Phobos & Deimos: Wayward Musings on Terrorism and Corporate Mass Media

December 2, 2008 in adoption, citizen media, politics, reactive attachment disorder

Day 280. Survivors found: 5

Several days ago, while my fellow Americans were lolling about in a lovely, tryptophan-induced haze, I was keeping up with a maddeningly perceptive journalist friend in India (who incidentally is one of my mainstays of support in this ill-conceived children’s crusade), foregoing bedtime to watch the world burn.

No rest for the sociopathic.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri)

This particular friend provided more cogent insight and analysis than any of the lumbering, corporate networks. She’s still my number one go-to for what in hellfire’s been happening these past few days.

The attacks on Mumbai manifested as a hydra–neutralize one spot and another spate of terror took its place. A terrible hybrid of chaos and cold strategy.

My friend told me that when the shooting first started, many locals assumed it was gang warfare. Only when the grenades went off did they start to realize…but then, nobody knew anything for sure.

In the violence and uncertainty, citizen media and the Internet gained the leg-up: locals Twittering in their escape routes from the terrorists; Google satellite imagery to map the attack blasts; civilians capturing rare shots of the gunmen on their mobile phones; real-time online chat with those who waited for news of their family in the blasts and taking of hostages.

CNN could only hope to keep up.

My friend ended up fielding questions that she found really odd, until she realized the networks were feeding them rubbish.

Between this misinformation and the languid dismay of behemoth outlets like the BBC over how this might affect the cricket game while the gunfire raged on and families were still torn apart by the hostage situation, I say we DO AWAY WITH PUNDITS.

Come on, this presidential election alone yielded proof enough of their utter worthlessness.

On the very first day of the attacks, CNN International’s anchor didn’t even bother to disguise his far greater concern for the posh hotel destruction than the steadily rising death toll.

(Big up to Ravi Shankar Prasad for verbally smacking the talking heads out of some of their self-serving inanity.)

How does one fan the flames of disaster and yet trivialize it at the same time? Really, it’s almost impressive, that Big Media balancing act, seesawing between ghoulish glee and snotty indifference to the loss of life.

Yes, there is cause for fear; terrorists now know they don’t need a nuclear warhead to wreak havoc to a world city. But in all this sloppy trafficking of fear and panic, panic and fear!–Big Media makes the Bad Guys’ job easier.

In other news…

Attachment therapy and the hyperbolic “RAD” diagnosis is gaining more credibility via sensationalist, corporate news coverage. Last week’s 20/20 “From Russia With Love” TV spot is just one example.

Spreading panic and fear about us “scary, damaged, foreign-born orphans” simply makes for good copy by a corporate network that throws a celebration whenever a nice, conventional, middle American gives birth to 8 children at the same time.

With adoption on the rise, I predict this fearmongering is going to get worse, validating often fatal abuse of adoptees and foster children. It will make all the smart, kind, hardworking parents look bad and give the entire adoption process a bad name. It will exacerbate xenophobia and even strain diplomatic relations (Russia and other countries are incensed over the adoptee murders in US).

Even if the child is not murdered, a “failed” adoption can spark international outcry.

Foreign adoption is not often subject to stringent investigation or guidelines, so many unfit parents obtain kids whom they then mistreat and abuse.

But because foreigners, orphans and especially foreign orphans are easy to dehumanize, WE’RE the ones blamed for the tragedy.

We become responsible–even at the age of 2–for making our grown-up abusers “snap.”

The less dramatic, more beautiful truth is that adoptees are no worse or better than biological offspring. But truth will be ignored in favor of sensationalism, leaving Big Media to lick its chops over disaster both real and imagined.

Suffer the little children.