The Secret Admirer of the MSM – Temasek Review

We all know the ST these days is starting to look like a cassette player in the age of iPods and MP3 players, may seem like a quaint blast from the past conversation piece but hardly anyone these days denies it should at least have the grace and dignity to make its way next to the dodo exhibit in some dusty museum.

Observation suggest the press is dying; readership is falling and people just aren’t seeing any value in newsprints any longer – it’s a sad but true valedictory tale that’s scissoring it way across the world and Singapore is no exception to this rule – even those battling against this tsunami of change like the Strait Times are finding it uphill and starting to resemble beleaguered animals as they get abused relentlessly in the internet while their credibility dies in ever steady increments.

This begs the question: what’s the best way to arrest the rot? How do we recapture the high ground again in the new media? How do we restore to the credibility of a beleaguered press in the eyes of netizens? The question acquires as added edge when one considers the ST isn’t just a regular newspaper; but it also performs the “higher” imperative of nation building and perpetuating the raison of the ruling hegemony.

My theory goes like this; one great way of getting netizens who would otherwise remain terminally indifferent to what the MSM has to say these days along with having to bear the pain of Auntie Sumiko’s ruminations about how euthanasia is like visiting to a Banyan tree spa is simply to repackage the whole idea of news; that’s to say get the “new” to bring back the “old.”

And how is this perceptive shift accomplished?

Simple get Temasek Review to act as a proxy for the ST – sound incredulous? The stuff of alien abduction? And where did the plane go when it ploughed into the Pentagon in 9/11.

Think again! TR lies in a confluence point in the new media! its also managed to successfully sell itself as a anti govt blog (never mind the minor detail about taking pot shots at workers party, I am sure that was just bad aiming) Did you know that of all the sites; TR is the only one that REGULARLY lifts articles from (you guessed it) the MSM! Of course, it’s packaged under the subversive tag of “plagiarism” to give it the illicit thrill underground movement like stone washed jeans and plastic palm trees.

And not only does TR regularly feature MSM writes; it does this on an industrial scale; based on the average number of articles a day which you; the occasional blog reader may hardly register as a whole lot (since who in their right mind has to time and energy to track back the origin of every article!) – but just to give you all a sense of scale as to the volume; just divide the number of blogs in the WHOLE of our blogosphere (including TOC, ok lah, I give discount multiply by an imaginary factor of 2) then inverse it with the number of times TR gives airtime to articles written by the apparatus of assimilation and root it with the number of published articles in the MSM and what do you end up with?

A whopping 8,000% comparative between the number of times a blog would normally cite a MSM article – this simply means: they’re in fact funneling you and I reads which would normally not be in our zone of consciousness very much in the way water rushes out from a pipe – a coincidence you say; OK lets put in allegorical terms then; what’s the probability of a tornado whipping through a junkyard and magically assembling a 747? Probabilities don’t make for possibilities.

Think about! Sometimes, not all the time, I admit (especially when a blind date turns out to be a 2 metric ton “internal” beauty) perception can be reality – but even if we decamped from the idea for just a moment; one thing remains robust even to suggest what I am theorizing this minute may not all together be the stuff of big foot, UFO sightings, bubble tea conspiracies etc – perception and reality can reinforce each other; what better way to funnel news which none of us would normally never ever consider reading than to repackage it as “breaking news” in a site that has a strong subversive and oppositional whiff?

Stands to reason; most of us will let our guard down; if we believed the site that carries the news is well known for taking bites at Mr Gahmen & Co; they’re after all one of us right?

Viola – perception has become real, it has to be believed; this is the crucial point; where prophecy becomes not only self-fulfilling; but sub-consciously it also convinces us the gold standard of blogging is to somehow fashion ourselves as a newspaper and since bloggers have neither the human, financial or readership footprint of the MSM – we will always come out short; and the house wins all the time; thus guaranteeing the primacy of a newspaper.

There is however one saving grace that guarantees a redemptive end to this short story – perception can never outrun reality forever – and the danger is that over pitching a brand even one as self aggrandizing as the Strait Times only sets the general audience searching for REAL news to for the fall. As eventually, like all great marketing ploys that take their cue from selling only helium filled hopes and dreams such as Ponzi schemes; when the house of cards come tumbling down and what is on offer in TR just an exact mirror image of another round of palpable surreal and contrived reality from the chemically enhanced artificiality of the apparatus of mass assimilation – the truth may just decide to stick it toe out from one corner and say, what the fuck!

As one of the King soldiers said to another before a slumped humpty dumpty, “how are we going to ever put it back?”

Start back pedaling – the truth is out!

Darkness 2009

Wrote this on the way home from the train; got to prepare for trading tonite when the NAS opens – I’ve got a feeling she will fly tonight. See you latter.