Once, on Morning Joe

Somebody posted a video of Russell Brand on Morning Joe on my Facebook and I was about to write my blog about it, but then, while watching it, I got very confused.  First, one  of the panelists got confused between Russell Brand and Willie Brandt, which is pretty egregious for a pundit, but then Russell Brand didn’t seem to know who Willie Brandt was, which is not so horrible for a comedian but he does have pretensions to being knowledgeable  about politics, so it was kind of an all around stupid fest, and then he (Brand) started going on about Bradley Manning, and I was thinking ‘Who the hell is Bradley Manning?’ and then I realized he was talking about Chelsea Manning and I realized that the video was very old, like years old.  So, not such a good topic for a blog.  But, I don’t have a good topic for a blog and Russell Brand had done something a bit earlier in the routine that I thought was significant.
At one point, he turned away from the panelists and looked at all the staff in the adjoining area and said “Are those people working?” and Mika explained that, yes, they were Facebooking, and Tweeting, and indeed that was their job.  Then there were a couple of jokes about whether they were allowed to watch porn, and could they maybe keep it down a bit, they were trying to do a show, etc…, and everybody missed the point.
Right there, in plain sight, and not even trying to hide it, are professional messagers, paid trolls if you will, and there’s nothing illegal about it and nobody even thought for a second “Well, damn, this is wrong.”
The internet is supposed to be a place for the free exchange of opinions, linking all the minds of the world so that we can find solutions to all of our problems and usher in an era of ecological stability, explosive innovation, massive advances in research in every direction, and peace and love and justice for all mankind.  But, the dickheads who run MSNBC apparently think the opinions of MSNBC should have more weight than the others.  Probably all the networks do it, actually.
So, what chance does the average keyboard warrior have of being heard?  Some, of course, which is better than before the internet, when it was none.  But, still, the system is rigged against us, and they don’t even need to hide it.
And I guess I just wound up writing about a stupid years old video after all.