I stopped watching TV after the UK smoking ban, because nobody smoked on TV, and nobody spoke up for smokers on TV. On TV I saw depicted a world to which I didn’t belong, and to which I didn’t want to belong. And also I had to pay to watch TV.
I stopped reading newspapers and magazines for the same reason. I had to pay to read them as well. Why should I pay to watch or read people I don’t like?
And also I rejected the global warming climate alarmism that accompanied the war on smoking that the mainstream media were prosecuting, and in which only one point of view ever got presented.
It seems it isn’t getting any better:
Woke Doctor Who fans have had a Doctor Who writer removed from a short story collection because he holds incorrect views about transgender issues.
Why am I not surprised?
I’m so old that I can actually remember a time when Doctor Who was a children’s TV programme rather than a political indoctrination class for budding Social Justice Warriors.
But, as we know, that Tardis flew long ago.
Even as long ago as 2005, Doctor Who was eagerly introducing us to possibly UK kiddy TV’s first out bisexual — Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman).
Then, it went a step further by explaining to us that actually Captain Jack is not really bisexual because in the future everyone has realised that sexuality is just a social construct so people can date whoever they want…
I think the idea behind it all is that the mainstream media can be used not to reflect public opinion, but to shape public opinion, and that if you can populate it with antismoking transgender climate alarmists the general public will follow their lead, and everyone will become antismoking transgender climate alarmists.
But I don’t think it works that way. I think that if you do that, people will just stop watching, or stop reading. After all, that’s what I’ve done.
Radio and television are powerful media, but they’re not that powerful.
I want to watch and read people who have similar opinions to mine. I want to watch people who are like me. I don’t want them to completely agree with me about everything, but simply agree about quite a lot.
And the interesting thing is that such people have been appearing in recent years. Only they haven’t been appearing in the mainstream media. Instead they’ve been appearing online, talking on video or radio, expressing their own dissenting opinions.
I’m thinking of people like Alex Jones and Michael Savage and Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh and Jordan Peterson and Brendan O’Neill and Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson and Stefan Molyneux and Douglas Murray. Some of them have been around for ages. They mostly never appear in the MSM. And they are increasingly getting banned on social media. Alex Jones is banned from YouTube. And Michael Savage is even banned from Britain. And they’re banned because they say the wrong thing, they don’t toe the politically correct line, and because they’re interesting. And there seem to be more and more of them.
It’s really just another example of supply and demand. People want to hear new voices, new ideas, new opinions. And so new voices emerge to meet the demand.
A recent discovery has been New Culture Forum: So What You’re Saying Is. Here’s their very first video, on How BBC Bias Works:
What I’m find rather intriguing about this is that just at a time when the MSM are becoming increasingly completely one-sided, a flood of new voices are emerging online, and they’re the only people I ever listen to. The BBC has no influence over me whatsoever, but people like Peter Whittle and his guests on the New Culture Forum do.
So it seems to me that the attempt to use the mainstream media to shape opinion is completely backfiring on them, and has instead resulted in a new underground aristocracy of thinkers emerging, all of them usually expressing politically incorrect views. The MSM are slowly killing themselves.
My only complaint about these new people is that none of them smoke. Or if they are smokers, none of them are actually ever seen smoking. And to that degree they continue to be as politically corrrect as the MSM.
And perhaps my other complaint about them is they all really want to be on mainstream TV and radio. They (e.g. Alex Jones) create flashy studios which look like BBC or Channel 4 or Fox studios. They don’t look like authentic living rooms.
But I am myself, in a very small way, one of these new voices. I speak up for smokers on my blog, and I can be found in the online Smoky Drinky Bar at 10 pm on most Fridays, in the company of people who are smoking in their own authentic living rooms. And also I don’t want to appear on mainstream TV or radio. I get the occasional invite, but I always turn them down. Why should I want to appear somewhere where smokers like me aren’t welcome?
Frank Davis 
I remember an episode of ‘Outnumbered’ when the young girl of the family was told by the school principal that she would no longer be allowed to read Roald Dahl’s books.
slugbop007
I felt the same way about MSM, around the same time the smoking bans banished me from bars, restaurants, coffee shops. Now I get food “to go” and eat in my pickup truck or bring it home. I still smoke at home but if they catch me they will evict me. Where can one live after being evicted from HUD subsidized senior public housing for smoking? I have no family. I suppose I would have to live in my pickup truck for my final years?
But, I digress. I also canceled cable TV after the Ban. I so clearly began to understand MSM is propaganda of the most insidious kind, disguised as entertainment. News shows are entertainment. The talk shows are left/right dichotomy, same as baseball or football, root for your team. We have been given very sublime bread and circuses. Even the weather reports are entertainment, with the sexy weather babe. TV will turn your mind to mush, direct your will toward buying the latest stuff, and indoctrinate a politically correct mindset. It is vile, and the TV is always there; at waiting rooms, in bars. I can’t stand 5 minutes of it.
I truly believe that my outcast status as a smoker who doesn’t want to stop smoking is a major reason why I can so cynically, easily, and accurately see right through the mind control agenda of the mainstream media. And the lies of politicians. And the vacuous vapidity of American street level society since the Ban.
I wonder if the eviction of smokers might explain some of this:
All over America, large portions of our major cities are being transformed into stomach-churning cesspools of squalor. Thousands of tens cities are popping up from coast to coast as the homeless population explodes, even the New York Times admits that we are facing “the worst drug crisis in American history”, there were more than 28,000 official complaints about human feces in the streets of San Francisco last year alone, and millions of rats are currently overrunning the city of Los Angeles.
I don’t think too many of this kind of homelessness is from smoking evictions. YET. There is a huge homeless crisis in America. I was homeless for several years myself in my 40s. (I am 70 years old now.)
Rents increasing exponentially higher than wages, gentrification of inner cities, the disappearance of Single Room Occupancy hotels (SROs) and, primarily, money spent on drug addictions, are the reasons for this crisis. There are long waiting lists for apartments like mine.
But as time goes on, evicted smokers certainly will become a significant percentage of the homeless population.
Charles, are you aware of NYC CLASH’s lawsuit againt HUD’s smoking ban?
Yes Walt. You know me on FB
I listened to a few of interviews from that channel today, Frank. They’re really good. Thanks for sharing :D