Fear and Deception Game Far From Over
As year draws to close, diligent rejection of mainstream media scare tactics essential
(Photo Credit: The Guardian)
It’s been a rough post-Thanksgiving week for the sport of football in the Year of the Virus.
The NFL closed shop for a few days to slow an uptick in cases. A game between Baltimore and Pittsburgh, originally scheduled for Thanksgiving night, has been moved three times (the latest kick off Wednesday afternoon).
In the college ranks, the University of Minnesota has canceled two straight weeks of games. Ohio State called off its Nov. 28 game vs Illinois, throwing into question its legitimacy for the Big 10 title and the College Football Playoff.
This tweet lays out the bleak state of the conference as the calendar flips to December:
These predictable circumstances (there is no way to bubble college students or NFL teams for several months and Dr. Fauci, the only epidemiologist I implicitly trust, said in October there would be a fall surge) will get resolved. Seasons will play out.
But the news of sports teams sorting out Covid issues has given rise to another resurgence. That from the facts-contempt, anecdote-loving coronabro media herd. And they need to be handled just as the virus, by using smart, tactical, preventative measures.
By doing so, an eventual goal of vaccination is attainable.
There is a social dance that often happens on Twitter.
Someone sends a tweet that gets shared. The sharing leads to a ‘conversation’ amongst tweeters whom offer an opinion on the initial shared tweet.
An example is from Monday, when the tweet I published in the above paragraph was shared:
By clicking the above tweet, we can see the replies or ‘conversation’ that ensued.
Each reply kicks off another series of ‘conversations’ that mutate into topics that quite often are totally removed from the original subject.
We’ve all been there, when an innocuous request for a pumpkin pie recipe devolves into a referendum on Trump and his immigration policies.
Tweeter: How do you make the crust flaky?
Respondent: Trump is separating crusts at the border! This is America not Communist Cuba!
Tweeter: Ah thanks. I’ll just YouTube Martha Stewart or something.
Fortunately, Trump nor immigration came up in the above posted tweet and ensuing thread.
Here was my response:
For context: Michael O’Brien, the high school sports editor at the Chicago Sun-Times, was attempting to make an argument of why football or basketball are not being played in Illinois right now. As supporting evidence, he shared the tweet that listed the current circumstances at various Big Ten schools.
I disagreed with O’Brien, as stated in tweet. To fair to him, I re-framed the argument away from what he actually said in his tweet. He said ‘last week’ about football and basketball not happening. I responded with a ‘we should have started the season’ argument. But I was making a larger point about mainstream media (MSM), which I’ll get to in a moment.
My response to O’Brien’s tweet led to a Twitter equivalent to ‘down ballot’ voting on election day, with tweeters jumping in with their two cents on the subject.
In my timeline, an article appeared:
As it turns out, the above article (claiming that a young man in Pennsylvania had died due to Covid-complications) was originally published in September. Before that article was published in the New York Times, the college he attended in PA had already debunked the Covid connection to his death. That detail didn’t matter to the Times or to the person who shared the story in my Twitter timeline.
In early fall, MSM was in the midst of Covid-hysteria. Any hanging chad of an anecdote linking death and the virus was worthy of 3,000-word vapid expositions. The accumulation of the hysteria contributed to the delay in the start of college and high school football seasons throughout the country.
In Illinois, Gov. Pritzker borrowed these hackneyed accounts as justification for cancelling fall football.
(If you haven’t linked out to the ‘science’ document presented by Pritzker and IDPH last fall, it’s quite humorous. Would make for a fun “Carol Burnett Show” skit with Tim Conway and Harvey Korman. The ‘South Korea Fitness Class’ article linked out to from the document would have Tim and Harvey on the floor puking with laughter)
Pritzker continues to use fear-mongering language at his press conferences, spewing this week about health care systems being overwhelmed if Illinoisans “aren’t careful.”
These intentional tactics—to marginalize recovery evidence and boost panic-inducing anecdotes—are consistent with Pritzker from the beginning. I’ve maintained his reasons are politically-driven, the governor more interested in elevating his own status (no state has tested more than Illinois!) amongst party peers nationally, more so now than the egocentric pleasure he got before the election by engaging in combative verbal fist-fighting with the outgoing president, Donald Trump.
Citizens of Illinois are catching on to his baseless propaganda. His daily sermonizing of voodoo ‘science’, spoken with the certainty of a medical school professor talking about a common surgery performed millions of times, finally has folks calling bullshit.
But mainstream media? What is their motivation for the 24/7 fright fest?
Covid is the story of 2020. The press likes a good story.
Consumers consume bad news at a higher rate than good news. There are studies that tie negativity bias with stronger psychological reactions.
Stronger reactions to news is conducive to sales. Media is a business after all.
Because of social media, we have a mono relationship with the individuals that produce media. We can search for the person who’s name is attached to an article and look beyond the byline.
That ability—at a meta level—has positives and negatives. In The Year of the Virus, in general, it has been more harmful than productive.
A group think set in early in the pandemic—the virus is going to kill us all and our lives will never be the same—a narrative adapted by almost all amongst the blue check brigade (the blue check being a status emoji one gets across social media platforms that signifies a level of influence).
Even as things got better—data showing that all those respirators we needed for all those sick people remain in warehouses unopened, how hospitals beds, soon to be overflowing with terminally ill patients, were actually empty—reporters could not report such news as it conflicted with their original stance of the soon-to-be- apocalypse (and losing credibility with peers is more important to blue checkers than actual facts). The online echo chamber became louder and louder and the anxious and fearful bought it, consumed it, rinsed and repeated.
But its sportswriters whom are the most egregious purveyors of this direct-to-consumer circle jerk.
Regardless of opinion on craft, a subjective judgment, at their core, sportswriters should objectively be fans. Yes, healthy skepticism is a mandatory quality for any good reporter. But the game is what matters. That’s what fans—or consumers in a business sense—care about. The games, the players and the coaches.
Over the past nine months, there are a lot of sportswriters writing about why games should not be played. I don’t understand it as that stance is not only counterintuitive to the preservation of their jobs, but to why I believed so many got into the business in the first place.
Because they love sports.
Instead, in 2020, we get commentaries on how sports aren’t important when compared to saving lives (a popular false equivalency from the ‘woke’) or pretentious lectures questioning decisions by institutions who dared to re-evaluate earlier mistakes and play games. It’s been a barrage of disdain, journalists biting the hand that feeds them.
Then, those same sportswriters go and cover the games when they are played. Sure, that’s their job but also the height of hypocrisy.
If a sportswriter is so disgusted by sports being played, he or she should quit. Let someone else who loves sports, write about sports. If advocating for the health and safety of young people means that much to you, more so than doing the job, then go work for the Peace Corps. The children in underdeveloped countries need a lot more patronage than strong, vibrant college students or 20-something professional athletes do.
I’m not saying sportswriters can’t have opinions. I certainly do, as subscribers to this newsletter know.
And I’m not saying sportswriters need to be cheerleaders or back something they don’t believe in.
But be a fan.. If not of a team, the games. They owe the readers and audience that at the least.
(One other note about O’Brien—he is a fan. That I know).
The facts are this—there are approx. 330 million people in this country. Just under three million die every year, about 8,500 every day. People under the age of 70 have a 99.5 recovery rate from Covid (those over the age of 70 should take reasonable precautions and follow isolation protocols as they are more vulnerable). As unfortunate as every death is, the people who pass on the day I’m writing this (Dec. 1) are much more likely to die of every other cause in this country other than Covid.
But the obsession mainstream media has with spitting out fictional predictions of ‘overwhelmed hospitals’ and the constant reference to more testing leading to ‘surging cases’ is nothing more than fear porn masked as news. Adults under the age of 70 whom continue to consume it are being willfully complicit with mainstream media.
Your life, your choice. But man, the rest of us would prefer it if you just stayed under the covers and off the internet.
For sports to be completed by the end of this year into next year, there is a long road ahead. The first half of 2021? More conflict.
Those conflicts start and end with a rigorous commitment to acquiring facts and snubbing misinformation.
One positive development Tuesday:
‘Playing through’ is the sound slogan moving forward.
It’s a message our young people need to hear.
They deserve adults teaching and writing about living with risk and managing threats to personal freedoms. Why? That’s how leaders are born.
How analyzing facts and data and making personal decisions is healthier than consuming content spread by irrational alarmists.
When government overreach takes away freedoms and use MSM to amplify messaging? Don’t let overregulation be a discouragement.
Engage in life anyway.
Don’t let scaredy-cat grown ups with a platform defeat ambition and drive.
If they are messed up, that’s their choice.
We don’t have to be.