This month I am cheating a little bit and posting my recent appearance on Aaron’s monthly Patreon bonus podcast as my bonus podcast. Rest assured you will not be disappointed.
Pearse Redmond returns to the bonus podcast. Here, he and Aaron talk about how popular it is to market your independent media to the right wing crowd. The far-right is now indistinguishable from the mainstream right, and so it is that online media is now experiencing a boom as their audience grows. These new rising stars are using the same old tricks that all media manipulators have used, which is mainly to create content that fits into the accepted narrative that their audience craves.
Pearse Redmond joins Themes & Memes as a return guest. The Covid19 quarantine classic, Tiger King documentary, is the topic of discussion. A variety of issues such as high control groups, media analysis, and politics are discussed on this different kind of review.
The Author of The War State takes questions from listeners and talks about the pressures from other national markets on the U.S. economy. What effect is Trump having on business in general? Is there a silent inflation built into the current situation?
The crazy world of Elon Musk is in the news. What can the crashes of the past tell us about the future?
Second hour Pearse Redmond takes on Qanon, what the MSM isn’t talking about, and much more. Is there a cage match in the future for the reality TV fool in the Whitehouse and his former apprentice? What does Pearse think of the latest on the performance artist formerly known as Alex Jones?
Is everyone enjoying the show? Is the real Turkey something we should name Trump?
Frequent guest Brian Heiss joins me for an in depth discussion of the current state of the media, and their continued legacy of manipulation and deception. We begin our conversation by dissecting the bogus news story that OJ Simpson is set to make a reality TV show with Casey Anthony. Brian and I discuss now the genesis of this story is a TMZ article that determined that an OJ reality show was actually impossible to make at this current time. Brian describes how this TMZ article became the source for numerous mainstream media articles making the false claim that the reality show indeed happening. We dive into how this fake news became a viral and is now entirely accepted as fact. Brian and I then move onto how the OJ trial built the foundation for this trend in media. We talk about several lies about the trial that have become accepted fact because of peoples emotional desires to believe something that fits their world view. We discuss productions such as The People vs OJ Simpson and OJ: Made in America and how they have continued to exploit lies in order to craft their own version of the truth.
In the second hour we expand out on this topic and look at the ways in which the media manipulates crime both here and abroad to fuel ratings and revenue. Brian and I use the OJ trial and the false allegations by people such as Jill Shivley as an analogy for the current push for war in Syria. We examine how emotions and not evidence drive both the public’s opinions about OJ and Bashar al Assad. Brian and I also look at the increased number of true crime documentaries that knowingly manipulate our emotions with lies and how this is affecting our entire criminal justice system. We speak about this rush to judgment and trial by media circus and it’s relationship to events such as the recent chemical attack in Syria.
Aaron Franz joins us to discuss the 2002 biopic Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which tells the story of game show producer and host Chuck Barris. Barris claims that while becoming a TV star he was recruited by and worked for the CIA as an assassin, killing a total of 33 people. In this episode we analyse this claim, which has been dismissed by the Agency as a ludicrous fantasy. We examine Barris’ true life history, focusing in on his marriage to Lyn Levy – the daughter of one of the founders of CBS – and his incredibly selfish relationship with their daughter Della. None of this appears in the film so taking this into account we consider whether Barris was a CIA assassin, a psychopathic fabricator or an emotionally warped narcissist (or all of these things rolled into one). If Barris truly was a CIA agent then what was his job? Was he an assassin, or did they employ him to ‘slay the audience’ by developing the prototypes for reality TV?
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is also notable for being George Clooney’s directorial debut, and a production that languished in development hell for years before he became involved and began pulling strings to ensure the film got made. We consider whether the movie was one of Clooney’s attempts to gain the attention and approval of the CIA, and whether he too thought that Barris’ TV career was the real mission for the Agency. We examine Clooney’s self-appointed role as Chuck’s ‘defence lawyer’, his obsession with goats and why he employed theatrical visual tricks throughout the production. We round off comparing Confessions of a Dangerous Mind to The Recruit, as both films show The Farm (the CIA’s semi-secret agent training facility) and portray the protagonist being inducted and initiated into that covert world.
Porkins Policy Review 