"Extreme acts of public piety"

The Z Blog explains why the press becomes obsessed with Ferguson or the Ray Rice story.  They may say that they're covering things that interest the people, but that's not true.  It's the other way around, people are talking about it because the press is obsessing about it.

Steve Sailer has been wondering why the Cult is obsessing over trivia like Ferguson. NYTimes is carrying on like some homo was kiled, rather than a ghetto giant. We keep seeing non-stories getting more coverage than stories one would assume have greater public interest. The increasingly dangerous situation in Ukraine, for example, generates little coverage, despite the fact the West is headed for an ugly showdown with Russia. The domestic economy, staggering along in ways not seen in a generation, generates no news coverage.

Then we have this berserk obsession with some football player who hit his old lady. Everyone knew when the story first hit the wires that the player punched his old lady in the elevator. Unless you’re missing a chromosome, you could figure out how the women ended up unconscious. That and the player’s confession solved that mystery months ago. Now, a video comes out showing the incident, as the normally inert US Senate is moved to get involved in what the state prosecutor thought was a nothing incident.

The lunatic sporting press has been treating this like Watergate for two weeks now. Meanwhile, real scandals like the IRS systematically harassing citizen on behalf of the White House goes unmentioned. The White House attempt to declare Obama dictator so he rewrite laws as he sees fit is treated like a zoning board hearing in Poughkeepsie. Whenever this is pointed out, the lunatic press claims they merely chase the stories of interest to the public.

But, public reaction to the Rice story looks more like mockery of the lunatics than real interest. Last night the Ravens played Pittsburgh and the Baltimore fans were wearing Ray Rice jerseys. It seems clear they were not doing this to support wide beating. Most of the people wearing the jerseys were women. They were doing it to protest the lunacy they see from the Cult on this issue..
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The question is why does the Cult become obsessed on nothing stories like this or hoax stories like the Ferguson riots?

My offering is the Unitary Cult Theory. This is when members of a mass movement, always jostling with one another for status within the movement, close the information loop, excluding information from people outside the movement regarding a topic. The result is a piety contest where members of the movement stand up and commit increasingly extreme acts of public piety. As more and more members jump into the ring, the contest quickly spirals out of control resulting in these absurd public displays.

Because the country is run by the Cult of Modern Liberalism, these piety wheels get maximum attention. The public is often sucked into the the false drama in the same way people get caught up in a TV serial. That’s gasoline on the fire. With Ferguson, the public has seen that drama too many times to stay interested for very long. The Gay Gayington story is too disgusting. This Ray Rice story gets more interest because the NFL is so popular and everyone can relate the story at the center of it.