Chunky news anchors with fluorescent jackets jocund and foaming with repetitious drivel, often not about reality but the curated parallel universe of make-believe that their owners demand, is what's on television tonight, every night. The demand for reality is appallingly impoverished, given that they have the viewers hooked on a theater of antics and polemic, often full of acrimony and planted animosity. The propaganda can only be inserted when you have obscured the facts or turned them into the color and consistency of what's illegal to write, but it comes out of us every day, at least when I'm not constipated.
But the agenda is clear: if, by appearance and rhetoric, the people can live without having any real problems solved, then that is an anesthetic that's compulsory for a democracy, which anyway is just an endorsed monarchy as implemented. The boom in conjurer's with their own supply of advertising support is guaranteed by the way in which all affairs of low repute are cordially conducted, of course, mainly through our thirst for a reality that is not based on the laws of physics but gods and their supporting cast of influences—this being big business and all that. The sad part is that truth has a way of leaking out of this tight container sealed by self-interest, and eventually everyone—you and me, the cat and the mangy dog—suffers the consequences of attention neglect on issues that are important.
It has worked quite well, and with much of the time devoted to sponsors who come with a toothpaste smile touting one piece of this or that, the rest is divided up into debates, a cacophony of shrill exchanges. These aren't really debates, but bait for the unconcerned to be riled up by one sensational accusation or another. The acerbic wit of the anchor is usually anchored to the incumbent political or business hand, from which they earn their pinch of salt and therefore their absent dignity. It's not clandestine but an open romantic love affair that makes you crave an advertisement break, of which, thankfully, there are plenty.
These Indian news channels draw out the grotesque in the viewer—the evil character or shade of something nefarious that waits for instigation and jumps out when an opportunity presents itself. At least grind teeth, think nails are fangs, and enjoy the urge for a pure, unadulterated malevolent streak. If you're on the street corner, like back in those days when television attracted bystanders like flies, an honor fight with a competing religion may have been compulsory. Now, of course, it's just an ulcer after a few years and blood in the stool.
