I’ve been on a media bias kick lately. It has noting to do with personal finance so feel free to skip and read one of our many other posts.
In today’s episode…I mentioned in a prior post that I am a Foo Fighters fan. I’ve told folks often that I love the Foo Fighters. Comments like this get me in trouble with my wife as she takes me literally. I’ll make a comment that I love this actor or love this musician, meaning that I like their music or movie. My wife will come back with a question about how I can like them when they’ve said… insert crazy political stance.
The answer is that politics rarely crosses my radar and is not part of my thought process.
I thought this was true for most people until I read a story a while back about irate fans protesting on instagram because their favorite artist had not come out with a stance on Israel/Palestine. I was shocked. Why can’t artists be artists? And from what I’ve seen in interviews and articles about artists, while they may excel at their particular craft, they are not always knowledgable about economics, politics or international relations. That’s OK, not their job. Why would someone who appreciates their art care about where they stand on a non-art topic? I guess I’m old.
Dave
Back to Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. I love the band. I love Dave – how can you not, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Them Crooked Vultures. And for my wife’s benefit and clarification for all. I love the music. It aligns with my taste and sounds great to me. I’ve seen the Foo Fighters live 4 times. Once Dave was in the big chair after falling off the stage at a concert in Sweden. He shattered his leg, but continued the tour in a cast and a moving chair. Good for him! Read about it here.
Trump
One morning, at coffee, my wife was up in arms about the Trump/Foo controversy. While my wife is very up on politics, she is more up on fairness and honesty. She’d seen the headlines and done the research and arrived at the conclusion that Trump had obtained the rights to use the song My Hero at his rally. Dave then came out lambasting Trump over unauthorized use of the song.
Me
Were it not for the coffee confrontation, I would have been painfully unaware of this situation. At least until I saw the headline on Fox News about Dave’s infidelity. Read here. This shocked me because Fox typically has a political angle. Why was this story headline news?
Then it hit me. Could this be Trump controversy payback?
NY Times
All of the above was slightly interesting, but I moved on quickly. Still love the music, but I’ve lost a lot of respect for Dave. That’s my personal opinion. He’s known as the “nicest guy in rock n roll and has done nice things for the homeless and firefighters, but the infidelity and what it shows me about his respect for his wife and family lowers my opinion of him as a person. But, there are other artists I enjoy that I don’t necessarily like. Love the music but don’t love Dave.
Back to the NY Times. I saw this today.
I didn’t want to invest the $ to click into the article, but the title tells me quite a bit.
Left v. Right
Representing the Right, we have Fox News trumpeting the infidelity as the top story. And for the left we have the NY Times lauding Dave for his lesson in crisis communication.
How can we not laugh at the absurdity of this? Whatever our feelings are about Dave or about infidelity, How the right and left media choose to cover the situation is totally absurd, in my humble opinion.
I’m almost ready to cough up a buck to read the NY Times article, but I have a feeling it’s not going to make me happy. Not likely to be a good use of $1. If anyone reads this, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts.
What The Media Chooses to Report
If you were from another planet, and all you knew of the situation was these 2 articles, what would your opinion be. If you read the Fox story, you’d probably think badly of Dave for his infidelity. If you read the Times story, you might feel differently about Dave – a man with his faults, but who had the courage to face adversity and come forward.
My Foot
Dave cheated on his wife and had a baby with another woman out of wedlock (since he was already married to someone else). Regardless of your political leanings, this is not cool.
There are so many positive examples of leaders who excel at crisis communication, why do we need to pick this one – yes, NYTimes, I’m asking you. It seems to me like we (you) are trying to find some good in this situation just because the other side of the political fence is enjoying the downfall of their latest nemesis.
Wrap-Up
To me, this is too absurd to get angry about. I had a good laugh and hope you did as well. Happy Thursday.