For anyone with an I.Q. above seventy, the Drudge Report is a wasteland of filth, bile, lies, and dreck. So when it was reported that a former writer for that site published an expletive-riddled story equating conservatism with cancer, a great many people took note.
While the Drudge website is ignored by decent people (except for writers looking for stories about wackadoodle RWNJ nonsense), there was a recent Drudge Report Exclusive entitled “Conservatism Causes Cancer” that immediately grabbed the attention of people all across the intellectual and political spectrum.
True, there were a few difficulties with the story. It wasn’t that the article seemed more like the Onion-on-steroids rather than the usual prevarication-on-parade of Drudge effluvia. Nor did it seem to matter that the article did not actually appear on the Drudge site. And there is also the teensy-tiny detail that the article in question does not, strictly speaking, exist. But that’s not the point of this article, so don’t worry about it; continue your regularly-scheduled reading, already in progress.
Here at eNewsChannels, our loyal cadre of web surfers surged into action (okay, it was just me) because this story was too good to pass up. Although ENC is a bit short on field reporters, we’re great on news items that only require the pixel-and-link brigade. So, we spared no expense to track down the author of “Conservatism Causes Cancer,” a man going by the name of Truthful Sojourner. (Note: We suspect this is not his actual name.) And now, after a tremendous amount of time, energy and effort, we are pleased to present a transcript of a phone interview with the man who made up, oops, we mean “wrote” the story.
“First, would you identify yourself?”
“I am Truthful Sojourner.”
“When you called us back, the name on the screen said ‘Fred Rick Delviane.'”
“He’s, um, someone whose phone I’m, uh, using at the moment.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s just some jerk I used to know.”
“I see.”
“Look, the guy’s a minor-league crook and a con artist and so I hacked into his phone.”
“And is hacking a part of your background, Mr. Sojourner?”
“Uh, let’s not go into that. Look, I’m just one of the guys who bloviate in print. You know, like Mark Steyn, Uncle Tommy Sowell, Walter Williams, Byron York, Jonah Goldberg… you know, the GOP whore writers. We all are experts in MSU.”
“MSU?”
“Making shit up.”
“Oh, right. Similar to Fox News talking heads?”
“Fox News is a whole different thing.”
“Wait, you’re saying Fox News doesn’t practice MSU?”
“Oh no, they’re masters of MSU. But they have a different audience. Fox News is for people who are retards. We’re different. We MSU for people who can actually read, albeit with a lot of moving their lips while doing it.”
“Uh, we prefer to avoid using a term like that.”
“What term?”
“You said ‘retard,’ which is, at best, insensitive, and at worst–”
“Jesus. Have you ever talked to a viewer of Fox News?”
“Well, yes…”
“And what term would you use to describe them?”
(Pause)
“All right, let’s move on.”
“Yeah.”
“So the point you’re making is that there is a cadre of people who are paid to write misleading articles?”
“Fuck ‘misleading.’ We lie. Have you ever read Drudge or World Net Daily or the Wall Street Journal? Or the stuff distributed by Cato and ALEC? It’s all out-and-out prevarication and deception. Listen carefully: what we do is Make Shit Up. You know, the president is a Muslim, Obamacare kills white babies, removing regulation will improve your life. All that asshat stupidity stuff. Take your typical right-wing crap and that’s what I’m talking about.”
“And you’ve been making a living writing that kind of thing?”
“A good living.”
“Really.”
“Oh sure. Totally. The GOP is funded by corporations and billionaires. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they have most of the money. Christ, over the past decade, I’ve made a million dollars just for the lies I’ve published for the Koch Brothers.”
“Okay, and now this ‘Conservatism Causes Cancer’ article comes along…”
“Yeah, ain’t that a hoot?!”
“Why did you decide to write a story about your former employers?”
“Some guy made me an offer that was too good to pass up. Apparently there are some people on the left who have decided to play by some of the same rules as people on the right. Not very many of ’em, I guess, but there’s at least one and he hired me to write this piece.”
“Can you give us his name?”
“Nope.”
“Oh come on.”
“Okay. First name, Anon; last name, Amous.”
“Okay, we’ll do some research.”
“Good luck. He paid me though a PAC.”
“Oh man…”
“Don’t be shocked. Hey, progressives hate the dark money PACs but they have to use ’em until the Supremes have decent people in the majority.”
“You mean the Supreme Court?”
“Right. As long as those turds Alito, Thomas, and Scalia are there, the country’s going to have a lot of its judicial decisions fucked up.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Yeah. Anyway, getting back to this piece, I can say it seemed like a good gig. But jeeze, I didn’t know how hard it was going to be.”
“How so?”
“Well, when you’re making up garbage for the repubs, nothing has to make sense. But these progressives, man, they think that stories should make some sort of well-reasoned point about how brain-dead the conservatives are. I mean, as if the stupidity of cons and neo-cons isn’t obvious.”
“It is to most sentient beings, yes.”
“Yeah. Plus, progressives are not satisfied with showing the GOP as outrageous and silly and offensive and anti-American; progressives also want the story to really get under the skin of the rubes, which means it has to be very simplistic. No subtlety, no finesse.”
“The rubes?”
“The marks, the patsies, the pigeons. You know, the moron base of the repub party.”
“I see.”
“And on top of that, progressives want the stories to be humorous or satiric. Man, it’s a ton of work having a story make sense AND be funny.”
“That does make things more difficult.”
“Yeah. Before, I could just scrape up anything and we’d be good to go. Y’know, on Monday I’d type up something about Obama being a socialist even though he’s so middle-of-the-road that most truly progressive democrats are disappointed in him. Then on Tuesday I’d type up something about how he was increasing the debt even in the face of the evidence that he’s bringing down the debt. If my stories made no sense, there was no problem from the right. Or if my stuff was inconsistent with other GOP crap, that was also no problem. I mean, hey, writing for the right is easy-peasy, y’know what I mean?”
“But now you have had some trouble with the ‘Conservatism Causes Cancer’ story from progressives as well as regressives?”
“Yeah, I’ve been hearing it from both sides. The right-wing nut-jobs are mad ’cause the story calls them cancer carriers, which, with their fracking, they kinda are. Man, they sure get mad when you tell the truth about them. But meanwhile, the progressives are unhappy ’cause the story has no, you know, ‘scientific evidence’ or whatever.”
“Well, facts have a liberal bias.”
“Tell me about it! That’s why it was so much easier to write for the right wing clown press where nobody ever cared about facts or data or evidence or proof.”
“Yes, it can be a bit more effort in justifying your work to liberal publishers.”
“Oh come on, there aren’t any liberal publishers. Publishers are all conservative.”
“All?”
“Ninety-nine percent. Editors are different; there are some editors who are progressive, but editors only exert so much influence. Look, there are only about seven corporations who control all news media outlets. That whole ‘liberal bias’ lie was amazing. I mean people actually bought that one! But that doesn’t really matter now ’cause I’m not going to be able to work for either kind of publisher for a while.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Oh, I got hired by the Heritage Foundation.”
“The fake think tank?”
“Right.”
“How did that happen?”
“Fortunately, nobody over there is living in this century, much less this decade, so they’re not familiar with my recent stuff.”
“Well, good luck with the new gig. What’s going to be your first story for Heritage?”
“Oh come on, man, you should know that! It’s called ‘Progressivism Causes Cancer,’ what’d you think it’d be called?”
“That does sound like the Heritage all right.”
“Absolutely. Total B.S. through and through. It’s back to easy-peasy for me!”
This opinion piece is Copr. © 2013 by John Scott G and originally published on eNewsChannels.com – all commercial and reprint rights reserved. “PROSE” button illustration is Copr. © 2013 by JSG. Read more from JSG at: https://enewschannels.com/author/scott-g-the-g-man/ .
