If Journalists Were Called Factualists, We Might Have Actual News Instead Of Opinions

I have never been able to take journalists seriously. I know that not all of them are misinformed sensationalists who flunked out of their community college's liberal arts bachelor's programs, but most of them appear to be. I used to think The Boston Herald was the absolute worst newspaper in the country, even after the creation of Boston's version of the international free daily, The Metro. The Metro, however, is often subversively funny. For instance, they did a story on famous beards, and the photographs included Abraham Lincoln, a guy from ZZ Top, Fidel Castro, and Liza Minella. That's funny. However, without a doubt the worst paper in Boston right now is Boston NOW. On a day when the Metro's cover story was about increasing violence on the streets of Boston, Boston NOW's cover was about how celebrity golf scores are available to the public. The front page story was on how Joe Public had the freedom to look up Tom Brady's golf score. I mean who cares about racial tensions in Louisiana, the war in Iraq, or the fact that Boston is seeing its first rise in crime related violence in over a decade, Tom Brady's golf scores are available at your local golf course. That's not even an important enough story to warrant the cover of the sports page. Are they not aware of the Red Sox threatening to flop out of their division championship? Didn't they hear about the whole video camera/Patriots scandal? Fuck how Tom Brady's golfing is going, he appears to be ready to lead the Patriots to another Super Bowl.

Headlines like this are why most people think the Jena Six are a cover band that play only songs by Janet and The Jackson Five.

During tonight's Writing But Mostly Drinking Group (which was more eating and shit talking than anything else tonight), we were discussing the Jena Six, and the the recent hubbub over a local school putting on the "pro-gay propaganda" play, The Laramie Project, when the term ex-gay came up. Apparently the straight white Emerson student population (who makes up 2/3rds of the writers' group) was unaware of recent reports on the "effectiveness" of the Ex-Gay movement (I know there are more recent reports on The Internet but, being as this entry is sort of an homage to "journalism", I'm not going to use more than one source). Basically, one recent study of two hundred and two Ex-Gays found that only twenty-six considered the program a success. Of those twenty-six, eight claimed to not have any "slip-ups". Of those eight people, seven worked for the Ex-Gay movement. The head of an Ex-Gay group called Exodus International in Orlando, said the report presented "opinion and certainly not fact." It should also be mentioned that ninety percent of those interviewed reported long term harm, and feelings of deep depression and the desire to commit suicide. This says nothing of the dozes of "Ex-Gay counselors" sued and/or arrested for molesting the people they're supposed to be counseling. I think a complete guide to the history of The Ex-Gay movement would read like an article from The Onion. I mean, Ex-Gay leaders have molested more children than priests and Republican Senators combined.

During the Ex-Gay discussion, someone brought up a possible alternative to the Ex-Gay movement: Cock Suckers Anonymous. So I present

                                    The 12 Steps of Cocksuckers Anonymous

(with the understanding that this is for male cocksuckers, not females who are welcome to suck cock whenever they please):

1. We admitted we were powerless over cock – that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a vagina greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of vagina as we understood it.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to vagina, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have vagina remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked vagina to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.*

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with vagina as we understood it, praying only for knowledge of vagina's will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other cocksuckers, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

*- "Hey Steve, this is Larry. You may not remember me, I met you in an alley in Manhattan, I was looking for crack, you had a couple rocks. I didn't have any money, so you suggested I suck your cock and...yea...yea, the senator. Anyway...no, no, no, the crack was great, I just wanted to apologize for sucking your cock. Really? Well, I'm flattered and everything but it was wrong of me. Wrong. See I'm in a group, it's kind of like AA, and I'm supposed to make this list and call and make amends to...Oh, no, I still smoke crack all the time. It's the cock I've given up smoking. Which reminds me, I came into a little money recently...no, not literally. Anyway, I can't suck your cock, but I could really go for some crack right now, do you think you could hook me up?"


I'm trying to think of some way to wrap this entry up in a nice little bow, but really all I can come up with is that so called journalists are really just a bunch of cocksuckers who refuse to apologize for the current state of The American Media, but that seems cruel. I mean, sure, there are a lot of cocksuckers who will lie to your face (or crotch), but at least they have the decency not to write their opinions about your cock and call them news stories.