Parrhēsia

People say that a picture is worth a thousand words and that talk is cheap. These days, it’s also worth billions of dollars in endorsement contracts.

For just a dollar a day, says the white man in the African village, you can provide food, medicine and an education to one of these children. In terms of product endorsements, it adds up to every starving child in the world eating healthy food, not dying of preventable disease and learning how to think critically. We would rather the power forward of the Weehawken Waterbuffalo have a lucrative contract to say Rancid Cola is the only he will drink.

It makes me want to get bitter and tell people to shut the fuck up when they say “Talk is cheap.” I thought we had freedom of speech, or so says the Constitution. Then again, a bloated, drug-addicted bigot has more influence over the base of the Republican Party than Mr. Whatshisface, the chairman of the RNC. I’m sure Rush isn’t lifting his couch cushions to find enough for a pack of noodles, or a refill on his script. Talk, it seems, is quite expensive these days.

The people trying to take freedom away from the masses place a high premium on speech. Think of a the little Limbaughs and Obermans conducting the flow of acceptable political speech. One goes this way, the other in the opposite direction. There are no diagonals or even other dimensions to the discussion, and why? No time slot for it. And time, as they say in their world, is money. So, it’s like a vending machine: put money in the slot, it gives you a treat.

No one in their right mind would pick the shit sandwich in B-5 even if it was the only real food in the whole box. Thus, no row for the shitty truth in today’s Vending Machine Media. CNN says they’re keeping them honest, yet, the pencil-necks and penguins continue to lie. Barack Obama has espoused a message of “change,” but it really means new treats in the same steel box. Gone, the pork rinds! Welcome, the cotton candy balls! It’s fucking cotton candy we’re talking about. That’s nothing to sneeze at, people. You better not. Who will cover the bill?

Once Diogenes of Sinope was sunbathing in ancient Greece when Alexander the Great approached him and said “I am Alexander the Great, conqueror of lands. What can I do for you?” Diogenes told him “Get out of my light.” I’m paraphrasing, of course. Diogenes didn’t write anything. He lived his teachings and would have insulted anyone who tried to pay him for his wisdom.

The lesson is the same and just as relevant. Parrhēsia, or the practice of frank speech, has a value beyond mere dollars. The big media corporations have virtually conquered all known media. Hannities, Limbaughs, Mattewses, Frankens loom over the realm of public opinion like the Khans of the mind. For them factual speech, the citation of statistics and so forth, only serves to help them to cover bigger lies, like the tiny figure of a human over the enormous light of the sun.

Readers in the Pittsburgh area may be familiar with the Quinn and Rose talk radio show. When I was a laborer in the housing developments of Seven Fields and Cranberry one of my co-workers insisted on listening to it. Quinn would be the demagogue. Rose validated whatever he said. Their main topic was the “fact” that communists had already taken over the government and that only the big business interests looked out for the little man anymore. According to him, the United States is blameless for the 10,000 or more illegal covert operations that have resulted in more than 6 million lives; the people that complain about the murder and thievery committed in the name of our government need to shut the hell up and go to Cuba.

I got so sick of hearing his bellicose demagoguery every morning that I started writing letters to him. If he truly loved the American people, truth and democracy, then he would quit, immediately. He didn’t, of course. Talk radio isn’t cheap, even though it sounds like it.

It doesn’t hurt to try. Perhaps I shall begin my campaign anew, but on a broader scale. This could take some help, though.

These pundits, the gatekeepers of the truth, stand in our light, like Alexander the Great over the sunbathing Diogenes. We need to tell them the particular ways in which they obscure reality. When doing so, we should refrain from the type of brutally disgusting insults that I reserve for my stories. Even if I write stories about people insulting liars and hypocrites, do not take it as a cue to insult a pundit’s mother in an e-mail in which you ask him or her to resign.

On the contrary, make note of specifics and break it down carefully when you write to a commentator or person with the power to fire. Introduce yourself as a citizen concerned about doing you part to ensure the survival of Truth, make your case, citing precise quotations and close by asking for the resignation of the offending employee.

The Better Business Bureau or the Federal Communications Commission lack the nads to attack the real offenders. The FCC would rather fine a station if a person says the word FUCK or shows a part of the body that billions of people spent the first days of their lives suckling. Mind-control, okay. Titties - bad! Evil!

Parrhēsia needs to come back into style, for the sake of our cherished freedom. It is up to every one of you to take your responsibility as a citizen seriously, to badger the commentators, the big wigs in charge of firing them and the FCC. Tell them to get the fuck out of the light before the sun goes down on the independent mind forever!

P.S. - None of these tactics may work. They may reveal themselves as what the pathologically practical call “a waste of time.” Just a warning. Keep in mind: It never hurts to try to do good.

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