Writers face increasing challenges from the ruling forces of political correctness. One straitjacket enforces uniformity of thought in content; the other enforces conformity of style. Buy into these new prescriptive norms and you can continue to play the popularity game with the big boys. Those of us who stick to our dissenting guns face banishment by the gatekeepers of government and industry.
The War on “Fake News”
US President Obama and the mainstream news elite have launched a paper crusade against “fake news” that, were it not a serious threat of Orwellian censorship, would be laughable on two counts: the absence of evidence that “the Russians” are behind all political narratives beyond the party line of the White House, New York Times and Washington Post; and the double standard that promotes as “real news” such blatant and admitted fakery as Iraq’s phantom WMD or the events of 9/11 (along with a long historical litany of other “false flags”). The purveyors of “official truth” may well satisfy a sheepish audience cowed to accept the mass-media fairy tales of government-designated good and evil. For the rest of us—free thinkers, advocates of informed debate, empowered democratic citizens—a single top-down narrative is anathema.
The Google Algorithm for “Readability”
Also troubling, for the writer concerned with style and freedom of expression, is the trend of Google, the ultimate gatekeeper in the Internet-driven world, to funnel traffic toward prose of the lowest common denominator. The dominant search engine now weights rankings to favor short sentences, short paragraphs, short sections. Standards are in place to reward transition words (to be used in 30 percent of sentences) and penalize passive voice (above 10 percent). While all of the above may be commendable guidelines for attracting a wide readership, what is repugnant is the enforcement of such rules from above instead of letting readers decide on a case-by-case basis what they enjoy. It may be true that 70 percent, or even 95 percent, of a poorly educated populace prefer digesting plain vanilla prose at a grade six reading level. Those with more eclectic tastes, however, will be harder pressed to find nourishment in wildcrafted fare.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines anathema as “a formal ecclesiastical ban, curse, or excommunication.” What is emerging today, in the form of the above overt and implied forms of censorship, is precisely such a witch-hunt against all deviations from official prescriptions of acceptable written expression. As a proponent of freedom of thought and creative choice, I would characterize that very trend itself using definition 3 of anathema: “one that is cursed or damned.”
further reading: “Manufacturing Normality” (CJ Hopkins, Counterpunch)
‘Then We Will Fight in the Shade’ – A Guide to Winning the Media Wars (Mike Krieger, Liberty Blitzkrieg)
