surely one hurting dude. And at least 10 fake other names - which is cool in MySpace or Blogger or Yahoo Messenger. But as a representative of the mentally ill, you actually think you pass off your “comments” as identities other than those you invented. That is funny to a point dude - or *if* you have a point.
But you don’t see the forest for your trees, dude. Any college student can tell at one reading which “comments” are yours.
This ain’t one.
Again, Pete, if you were a man, you would tell us WHERE you preach. But you knew you were just a dying, heart diseased-ridden jerk waiting around to die. But shit, your taste is SO tacky, again, I must say, so dorky, that it is good.
Thank you.