Stick the Narrative
In gymnastics, it’s called stick the landing — v. phr. — to finish an athletic, gymnastic, or other sports performance with an ideal pose…
In gymnastics, it’s called stick the landing — v. phr. — to finish an athletic, gymnastic, or other sports performance with an ideal pose or stance, especially after a jump or leap.
In media, let’s call it stick the narrative — v. phr. — to adhere to a particular message or thought despite contrary evidence; remaining independent of agency.
If we examine structure and agency, where structure refers to “patterned arrangement to limit choice” and agency refers to “the capacity of the agent (the self) to act in any given environment”, there can be no denying that sticking the narrative is tantamount to the media maintaining its stranglehold on culture…and thought. Media defines the structure in order to maintain the order and confine the agency.
Sticking the narrative is a core component of our culture today. Whether it is mass media, politics or in business, one must “stay on point” in order to be successful (provided we define success as financial or popular).
We’re reaching critical mass where one’s agency has all but been co-opted and structured by the media. As a point of clarity, media should be thought of as ALL media (TV, Podcasts, Internet, Magazines, Newspapers, etc).
If one maintains control of their agency and runs it up the flag pole, they run the risk of being viewed as “troubled”, “rebels” and in some case, “heretics”. Voicing any individual thought today is turning into a Sisyphean task that doesn’t allow the rock to roll back down, it all but insures that each time it promises to roll over you on the way back down. Each and every time.
Look at the shit storm Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journo Seymour Hersh kicked up by publishing The Killing of Osama bin Laden in the London Review of Books. Oh lordy lord did people get all knotted up about this.
It’s important to state bin Laden is dead and Americans killed him. We know this to be a fact. The how we did it is not something we will ever truly know.
The how narrative is best defined, and accepted, by the movie Zero Dark Thirty. Both government and media have stuck to this story for the past four years and it’s the one most American’s believe. Fine.
To be honest, while I don’t entirely believe the narrative of that movie, I have decided to accept it. It’s a good one, it’s plausible and we’ll just never know. I am acutely aware the story seems a little off and probably has more holes than a chunk of swiss cheese…but it’s a good story.
I read the article and found some peace knowing that Hersh had some of the same questions I did.
How is it possible we flew into another country without their consent at most, knowledge at least? In that region, Pakistan has a long history of being our best “freinemy”. Which begs the question how did two helicopters (despite the movie, no matter how hard you try, helicopter’s can’t be that quiet) flew into foreign airspace and landed on foreign soil without someone being aware of it. Oh yea, bin Laden’s home was also by a military base.
How did a helicopter crash and then get blown up without anyone noticing? Seriously, how?
Why are there no photo’s of bin Laden dead? The Internet is virtually one giant snuff film anyway, how does not ONE photo exist?
Why did our government supply the producers of Zero Dark Thirty access to classified documents that they wouldn’t supply the press? Seriously, why? The movie wasn’t, and ISN’T, a documentary. A great movie to be sure, but it’s just that…a movie.
Hersh has written a thorough, albeit THINLY sourced, article that provides a wildly different and, in my opinion, a more plausible narrative to what may have actually happened.
The result? He’s been vilified by everyone from the government to fellow reporters. In some cases, even called crazy and “has derailed from any sense of journalism”.
Look, it’s no secret the man is a provocateur, but that doesn’t mean he is entirely wrong. He certainly hasn’t been wrong in the past. I listened to an interview with him on the On The Media podcast and while he sounds a little too defensive and perhaps a little too full of himself, it doesn’t make his narrative any weaker to believe.
Hersh did not stick the narrative of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Accordingly, he is being punished. Hardly seems journalistically equitable, The London Review of Books isn’t exactly The National Enquirer.
Another narrative purported is that President Barack Obama is a liberal Democrat. Oh he is a registered Democrat to be sure. But liberal?
I would find it hard to believe that ANY liberal being of clear mind, can say that Obama has stuck to the core principles of a liberal. Look at his stance on the death penalty; while never being overtly vocally for the death penalty, he has recently moved away from abolishing it at a federal level.
Executions are mostly handled at a state level but an outright abolishing of it at a federal level would go a long way to having states that still exercise the death penalty reconsider their position. Taking into account that we now have botched executions whereby prisoners may actually be sent to the gallows pole (or gurney) TWICE. It hardly seems fair that a guy survived…only to potentially end up being killed again.
Lethal injection is the primary method of execution in the United States and the only U.S. company that is allowed to make sodium thiopental, Hospira, has decided to stop manufacturing it. Leaving the few states that still employ the death penalty at a serious shortage.
It’s not far off base to think that we could have a bunch of half-wit Walter White’s concocting mixtures that are but one step away from injecting bleach into a prisoner.
President Obama’s virtual silent acceptance of that hardly seems to jive with my understanding of what it means to be a liberal.
Please don’t prattle about the Affordable Care Act (UNLESS you actually know it is THE SAME THING AS OBAMACARE). Both parties are sticking the narrative on that one. To the left, it’s great it works, everything is awesome! To the right is all but government interference in something that should be private (I just paid 600 dollars to have a crown replaced…AND I have pretty decent coverage from my employer). From where I sit that private option kinda sucks too.
The reality is that the ACA is shit at it’s best and serious shit at its worst. Anything less than a true single payer universal healthcare system for all is shit any way you smell it.
To the left I say, take heed. The the right I say shaddap, no one says you have to give up your own healthcare. Is it really so bad to pony up a few extra bucks to make sure ALL our citizens are covered? Decently? To both sides, I beg of you, read opposing points of view and use your agency.
President Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act simply proves the man has more flexible ideas about liberalism. Certainly more flexible than myself, but the narrative from the right and the left remains, he’s a liberal.
I’m often left scratching my head when conservatives say Obama is anti-corporate, weak on defense or that he favors minorities in some way. A two-minute search on the Internet will prove all three of these patently false.
As the middle class continues to erode, the same can not be said for corporate profits under President Obama. Corporate profits AFTER taxes for Q1 2015 are roughly 1.9 trillion dollars.
By comparison, corporate profits for the last quarter of Bush’s second term totaled about 670 billion dollars. So corporate profits increase almost THREE TIMES more under Obama and he is still labeled “anti-corporate”? (I’ll forego the percentage of taxes corporations actually pay versus how much you and I pay).
Drone strikes are de rigueur these days and from 2004 to 2015 there have been 417 strikes. How does that break down? 51 under President Bush and 366 under President Obama. Even IF you back out four years from Obama’s total, it’s still an awful lot.
The wealth gap between Blacks and Whites in America is at a 24-year high. A study by PEW Research Center revealed the average White household is worth $141,900, and the average Black household is worth $11,000.
Thinking that President Obama is either liberal OR that he is the conservative’s answer to the dark lord himself, Satan, is naive and uninformed.
President Obama’s legacy is going to be problematic. If he is indeed a liberal, I am not sure I want to be associated with a liberal who ignores the travesty and injustice that is the death penalty, champions corporate profits, kills innocent people with drone strikes and does virtually nothing to help the middle and lower classes.
Is Seymour Hersh a journalistic heretic? If you believe the narrative, yes. In reality? No. Read the article, you may find yourself having a few more questions and realizing that Zero Dark Thirty is not the definitive re-telling of events and is just a really good movie.
The media continues to further define the structure of what we ingest and continues to stick to a narrative that is, at its best, marginally accurate. At its worst, it is of no benefit to anyone, regardless of ideological beliefs.
The truth is always far muddier than we want and its often simply too fucked up to accept or believe. To find a truth, your truth, you must re-discover your agency, your ability to think and to question. You must.
Without finding your own sense of agency, we’ll be left with a nation full of lemmings. Discovering and voicing your own agency is paramount to what remains of democracy and imperative if we are to ever regain our democracy. Of course it’s dangerous and you run the risk of being called all kinds of names, liar, lunatic, stupid, etc. but the one I like the most? Rebel.
Rebellion ain’t always a bad thing.
Lest you forget, it is rebellion that birthed this country. The lack of rebellion is what will destroy it.
Find your agency. Stick the narrative. Your narrative.
Originally published at keithrhiggons.com on May 30, 2015.