Tomorrow, Saturday April 26th, Rage Against the Media is hosting our first “Flashmob for Truth” at a mall in Los Angeles.
The idea is this:
Imagine you’re at a mall – strolling around with your family or friends, wishing you had some money so you could actually buy something, and you hear a ruckus behind you.
You turn, and see five, perhaps 10, maybe even more, cheerfully dressed men and women, not quite walking but not exactly dancing, either, weaving their way through the crowd. The one in front shouts through his bullhorn: “What do we want?” And the joyous, dancing group shouts back “THE TRUTH!!” He shouts “When do we want it!?” And they reply: “NOW!”
Some of the group hand out flyers, others hand out stickers saying “WE WANT THE TRUTH” , as they pass through the throng of shoppers.
They quickly form a circle, one of them beating on a small drum, and continue the chant. Less than a minute goes by while they dance in the circle, handing out more flyers and stickers, then WHOOSH: before anyone really realizes what just happened, they’re gone….. read more here
We’ve only invited a select few to join us tomorrow as we take this whole idea for a test run. And this will hardly be our usual modus operandi. Taking a page from the 60’s, we’ll be joyous, and focused on one message: Demanding the truth from the media.
That’s it.
Nothing political – the assumption is that every one of us expects honest reporting. Of course, we know that’s hogwash, but it’s a friendly, non-confrontational stance to take, and if we also hand out fliers with factual information, perhaps we’ll jolt perhaps someone into at least a bit of annoyance at being duped by the media.
Perhaps not.
Because let’s be honest. Complacency is rampant. The corruption is deeply, deeply entrenched in our media. And with the abomination that is our education system, combined with the generally pervasive and unfortunately successful destruction of so many facets of our civic life, the fight back seems Sisyphean. Day after day, we are subject to some new outrage, some new scandal, another indicator of how far we’ve come from a nation based on the rule of law, and one where our news media uses its first-amendment-guaranteed freedom and actually reports rather than evangelizes. The other day, M*A*S*H’s “Trapper John” referred to the news media as “constipated by their own ideology,” and that was just for starters.
Will one small group dancing through a mall make a difference? Doubtful. But one advantage of this approach is that it’s easy – and fun! – to duplicate. We hope this will be the spark of a much greater conflagration, a wildfire that we hope will sweep the nation, inspiring one after another of us to do what we shouldn’t have to do: DEMAND THE TRUTH of our news media.
Stay tuned; we’ll get back to you tomorrow.