A stupor of homogenous thinking took hold this week. I am even tired of magazines. I decided that the prevailing culture dominated by inbred circus media was getting me down. I always worry when I return to questioning the existence of museums. I was weak and embattled. Had Medialomania beaten me? Is Medialomania contagious? What is Medialomania?

I looked up “medialomania” on Google and got five hits back. Two of which were domain name advertisers. One other was German and I can’t call the fourth. The fifth? Well, I stopped caring because something has to have more than five hits on Google to be anything.

However, when I do that search post publishing, I will find myself on that list with the only firm definition of “Medialomania”. I hope. Is this not a good test of Google’s panopticism? Or should we all just wait for Wikisearch? (Which currently hosts an expired blog by a former board member). The details may play out in a soap opera script, or may not….

So allow me.

–noun
med.i.a.lo.ma.ni.a [mee-dee-uh-loh-mey-nee-uh]
1. Psychiatry, – institutional Psychiatry – the symptom of media corporations observable in offensive delusions of importance. Mediolomanic institutions will often get embroiled in adolescent ratings battles. Medialomanic activity increases proportionally to group size. Behaviours extend to racial profiling, empty headlines, long-sightedness, lack of context and human interest stories. – cognitive psychiatry – within human individuals medialomania is evidenced by mutations of institution medialmonia, that give rise passive rose tinted consumption of the world and its events.
2. Journalism – communicative psychology - the obsession of largess media with doing extravagant or grand things, eg graphics and scrollling headlines and a clock and a busy news room behind and five monitors and a nice silk tie, or “oo, look honey, she’s done her hair differently tonight…”.

-adjective
med.i.a.lo.ma.ni.ac [mee-dee-uh-loh-mey=nee-ak]
1. Of, pertaining to, or suggesting megalomania; a person. group or corporate boardroom that displays the symptoms listed above.

[Origin: Wednesday, 28th March, 2007; media- + -lo- + -mania; media- + -lo- + maniac]

I recently subscribed to the feed from the grandly titled Institute for Public Accuracy. I know nothing about the editorial team but I have enjoyed their strong opinion and bare journalistic swagger.

This week I discovered photojournalist visionary, Fazal Sheikh, who is making the sublime legible. Edward Burtynsky is as brilliantly shocking as he is aggrandised by media elites. But aren’t there thousands of people doing work as human? Let’s see it. Let open source reign. Lets see the facts laid bare and let them be unobscured and unfiltered. I’d rather discomfort and awareness than sensation and numbness. A wise man once said, “If you are to choose between security and liberty, always choose liberty”. Journalism is not entertainment. Entertainment is predictable and voluntary. Journalism, with the world as its looking glass, is every possibility simultaneously and your a fully subscribed member.

If entertainment is security and journalism is liberty, then the only question remaining is which do you choose? Allow the medialomanic corporations to continue their circus, just don’t turn on your TVs.

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Last Summer, UK’s Channel Four ran a documentary about Tony Blair’s failed attempts at rock stardom whilst at University. The band were named Ugly Rumours and tallied an impressive six gigs before implosion. Unfortunately, that streak of destruction never left our smiling leader, and decades later he waged an illegal war in Iraq.

Stop the War Coalition organised the march of close to two million people in London just before the invasion of Iraq. You may recall a post on the charismatic and egotistical George Galloway. As head of the Respect Party, he is a key player in the Stop the War Coalition. George Galloway makes a cameo appearance as the arresting officer at the end of the video.

Stop the War Coalition has formed a band under the same moniker, Ugly Rumours, and fronted it with a Tony Blair lookalike. (The physical similarities are pretty poor). The single, released in January only as a download version is now tipped to top the UK charts this Sunday.

View the punchy, low budget version of Edwin Starr’s classic song War.

This proves to me one thing – Despite the ongoing denial in mainstream media about the heinous crimes and lies of Blair, Bush and their governments, the opposition still has humour, invention and truth on their side. They also have a voice … and some great lip sinking to boot!

Blair’s Dream of rock stardom has arrived, and I am sure Tony appreciates the the cooing street-level pedestrians, ala Beatles.

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I apologize in advance for a second consecutive post that is again heavily youtube reliant.

However, if you take 18 minutes out of your day, please do so for this collection of three clips … that means you, Dave Cohn … brew a cup of tea if you need to multitask.

In introduction, although I want George to do his own talking, George Galloway is an old school socialist that was expelled from the Labour Party in October 2003 when a party body decided that statements he had made in opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq had brought the party into disrepute. He now leads the Respect Party and is Respect Party’s only representative in the British Parliament. He is a vehement opponent of Bush, Blair and the Invasion on Iraq. He also hates certain western media conglomerates, or rather … all of them.

Because the British could not handle Galloway’s inflammatory and unapologetic rhetoric, the Americans came gunning for him. Whilst he was fighting a legal battle against London’s Daily Telegraphfor reporting on questionable and biased accusations against Galloway of accepting bribes from Saddam Hussein, Galloway was facing the same baseless inquiry from the US Senate!!!!

To be fair and balanced, although I wouldn’t Galloway’s comments about the media and Bush, Galloway is not the perfect politician. He made the mistake of being a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother. Don’t you think he used a palatable chat and millions of viewers to cleverly convey his political agenda?

I think the closest America has had to a politician like Galloway was James Traficant but then he was corrupt liar and Galloway is not.

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On my way to the bank during my lunch break, I glanced at an ad on the side of a bus stop. I continued walking and stopped at the crosswalk, waiting for the little white man to appear and tell me to continue my locomotion to the next corner. Just before the cross-traffic light turned red and the light I was waiting for turned green, the words that I had read finally processed. Here is the ad:

Their tagline is “Turn an Exit Into an Entrance.” I’ve never heard of this champagne (Matt tells me it’s a status icon, which explains why I never heard of it), but if it’s going to make some Paris HIlton upstart want to have anal sex with me, I’m buying. Well done ad campaign. I doubt they meant this to be explicit – or maybe my prudish 1982 sensibilities are out of date – but I can’t imagine that someone down the line didn’t realize the double entendre.

If anyone else has a ridiculous ad they’d like to share or post, email me or leave it in the comments of this post.

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The title is far too grand for this post which is in truth my own personal reflections on good stuff that America needs to know about. Unfortunately for the yanks amongst our readership, the most chucklesome and inspired comedy I have seen since arriving on these shores is Canadian. Check out the Trailer Park Boys for some boyish rebellion and social debris that is more honest than any offering by American networks. I wouldn’t want to call it social commentary because it isn’t – it is new actors made good by cute script writing and a unique scenario.

I have to admit that when I first arrived in the US of states, John Stewart tickled my fancy. That was five years ago. It was inevitable that Stewart’s platform would eventually be perfected by a greater caricature. The Colbert Report is an inspiration only in that it uses the unfathomable logic of American media and politics to poke fun at us all. It’s limitation is its success – it stabs stoopid Americans in the heart with a stoopid pencil. But only half of America knows what a pencil is, let alone how to use one.

How long will it be before you get sick of Colbert’s rapport? If you’re not turning off your sets when Colbert reaches for his “gutsy” lance of truth, then you should soon. Carry your television set to the roof and throw it to the concrete. What now you ask?

TV is for idiots. Go to youtube, liveleak, videoegg or any web based self broadcast interface of your choosing. All well and good. But where to start? Begin by checking out what the ladies and gents in your home town are doing. You may be surprised…

Alternatively, type in the name of any random mammal followed by the word “attack” and you’ll get some side splitting results. If that doesn’t grab your fancy check out my own sole offering.

Meanwhile, open up another tab and buy, pilfer or download the following recommendations

Time Trumpet. Armando Lanucci continues his smug ambivalence. This clip summarises the distressing trend toward two party, centrist, spin-laded politicking that Britain must now endure. I fear there is no way back. For your information, David Cameron is the leader of the opposition in Britain, but that isn’t important. Cameron recently instructed the Conservative party to post its campaign ads on youtube to attract young voters. Dick.

To be honest, I preferred the days when politicians could throw punches. John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, who is to put it nicely a total tosser, won votes and public favour for this left jab.

BrassEye. I hope that Chris Morris has earned a cult following stateside. His criticisms of media when covering the most sensitive subjects, such as paedophilia, drug abuse and immigration may seem a little close to the bone, but how else are we to deal with public hysteria and corporate thought control amongst nations of idiots? If you can’t reconcile souped up graphics and sensational coverage with real issues on your doorstep then Morris has proved his point. Don’t rely on TV for anything – least of all opinion or direction on the most incendiary of social issues occurring on your doorstep. For the record, Morris was making fools of celebrities years before Sasha Baron Cohen came on the scene. Borat was stolen.

The Mighty Boosh. Many of the best British comedies begin as radio shows. That is why script based comedy endures. The visuals only add to surreal and unhinged narratives of Fielding and Barratt. In the final coup de gras, these two fellows took their ritalin-goth selves to the stage. On a trip of self exile to the outer reaches of Britian, they fell under the spell of Old Greg, a lonely and psychotic lake faerie. Any similarities here between Old Greg and Chapelle’s Rick James, Bitch?

As an aside, both Fielding and Barratt appeared as equally self absorbed characters in Nathan Barley, Morris’ latest contribution to an amoral Britain. Most people hated “Barley”. Those that didn’t jerk their knees frenziedly were those that were honest enough to see themselves in this utterly disgusting human. Laugh at yourselves, we are all idiots.

Peep Show. Nothing kinky here. The show’s name derives from the filming that only used character eye views for the entire season. Peep show is another example of male weakness being the only remaining subject left to chortle at uneasily. We live in an age of stifled laughter … hearty laughter belonged to our parents. Embarrassed laughter is all we have.

America. Embarrass yourselves through comedy, not politics.

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