Freedom of Speech can, sometimes, be a dangerous thing.
And with these days, everyone and their dog being a “blogger” and tweets and “likes” flying around the cyber world, the art which was once journalism has deteriorated into a muddle in a puddle of words which mean nothing and rants from runts and punks.
I have been just as guilty of this and it came crashing home very loudly to me today- New Year’s Eve- and when “old acquaintance be forgot” and we are meant to ring out the old, ring in the new and make new resolutions we rarely keep.
Writing is a passion- and it can be therapeutic- and which is what I use these so-called “blogs” for.
They are cathartic and cheaper than popping meds and seeing a shrink.
And though I will continue to believe Donald Trump to be a hypocritical oaf for his constant China bashing, there are also those times when one takes sides.
There are also those times when one is used.
Journalists have been used for decades and bloggers are being used even more easily.
So, to tear someone apart based on hearsay comes into play- and one rarely thinks twice about writing about it as being gospel.
It’s almost a “cool” thing to do.
But it’s not.
That all ended with Hunter S. Thompson.
Look at what happened to Obama.
As Don Henley sang on “Dirty Laundry”, “Kick ’em, when they’re up, kick ’em when they’re down.”
It’s all part of airing dreaded dirty laundry in the name of Freedom of Speech.
Don Henley is a very intelligent man about a great many things such as “The End Of The Innocence,” being a “Desperado”, getting to “The Heart Of The Matter” and “Dirty Laundry.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkJgvx2jb94
Four years ago, Barack Obama could do no wrong.
There were awful songs written singing his praises and he seemed hungry for all these hosannas to him.
Oprah of The Americas, Ellen of The Lesbos, all those who simply wanted to see a handsome Black man in the White House and anyone to replace Bush, bought into all those political slogans and buzz words like Hope and Change.
And to show he could connect with “them”, Obama’s Army went to war armed with millions and invaded Twitter and YouTube and other forms of social media.
Many bought into it and now it’s all unraveling.
Will he be re-elected?
Of course, he will be.
What’s the choice and where’s the beef?
These two guys?
In a much smaller way, we must all watch what we write and what we say.
We could be maligning some good people whom we doesn’t know and becoming a world of Perez Hiltons.
Who ARE these “celebrities” who are only famous for being famous?
Joy Behar tearing Perez Hilton is a video I can never watch enough.
Watching his “video fight” with will i. am, what we see is a sniveling little man who has grown too big, fat and bloated on his own ego.
And, of course, more airing of all that “dirty laundry”- petty laundry.
So when I received this call today from someone I have been tearing apart in my blogs, he asked, “Hans, have we ever met?”
Of course, we hadn’t.
But there I was writing about him as if he was the devil incarnate and, as he reminded me, calling him “a con man.”
Truth be told, no matter what one might think of him based on his television persona, he is someone to be admired.
Anyone who fights hard to get somewhere and does so successfully and without hurting people should be admired.
I was silenced as my mind raced to what the hell I had written about this person.
It got me thinking how sensitive I get to be on the receiving end of even mild criticism.
Those in glass houses etc.
Here is a gentleman who need not have called me.
He is up there, I am down here and he certainly need not have spent even a minute on me.
But we talked- and for almost half-an-hour- him in the UK and me in Hong Kong.
His calmness in chiding me made me feel like a gnat.
Like a girlie man lacking in balls and, more importantly, not having done my “research”.
Check and re-check the facts.
It made me think back to why I gave up reviewing records as a young journalist:
What the hell did I know why a musician produced what they had and what they had gone through?
I was just writing to be “cool”.
It’s like being a judge today on a television singing contest.
How much psychological damage are all these criticisms doing to some fragile psyches?
Yes, we kick ’em when they’re up, we kick ’em when they’re down.
With this being New Year’s Eve, perhaps it’s a good time for reflection.
A good time, at least for me, to get back to the very roots and reason for the journalism I studied.
The kinda honest journalism for which I am just as passionate about as I am about love, family and friendship and honest music.
Happy New Everything.
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