All The News That Fits Our Agenda

Jay expressed surprise French rioting has gotten airplay in the American news. It must have gotten considerable attention if I noticed it. I've been working 60 hour weeks (seasonal overtime, I'm a graphic artist in something that approximates an account's 'tax season'), and the meds work better when I don't read the so-called news.

Because they only tell you what they think you should believe.

Still, I've managed to pick up on the French riots through the walls of my news-source Est chamber. Why? I have two leading theories: focus groups revealed that Americans love to hate the French (more on why to follow); and focus groups revealed that Americans love to see Muslims behaving badly (again, see below).

Why focus groups? Because I think as much as the American news media is very much the propaganda machine it is painted to be, like all good grifters and cons, American news outlets want you to like and trust them. Why? Because there's no money in the Nazi/Soviet model. I used to work as a cashier in gas stations, an occupation in which I fortunately avoided having a gun put to my head. However, there were occasions when people tried to rip me off.

A common grift was the quick change artist who tended to favor things like D-Cell batteries the quick-shop overpriced. We kept them up by the register because aside from a gallon of antifreeze or a carton of cigarettes, a pair of D-Cells were the most expensive bootie in the store.

No one seemed to want to steal anti-freeze, even the summer when one of the two U.S. factories making the stuff blew up and the price tripled for months as the other factory went to three shifts to struggle with the demands of the ignorant motoring public. People accused me, eighteen year old barely-above-minimum-wage employee of being responsible for the deplorable price gouging, but they never tried to make off with the anti-freeze.

Quick changers would come in and grab a pack of D-Cells and whip out a roll of cash (usually a few well-wrinkled $1 notes wrapped with a $20. The idea was I'd see the twenty get peeled off right around the time I told them their total was $4.85 with tax. Of course $4.85 for a pair of batteries in 2005 is truly price gouging, and in 1988 it was beyond $3 gas. So the guy hands you a $1 (dealing from the bottom of the deck of bills), then does a double take.

"Did you say, Four dollars and eighty-five cents???'"

"Uh-huh," I'd say around the cigarette I always had going despite policies and city ordinances declaring my kiosk a 'smoke free' area.

"Nope, I don't want 'em." the grifter would say, indignant. The man wasn't going to charge him almost five bucks for a pair of batteries.

You've already started to count out change for a $20, right? It's a matter of timing, usually bought with banter about whatever was in the news that day, but the grifter wants you to have his $15.15 in his hands, and the $20 in the drawer, and he wants to leave with both.

What he 'really' gave you is $1. If you file your money in the drawer (contrary to the training better convenience stores give that you put the money in sight of you and the customer while making change), worst case scenario for the grifter is you put a $1 in the $20 slot. If you're green enough, maybe you'll even laugh at your own mistake make change and not realize you've been had until shift-change when a real-world drawer count reminds you of this dude who wanted, uh, batteries?

Fortunately, I wasn't dumb enough or apathetic enough to get taken by this scam, but barely. A guy almost pulled it off a few years into my term as gas station serf. He was wiley, picked film instead of batteries...

Back to the focus groups: keep in mind that when Al Gore was running against G.W. most Americans were, "That's a choice?" A day later and there were protesters in Florida willing to swear they had been duped (a bad thing to admit) into voting for Pat Buchanan. Prior to 9/11, even the protestors didn't give a shit who won the White House: 'You mean if I paint a sign, I'll get on the news? Cool!'

And when Bush ran for re-election, against Kerry, again: "That's a choice?"

What was one of the biggest obstacles to letting Iraq have hell for being controlled by the despotic, evil Saddam Hussein? France. See also Russia, China and Germany, all of whom, like France, had figured out how to accept lucrative bribes from the unforgivable shit.

Did that justify 'shock and awe?' No, but it goes a long, long ways towards pointing out that politicians are shits whether democratically elected by a popular vote or appointed by an oligarchy or the Chinese Communist Party.

But Americans have delight in hating France since I was a little kid. Why? Hard to figure since Jefferson was highly partisan to the overthrow of the Ancien Regime. To the extent that Socialism was untried at the time, he can probably be forgiven; he was fighting against monarchy, a good cause despite its tendency to replicate in the private sector as 'heirs' to 'corporate interests.'

To reduce guilt about the Iraq war, it's common for Americans to latch on to patriotic nonsense. If they're too educated to point out we 'saved those frogs' from 'the Huns' maybe you can get them for liking Jerry Lewis.

Or nail their ass for 'oil for food' corruption. Which is dead-on, but not as damning as riots.

So there's the first reason the French Riots get 'ink' so to speak (or is it pixels?) in the American news.

The second reason it's 'news fit to print' is that Americans love to hate Muslims. 9/11 made it okay to be open about it in some circles, but as early as 1988 I heard Arabs referred to as 'camel jockeys' and 'sand niggers.'

So you have 'sand niggers' trashing a country that has embraced Jerry Lewis and 'ought to be grateful' sixty years after we saved ourselves through their convenient offices. Naturally the focus groups pick up on this as a hot button.

France is enjoying the fruits of immigration for the sake of a welfare state. See also New Mexico, Texas, Arizona and 'Caulifourneyea.' Mexicans who want to work, I say bring it on. Native-born Americans (even 'Native-American-Born') who just expect a check to show up because they're alive, fuck off. I once met a state-level politico who worked his way through college by shoveling out hog pens. He was fond of saying that 'hunger' was the best 'employment program.' He didn't shovel hog-shit because he liked it, he did it because, realistically, it paid twice what he could make frying pork at Waffle House. This was a legislator who caught no end of shit from his electorate in terms of supporting NAFTA (he enthusiastically supported the idea that a Mexican immigrant might take the shovel away from him at the hog-pen), to support free trade and anti-tariff measures.

I've known an American daughter of a capitalist who'd earned his retirement 30X. He set her up with a puppet business after he sold hout. She lived in France while going to college and accidentally picked up more than I've ever made in a year pretending to 'want work.'