A Note on Media Urgency and the News As We Know It

Unlike all of my previous social media posts, this one is important. I don’t mean to say that I thought my earlier Facebook posts were wanting in importance when I wrote them and sent them out blindly to everyone; even rereading them now, I can taste their urgency. But the logic of the marketplace — that yesterday’s groceries are today’s piss and excrement (which is why and how Rachel can and will promise a “big show tonight,” never a small one, just like Ed Sullivan did in the 1950s) — decrees that things can only seem important when they become part of the present tense and therefore become susceptible to our buying power, our hallowed credentials as treasured customers with digestive systems. The staying power of nondigestible items isn’t worth thinking about. But saying that this particular one is extra-important now ensures that it will become expendable tomorrow. So you might want to save this post for later and then throw it away.

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