Today's brief post (sorry I've been so lazy...) is on the art of juxtaposition. Today's NY Times published what was supposed to be a long feature article about the remarkable success of comedienne Chelsea Handler. Personally I'm a big fan of her show on E, but I couldn't help but notice: were the NY Times editors pulling a little gag of their own on poor Chelsea? The juxtaposition of the article about people who need help to manage their lice (yes LICE) and the huge photo of Chelsea, all on the top fold of the cover of the Styles section... was either too much of a coincidence, or was just randomly a funny sort of raining on Chelsea's parade. Either way, she seems like just the kind of person who probably thinks its pretty funny that her moment of glory: a feature article in the NY Times with this huge picture of her on the cover was thought to fall into the same category of newsworthyness as the lice story. I wonder how many people never folded the section open this morning and just thought poor Chelsea was just another victim of bugs in her head? 
Actually, this whole thing, ironic and amusing as it is, is not unlike the art of juxtaposition often engaged in by the media. From the lefty Times to the Righty Fox news: they all do it. Just talking about things near each other, or mixed up with each other often gives the impression that they are actually somehow related to one another: a great way to smear someone with little to no evidence, or create an issue in the consciousness of the public, and get away with it. As I'm writing this blog, I found examples by checking out foxnews.com and nytimes.com in about 2 seconds -- check out this headline: "Obama's Nuke Mission". As if Obama is on some kind of evil nuclear mission: typical Fox news juxtaposition. On the other end of the spectrum, the NY Times headline for the same summit leaves Obama out of it entirely: "Agenda of Nuclear Talks Leaves Out New Threat": I mean, really, Obama isn't a main player here and the focus should be on the idea that none of this goes far enough because of... you have to read the article to find out what is the 'new threat', which turns out to be: Pakistani nuclear facilities that might be used to build weapons grade nuclear fuel because of their fear of India. Again, a story crafted of juxtaposition of 3 month old arial photos and the real story: the question of how the world's civilized (well, relatively civilized) nations can keep nuclear arms out of the hands of small bands of terrorists who could use them to significantly disrupt the world order and terrorize and/or kill millions in a short flash, literally. So it makes you wonder, with all of this slanted coverage (oh yea, and this is only within the US version of things: you can only imagine how all of this is covered by BBC or in middle eastern countries, India, Japan, etc etc): how do we ever get to the truth of what's really going on here with one of the most important issues of a generation? Probably, any reporter worth his salt would argue that there's a line between unethical juxtaposition and having a unique "angle" or "spin" on a story to distinguish your media outlet from the hundreds or thousands of others covering the same story (probably, millions of others if you count the blogosphere...). I have no answer to this problem, other than to say at least we have a very free (not totally free, maybe I'll post on that some other time) press and we then have to sort through this marketplace of ideas for some version of the truth and that's what democracy is all about. Still, the Chelsea Handler/Lice juxtaposition is just funny, stupid and ironic. Nuclear threats just aren't. I think the media institutions, who are being slowly killed off daily by the blogosphere, had better subscribe to some higher standards on subjects like this, or else they really will dissapear off of the face of the earth, and be replaced by us stupid, standardless bloggers completely. As much as I believe in the value of the world that is opened up by blogs and more, we'll probably all be worse off if the institution of a responsible, professional media, withers away too much further. They need to rise above the anarchy of the internet, not stoop to its level. OK, so honestly, this post kind of sucks, though I kind of feel better having gotten this off of my chest. This whole juxtaposition of Chelsea and the Nuclear story is a little lame, yea? Maybe I need to stick to writing about the music stuff. Next time...
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