[ExI] Book review - Hate Inc. Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another by Matt Taibbi

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Jan 2, 2020, at 7:38 AM, BillK via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> As this book is very critical of the mass media it is difficult to
> find a good review from mass media sources. What a surprise!
> Try :
> <https://www.eastvillagemagazine.org/2019/12/07/review-hatred-inc-and-why-we-hate-cast-light-on-todays-quagmires/>
> 
> Quotes:
> 
> The “Ten Rules of Hate”
> “So long as the public is busy hating each other and not aiming its
> ire at the more complex financial and political processes going on
> off-camera, there’s very little danger of anything like a a popular
> uprising,” Taibbi writes.  His  exposé of the media’s lucrative take
> on pedaling hate offers “Ten Rules of Hate”  as a primer through this
> cesspool of inhumanity.
> 
> Ten Rules of Hate
> 1. There are only two ideas
> 2. The two ideas are in permanent conflict
> 3. Hate people, not institutions
> 4. Everything is someone else’s fault
> 5. Nothing is everyone’s fault
> 6. Root, don’t think
> 7. No switching teams
> 8. The other side is literally Hitler
> 9. In the fight against Hitler, everything is permitted
> 10. Feel superior
> ------------
> 
> There can be little doubt that both sports and politics continue to
> profit from fomenting such tribalism. A chapter in his book titled
> “How We Turned the News into Sports” is Taibbi’s takedown of this
> conflation.
> 
> Another chapter, “How Reading the News is like Smoking,” addresses the
> addictive toxicity level of such media assaults with this warning:
> “Like cigarettes, this product can have have a profound negative
> impact on your health. Almost without exception it will make you
> lonelier, more anxious, more distrustful of others, and more
> depressed.”
> 
> From Hannity to Maddow, Hate Inc. disrobes the theatrics that is  24/7
> news to reveal corporate media for the highly profitable infotainment
> product it truly is. Both the book and the documentary examine various
> common threads like tribalism, but the most common thread is money and
> control.
> Hate, it turns out, pays off big time.
> ---------------

This reminds me of the work of Neil Postman. He homed in how news isn’t really about being informed so much as believing one is being informed while actually being entertained and actually being entertained by tragedies and scandals. (He doesn’t make a case that you can’t be both informed and entertained, but that the news generally doesn’t do both.)

Regards,

Dan
   Sample my Kindle books at:
http://author.to/DanUst
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