The Cleanse
Getting started on a detoxifying, four-year media diet.
This just in: a New Zealand sheep weighted down miserably with 80 pounds of fleece received an emergency shearing and is resting comfortably in his sheep station. All the details are here. Compelling, yes, but I won’t try to pull the wool over your eyes. That isn’t the only media content I’ve consumed lately. Not by a long shot.
TRIGGER WARNING: The following headline concerns an annoyance. It also tells the entire People story it tops.
Passenger Pretends to Be Asleep to Avoid Raising Their Reclined Seat on 9-Hour Flight – Leaving Fellow Traveler Mad
Journalism lives, heroic as ever. OK, if you’re in search of gravitas, Foreign Affairs maybe that story is not. Incredibly it’s also not from The Onion. But things have changed around here on the subject matter of my media diet. It turns out that, in my lifelong obsession with keeping informed on domestic and world affairs, I’d cloistered myself from whole categories of human enterprise, such as prime-access syndicated TV game shows. Apparently they exist, and, as such, are no more insulated from controversy and heartbreak than war, famine or travel etiquette.
Here’s a story from TV Insider headlined “Wheel of Fortune” Blasted as Couple Misses $70,000 on “Unfair” Puzzle. The category was “person,” and the contestants were unable to fill in the blanks to solve _U_ _ K STUD_ as “QUICK STUDY.” O, the humanity! Perhaps because they themselves are not quick studies, many viewers were incredulous that the term would be classified as a person — though to the best of my knowledge it is a synonym for “fast learner,” which excludes almost everything but people, including balloons, cats, fences, all-inclusive resorts, pistons, cheese, phys ed teachers, chlorine, asthma, moist towelettes and Congressional Republicans. (If you are now seething about dogs, apes, dolphins, octopi and AI, I’m pretty sure you’re missing the point.)
Oh, but look, “Congressional Republicans.” I’m already slipping. The point of the new media diet is detoxification, to rid myself of the poison we’ve been contaminated with and will be further sickened by for (at least) the next four years, as you-know-who and his band of evil fuckwits go about destroying the world. To survive, my plan is to take a hiatus from reality. I’ll put my head in the sand, in other words, which should be easy, because by 2028 Kansas will be desert and Ohio beachfront.
My old Secret of Happiness was “Always Have Low Expectations.” But I can’t go any lower, so my new mantra is “Distract Yourself.” Which is why I’ve watched this video 700 times. It’s a Christmas pageant speech by a 4-year-old girl felicitously named Story. Listen to her, but also watch her gestures. You will never stop.
Truth is, I’m stuck in the rabbit hole of Meta’s Reels, the TikTok knockoff. That is an act of genuine desperation, because if you had Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk, Alex Jones and Mark Zuckerberg in custody and only four tiny uncharted islands to which to exile them — islands too small for more than one inhabitant — I’d say send Zuckerberg to one. And save the other three places in case someday there are Real Housewives of Greenland.
But, again, I backslide. Reels, at least as the algorithm serves me, is filled with mind blowing auditions from America’s Got Talent, Britain’s Got Talent, Italy’s Got Talent, Romania’s Got Talent … the whole global franchise. And they are addictive, because you get to see spectacular performances from obscure people without all the celebrity-judge bullshit between the acts. These are variety shows, so it’s hard to generalize, but I’d estimate that 98% of the performers are 10-year-old white girls who sing like 40-year-old Black women. It’s kind of remarkable, as is the smattering of 13-year-old Black boys who sing opera like Maria Callas. I can’t say I don’t find myself missing the vital news of the day, no matter how horrifying and repugnant, but I’ll just say this: I’ve never seen a clip of Trump imbeciling and then pressed “replay” six times.
Furthermore, when you do a daily politics enema, you discover whole categories of entertainment that you didn’t know existed. I’m thinking of Joelle Legg, a New Zealand fitness influencer, boxer and life coach who has struck it rich in the brand-new genre of looking at the camera while listening to a recording of a comedian’s joke and reacting.
Joelle and her husband Mike have posted thousands of these bits, almost all filmed while she appears to be doing ordinary tradwife things like picking up after the kids, preparing meals and so on. When Mike (whom we do not see) starts playing the comedy recording, she listens and reacts as the joke proceeds. She is an attractive but relatable 40-something woman with a beautiful smile and lovely aquamarine eyes. She’s always dressed casually, usually in cutoffs. But she utters hardly a word. Her talents are: 1) being attentive 2) enjoying 3) gesturing 4) laughing. Virtuosically, I guess. The Leggs have more than 1 million social media followers.
I’m going to be seeing quite a lot of them between now and 2028, partly because her amusement really is infectious. Also the jokes are mainly very good. Also, they’re from New Zealand, like the sheep, but with better grooming habits.
Godspeed, Joelle and Mike. Also, by any chance, do you guys have a spare room?