Saturday, September 6, 2014

20 Years of Media's Abuse

20 Years of Media's Abuse
I tried to recount all the brushes I've had with the media last night. I got off to a positive start in 1984 when I submitted a three-song theme to an Ottawa radio station. They liked my concept and broadcast the piece. They were decent enough to include my name with this work. It featured a Beatles song, a Rolling Stones song, and a Police song. Between then and 2003 I submitted the odd letter to the editor. These letters would usually be published with my name under them.

These were the only times I recall being treated fairly. I submitted a few cartoons to the Georgia Straight in the mid 90's and they published them without including my name as the author. In 1999 I took an acting class and showed a script to my teacher. Kiss goodbye to that work. That was the year I opened my first Blogger account and if only I'd known how many readers it had. I think that was when I first coined the phrase 'force for good'. I took a web design course which may have been monitored by the media in the search for technical staff and I shared a few short stories on a private web space that I couldn't afford on the long term. I wonder whose name they're published under today. In 2004 CBC's David Frum passed some of my work onto George W. Bush for his re-election campaign. I also wrote and shared the story 'Four Progress' (see my 2004 blog) and later that day heard Bush say that he wanted to send a man to the Moon and return him safely to the Earth. I submitted my short stories to web sites for publishing and was rejected. Then I saw one of my works appear as the script of a suspense/horror show on television. In 2006 I started blogging again and wrote about how a loving God wouldn't punish us. George Carlin stole it and the media supported him. I added more bitter blogs about how people are boring, people are stupid, businessmen are assholes, and so forth, and then I wrote and posted Size, which totally changed my philosophy and made me believe in a higher power. This caused me to erase most of the angry, bitter works that led up to it, and Carlin was quick to cash them all in with the media's support. I mentioned that my favorite shows were the Simpsons, Family Guy, and late night comedies and those shows all started helping themselves to my scripts. In my defense, I wrote poems about each violator: Sappho Asparagus (Ellen Degeneres), Overweight Oaf (Homer Simpson/Peter Griffen), Jackie the Pro (Jay Leno), The Cinnamon Gang (Saturday Night Live), Shorty Suffuse (George Carlin), and others, as well as media violators like Dateline NBC (The Porcupine Girls), Irma Upskirt (FOX News), and even show biz execs like Dick Cheney (Buck Henry). Each one was stolen and broadcast as the property of the person(s) each was intended to condemn - all except Buck Henry, which Cheney must have paid Leonard Cohen to steal. The media supported this fully. Then Dateline NBC broadcast their first Kangaroo Court to determine my 'legitimacy' in October/November 2007 and apparently found me guilty of fraud. Every network broadcast their news stories in verse around this time. The public backlash from all this evil mass manipulation finally drove me from the web and the TV proceeded to loot what remained of my work to fill the content of their flagship comedy shows, cartoons, and music videos for the next three to seven years. In 2008 the local media stacked the crowd with fanatical supporters for a Crystalids concert made out of my songs. Nice people. This was after they broadcast an hour of my music on CBC FM, probably to spy on me and check my reaction and make sure I had no knowledge of my ownership. In their cozy limousine, The Crystalids chased me and harassed me for the next three years as I struggled to pay my rent. In 2010, as my scripts were winning laughs for cartoons like the Simpsons and Family Guy, the Daily Show bashed my cartoon 'A is for Altered', which I shared on YouTube. They told me I needed MacBook Pro. Tina Fey went on TV and told the world I 'sock'. And the Crystalids jumped on every new song I shared in my YouTube account and bashed it severely in an attempt to make me erase it so they could steal it. Thanks, CBC. Thanks, NBC. Thanks, FOX. Thanks, Comedy Central. Thanks, HBO. The music business managed to build up a whole chain of alternative rock stations, like Vancouver's the PEAK, around my songs and not share a measly cent of the profits with me.

This experience was so traumatizing that I completely wiped it from my memory, returning me to my earlier, atheist mindset of 2006. I stayed like that until 2010, and by re-posting my song Size, I recovered my faith in a higher power. Along the way, I exposed a cast member of Saturday Night Live as a fraud through my blog and I believe that SNL wanted the Crystalids to return the favor by getting the band to throw me in jail for Size. They were so determined to incarcerate me that they showed up at my front door and were going to drag me off to jail with no trial. Lucky for me I wasn't home. Then I heard about a cartoon that a media show posted of me being spanked by the Crystalids with my own songs. How considerate. How helpful. Oh, but they wanted to help. Yes, that's why they bought my original blog from Google in 2011 and looked forward to busting every star on TV with it. Think of the ratings. That was when Dateline NBC tried to pass themselves off as my heroes, inviting my 'groupies' on the show to tell the world how unattractive I am, getting my brothers to talk about how ordinary I am, and encouraging Nasco production workers to talk about how much they hated my guts. Too bad I didn't know about this at the time. They did this behind my back to make it look like they had my consent, giving them more control over my image. And did you see how all the other media supported their campaign? Just like when they broadcast their news stories in verse on every channel, they showed how they march together in lockstep, those reporters and journalists - maybe not so much the journalists.

But the media's true, unprofessional feelings towards me resurfaced in 2013 when I complained about their violations and recruited lawyers to my cause. Suddenly I was a bad guy again. 'It's not David,' they said, after saying the opposite for most of the previous year. 'You're an embarrassment to the whole industry,' they said, as if all their crimes against me were my fault. They tried resurrect the comedy career of the SNL cast member who'd been kicked off the show in 2010 for stealing my words. The Nasco workers rallied around Jeff Hisko. Taylor Swift was somehow allowed across the border for a local concert on Canada Day. That was when I heard that Tina Fey finally went to prison. So did the comedian CBC supported and tried to resurrect. He stole a lot of my work for his stand-up routine. The media must have hyped his comeback because the people lined up all the way from Commercial Drive to Clark Street to see him perform. Yes, and the big party for Jeff Hisko was cancelled at the last minute.

Since then the media have been ignoring me and the arrests and prosecutions of the famous violators of my work. I've learned that CBC staff like David Frum stayed on the CBC payroll since 2000. I wish they would simply re-staff the whole media with new, innocent people. When they all march in lockstep, all it takes is one poisonous prick like Frum to turn the whole organization into a giant threat. If the media had put even a fraction of the effort they made to destroy me into helping me instead, I'm sure I wouldn't be stuck here typing this blog today.
  
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