The 24 Hour News Cycle

America has turned into a place where the talking heads are now. For lack of a better term. Dying out. With nothing really left to replace them.

The death scream of a talking head is usually a wild, off the cuff remark that if you first ignore it - because you realize +before they say it+ that they are now having to do some pretty ridiculous things to try to boost their ratings in a post-Bush Republican era ... and then later reflect upon it for a brief moment - the argument quickly falls apart on introspection.

Its important to initially ignore the talking head, because the only reason they're out there with this stuff right now is to get a visceral reaction from you - and also to get you to do three things.. a) say their name in public , ... b) say something about what +they+ are talking about, never mind if you were thinking about something else or had something better to say .... and c) succeed in changing a number that will arise from a random sampling of adults your age (usually you hear the stuff they want you to hear, because there are only 8 companies in America that control nearly 78% of everything you see, hear, and read in magazines).

Some example deathscream categories would be ... saying something outrageously treasonous ... another might be completely illogical. For years, during the Bush Republican era - the talking heads could get someone on their show , state a fact, then have two people come and argue about whether or not it was a fact. It was their way of a) ignoring facts, and b) boosting their ratings. Now, there are less people interested in spin - and they are getting their news and information more and more from blogs. The demographic 18-24 has delivered to them a full 26% drop in viewer and listenership, in just this past three years. And before that, it was almost the same. About one in every two listeners and viewers of the talking head shows are disappeared from their view.

Other things you can do, are to simply pull the plug. The cable TV bill you're paying is 60.00 bucks a month but the digital signal thats travelling through the air, free, to your TV has 3 rider stations on each channel, and about 5 channels you can pretty much guarantee will come in alright with at least another three or four channels that will come in if you feel like you want to play with the rabbit ears to get them in. Thats 20 stations. Good enough? The talking heads and their 24 hour news cycle exist almost exclusively in the realm of Cable TV.

Back when Captain Outrageous started the 24 hour news cycle, there happened to be a lot of news. CNN got its big start during the gulf war of the 90s. And guys like Atlanta resident Newt Gingrich, learned how to game the 24 hour cycle for political benefit - bringing a failed investigation of Bill Clinton and his whitewater scandal - into full rotation stories about blowjobs for the president. Newt. I love you but I'll take a guy with a strong sex drive over a drunk any day. Sorry. Thats 20th century strategy.

A better strategy involves the uncontrolled and intensely better patrolled and vetted space of blog based news sources and activism. If you post something on a blog, it had better be right or the readers will ferret it out and call bullshit on you. Blog articles, first and foremost have to be about facts and facts that can be hyperlinked to, no less. Crackpot theories end up getting comments with links that show where they came from and you're known by the company you keep (click on my ads! click on my links! click me! please! I deserve it. heh heh. ). But they're also about starting detailed discussions about the little details you might want to go through , to get things done. For example. Samantha Orobator. Why chat about "the concept of life" when you can read her case file and zone down onto the paranoid government officials, in the republic immediately adjacent to Burma -where she and her baby within are going to be killed in cold blood? It was a total of 24 hours, with no 24 hour Teri Schiavo news cycle - before Samantha was safe and her baby saved. London Calling. Rock on.

We blog for a reason. We all have reasons to be. Blogging is a real life activity even though it exists in a virtual world. Bloggers are real entities even though they might only be known by a handle. People who read them are very real. Submissive. Dominant. Smart. Dumb. ... Anonymous... and even some that are famous. Whatever reason, blogging is changing the world.

And twitter is just effing annoying.