Posted on 12/17/2019 4:00:56 PM PST by marktwain
Ayn Rand nailed journalism, as it has become, 62 years ago.
“The reporters who came to the press conference in the office of the John Galt Line were young men who had been trained to think that their job consisted of concealing from the world the nature of its events. It was their daily duty to serve as audience for some public figure who made utterances about the public good, in phrases carefully chosen to convey no meaning. It was their daily job to sling words together in any combination they pleased, so long as the words did not fall into a sequence saying something specific. They could not understand the interview now being given to them.”
The quote is from Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957.
Ayn Rand absolutely nailed it.
She saw journalism as what it had become, way ahead of everyone else.
Some might argue she did not go far enough; that journalists had been trained not only to conceal reality, but to actively create narratives to convince people they lived in a particular fantasy universe, in which collectivism worked, men were women and women men, and wealth magically appeared without effort, but was mysteriousl distributed to "the rich".
Like a prophet....wow!!!
She didn’t get everything right, but she did get a lot right. And this is one case where she got it right.
It would take a while for me to dig it up, but Hunter S.Thompson had some similar remarks in the early’60s, I believe.
Omg that was a great movie
Even more relevant today.
My favorite line, “We’re in the boredom-killing business!”
He might have killed Edith Bunker with that speech: “A world where there is no cancer in the Bunker house”. Producers for “All in the Family” probably decided to kill her off after hearing it.
I’ve never been disappointed in anything she wrote...Atlas Shrugged, Fountainhead, Virtue of Selfishness, Anthem, and all the rest.
A truly fascinating mind, and a truly fascinating philosophy.
FYI
We finally have the answer to the age-old question “Who is John Galt?”
John Galt is Donald J. Trump.
I worked with journalist majors in high school and college.
Was on papers and served in editor positions. Was News page editor. I was the News page editor, and got it drilled correctly into me what a proper news story is versus a feature story, or an editorial piece.
Everyone in college, especially the girls, were in journalism “to make a difference”. That’s your problem in journalism today right there. That meant pushing an agenda, a liberal agenda. That meant bolstering liberal politicans and groups, and targeting and trying to deliberately “take down” those politicians and groups that weren’t.
In some ways.
It has been going on a long time.
There was a relatively short period when quite a few publications strove to be non-partisan.
It can only happen when the culture is pretty unified.
It has been going on a long time.
There was a relatively short period when quite a few publications strove to be non-partisan.
It can only happen when the culture is pretty unified.
Yes. And admittedly there are some cons with that too. But whats going on here is socialists destroying the country on purpose. Balkanizing and dividing people so they will never unify on fundamental common ideas.
This is why Rand is important, I think: not because what she said was true but because she said it so much before the rest of us could perceive it. I do not think that her Ubermenschen will rebel - most of them have been bought off - no, I think that something even more important will, the middle class. It won't be John Galt that kills them off, it will be Eddie Willers.
No its gone far past what Rand was speaking of.
The Fake Journalists today just make up full blown lies and endlessly regurgitate them and quote other journalist liars to amplify their ‘evidence’.
Betrayers such as these fake-journalists will be facing retribution appropriate to their crime.
The left still wins for destroying an important American Institution — which will take a decade to restore even after the leftist are driven out with rocks and sticks by the citizens they have betrayed.
I’ve heard it said before that the definition of “news” is whatever it is they don’t want you to print.
Pretty close.
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