What the hell is news, anyway?

How disappointing for those salivating at the prospecting of reading about "a very callous attack on a very young and defenceless female" to discover it wasn't a rape, just a nasty murder.

The job of the commercial news media is to sell advertising. That means grabbing readers and viewers with catchy headlines. Sex, and sexual violence, both do the trick wonderfully. The bruising, tearing, fouling, and breaking of women's* solid, real bodies is processed and broadcast back to us, on flat paper and flat screens, as entertainment.

I first understood this way back whenever it was I watched the movie Strange Days, in which, thanks to a technological trick, a rape-murder is recorded from the perpetrator's POV, while simultaneously being played back into the victim's brain. She - and we - are forced to watch.


* Men's bodies are also regularly desecrated** in much the same way. The media tends to ignore it, rather than reporting on it either seriously or with lascivious glee. Nor are men*** continually constrained by the threat of rape.

** I'm a Pagan. To me, sexuality is sacred. If there's such a thing as sin, this is sin.

*** Obvious exceptions include men who have been raped, transmen, gay men, imprisoned men, and men who are targets of "ethnic cleansing".

Mfffrgghh

Not willing to repeat my previous mistake, before visiting the dentist yesterday, I took a whole milligram of Alprazolam (aka Xanax). That was almost exactly twenty four hours ago, but I am still somewhat tranked. The stuff is supposed to be out of your system in about six hours, which has been my usual experience with it. I suspect my very busy liver has told it to join the end of the queue behind all my other meds. (Some very freakin' determined writing is going on here. Just not a lot of it.)