Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Random Newsflash! Panic!

Yeah, an earthquake struck near Acapulco. Makes me feel happy that I'm among the few U.S. Americans who is somewhere else in Mexico besides Acapulco.

Yes, I write about problems here in Mexico. I'm not Mexico's PR dude, allright? But the news media hasn't done anything but insult Mexico since I've been here. It makes me want to find something good that is newsworthy about Mexico. And by that I don't mean "The dance club on top of Burger King near the Palacio de Cortez is excellent."

(which it is, sort of, at least in terms of lights and atmosphere, despite being on the second floor above a Burger King. although a bit heavy on pop and hip-hop. I prefer Aloha bar's techno music, or Eclipse's live band covering the Red Hot Chili Peppers in English: "I don' believe its b-eeh-d!" Sorry about that tangent anything to lighten the mood here!)

The job of the news media in the U.S. is to get people worried about things in other countries so that they don't worry about things "over here" (which is not where I am right now, hence the quotes). Sort of like the U.S. military.

U.S. people respond by hating their southern neighbors even more. Harder to place blame on U.S. drug purchasers, or U.S. gun trafficers for border violence. Not to mention the connections between NAFTA, peso-to-dollar rates, and undocumented migration to the U.S.

The Mexican media, meanwhile, mostly reports on Mexico, to control the Mexican people, sort of like the Mexican military, and many militaries throughout Latin America. Which is why they blew the whole swine flu thing out into a panicfest, then told us the number of cases was going down and we had nothing to worry about (I'd already quit worrying, but really it just meant "that's so last week's news" as far as they were concerned).

Sorry if this post offends anyone who works for the media, (and yes, we bloggers mostly parrot what the MSM gives us). Sensational news just sells better! That's why the Cristian Science Monitor is now only a weekly paper. I should put a bunch of pictures of me wearing "cubrebocas" just to increase ad revenue.

P.S. Is it just me or do I do my best writing at 2:00 AM after watching clips of Steven Colbert?

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