The sound barrier has been broken by all the TV networks and my ears are hurting badly. It is only June 15, 2016 and the big onslaught of paid for political garbage hasn’t even started and I still feel like I fell asleep next to an amplifier at a Grateful Dead concert. The incessant screeching and screaming from the presumptive nominees and all of the cackling from self-anointed media pundits are making me crazy. I might even forgive Katy Couric’s selective interview editing because she doesn’t screech, scream or whine. I am so tone deaf I am settling for selective serenades from dopey media people with pretty vacuous smiles, soft voices and untrustworthy fact finding.
This morning I followed Joni Mitchell’s advice from her hit song “You Turn Me on like a Radio”:
If you have too many doubts
If there is no good reception for me then turn me out
Cause honey who needs the static it hurts the head
And you wind up cracking and the day goes dismal
From breakfast Barney to sign-off prayer
What a sorry face you get to wear
Instead of listening to TV to get the morning news, I just turned it off and listened to the birds. Though as the caffeine kicked in, I got edgy and I had to read “The Wall Street Journal” because Peggy Noonan’s editorials run on Fridays. No joy there because Peggy’s article was pretty shabby and every other article was a paid advertisement disguised as objective journalism, sponsored truth in 12 point bodoni type.
Because the WSJ had both bad news and an altered version of the real news I returned to the birds realizing that their morning chitter was soothing, harmonic and downright pleasing. A light bulb went on for me! I may not be the only person in America that just can’t stand the noise. TV news is finished. It does not matter whether it is free or paid, Fox or Foe. It has lost its legitimacy for the same reason that the WSJ, Google and Yahoo will eventually lose their legitimacy- it is all sponsored advertising masquerading as highbrow, elite truth.
There Is Daily truth in The Daily Mail
But there is an alternative for any of you who want to know what is happening but need a new harmonic. My daughter sent me a link for an entertaining and photogenic purveyor of daily truth from the UK called The Daily Mail. You won’t find any of the elite media vocabulary either – no daily vocab tests from “The New York Times” or “The Washington Post” asking you to “conflate opposing ideas” or “The Economist” talking about the Syrian “diaspora”. This is just junk, funk, nearly naked celebs, dethroned athletes and quite soothing daily blather from the Kardashians usually accompanied by multiple wardrobe malfunctions. This stuff is so bad there are no advertisers.
Where else can you learn that Bristol Palin played hooky to go Halibut fishing with her “baby daddy BFF”, Dakota Meyer, and the pictures are mostly 100 lb. halibut. Or that a Yellowstone tourist put a baby bison in the trunk of his car because he and his wife were trying to save it? Better yet did you know that Selma Hayek was nervous about meeting the Pope so soon after she was posted on Instagram admiring Susan Sarandon’s cleavage? This is just the kind of news I need with my Raisin Bran in the morning. It goes well with the bird songs and will make me better understand most of Trump’s admirers who click here for their social and political insight. Its international readership probably includes members of the Hillary Nation who are blackmailing her with Benghazi emails they stole from her server as well as loyal donors to the “Foundation” trying to buy a night at The White House. I had to dig deep in The Daily Mail, however, to find anything about Bernie Sanders’ followers. Luckily, it came late in the publication where Elon Musk is quoted as saying we are probably living a simulated computer game designed by aliens and run the risk of becoming like pets or house cats.
Now that is something we can all conflate. There is daily truth in The Daily Mail!
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