Finneran: An Omen for America

Friday, October 04, 2019

Tom Finneran, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Tom Finneran

It’s the noise.

It’s the contrived constant noise.

And it’s virtually a 24/7 inescapable reality.

I speak of CNN, FOX, MSNBC's non-stop nonsense and the hysteria in which they wallow.

I cannot take it. I refuse to indulge in it. I’ll think for myself thank you. I do not need Hannity’s “insights” or Maddow’s “analysis”. They are overpaid performers, doing their version of a WWF flying drop-kick off the ropes. It’s all so phony.

A conversation with a real political player is revealing. He is well-informed. He is influential. By necessity, he must be alert to a wide variety of issues, personalities, and ambitions. He has broad institutional knowledge and wise people seek his quiet counsel.

You might expect that this person reads the Times, the Globe, and the Post every day. You would be wrong. You might expect that this person has three television sets on simultaneously, breathlessly monitoring every utterance, every “crisis”, every bit of “breaking news” on Fox and CNN. You would be wrong. He confesses that he too cannot take it.

He speaks of the over-wrought phoniness of the news. He speaks of the apocalyptic dramatizations of the day. He shakes his head in wonderment that anyone really believes this stuff.

A disclosure---this wise man is a Democrat, always has been, always will be. And he sees the “fake news” of which President Trump speaks. He posits that the fake news actually pre-dates Trump by many years.

That Trump sees it and ridicules it is not surprising. Trump is but a symptom of the age, bringing to the stage all the noisy bluster of New York City. And Trump, unlike his predecessors, has Twitter as a tool, a tool that lets him go right over the heads of Times editors and reporters, bypassing their biases and their privilege. And Trump being Trump, of course, he has his Twitter at full throttle

My conversation with the political player re-winds to George Bush the younger, to the now seemingly innocent age of 2000 and 2004. That twenty years have passed since Bush’s election to the Presidency does not allow us to forget the “fake news” attacks on his sobriety, his alleged “war crimes”, his Nazi-like inclinations, and other slanders brought to us on a daily basis. Move On.org certainly moved on pretty quickly once President Obama was elected, notwithstanding the multitude of drone strikes that Obama orchestrated. What Move On.org once described as a shameful crime, suddenly became acceptable.

Note the phoniness of their “speaking truth to power”.

Obama’s White House years carried similar instances of “fake news”, including Manchurian candidate speculation about his origins, his patriotism, and his policies. Fox News loved Obama for the ratings feast he provided. As CNN loved Bush for the political feast he provided.

There is an ominous danger here for the nation. When smart, sober, and judicious people tune out the “news”, when normal people drop out of the screaming matches, the field of debate is left to the partisan lunatics of the left and right.

Spare me. Spare me the resultant noise. Spare me the gender wars. Spare me the race wars. Spare me the privilege wars, all of which wars are the favorite fare of the Globe and its ilk.

Here’s a test of their self-proclaimed tolerance and good faith in the wonders of diversity and respect: Can they lighten up on the florists, the bakers, and the nuns?

No? I didn’t think so…………………….

Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.