The Psychopathology of the Media

The Anchoress has an interesting take on the media. I have tried to put my finger on their problem, and have become convinced that there are no truly rational explanations, so I'll go with her for now.

Here is an excerpt, but it's well worth reading the whole article.

My son Buster was not in school today, of course, due to Veteran’s Day. He spent the better part of the morning and afternoon working on an Eagle Scout project for one of the fellows in his troop, and while they were working, they kept a radio on. One of the scoutmasters in attendance wanted to hear the president’s speech, and so they tuned into Limbaugh’s program.

“The speech was really good,” Buster said, “but when it was over, instead of switching back to music, we stayed tuned to Rush, because he was taking calls from people about the speech. Then at one point Rush said he was looking at the news-show responses and some reporter said something like, ‘the fact that Bush is defending himself proves he lied.’ Didn’t you tell me once, Mom, that that’s a psychopathic thing to say?”

My birth family was a troubled one - lots of dysfunction, of which I won’t go into detail, but one of the more messed up aspects of that dysfuction was that the Patriarch - a brilliant and troubled man - would routinely make outlandish, very ugly accusations at various members of the family and then, when they would struggle to defend themselves, their honor, their reputations, their own scruples, their own ability to reason, the escalating battle would result in the defendant falling into frustrated hysteria while trying to be heard and understood as innocent of whatever mad charges the Patriarch had made, (and believe me, the charges were always quite mad) and the Patriarch, sitting there very evilly, would smile and say, “if it were not true, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to defend yourself.”

I thnk I’ve mentioned before that I left home pretty young. I wasn’t going to subject myself to that madness.

I remember talking to a good friend, a psychologist, some years ago about the behavior of this Patriarch. After hearing a few stories she made a diagnosis. “He was a psychopath and a paranoid, with severe character disorders,” she pronounced. I didn’t disagree. Sounded about right to me.

It also explains why I don't get any of my news from the MSM any more. Not only is it old by the time it gets to my door, but it's simply the product of a psychopath and I refuse to subject myself to that madness.