This cold morning we warm ourselves with the knowledge that, no matter how completely the administration of President Stupid has laid bare the Big Lie of 'Both Sides Do It', the Beltway media simply cannot stop repeating it, and hammering every story until it fits its contours. It is their default factory setting, never to be tampered with, lest you void the warranty.

So when a big enough mouth with a big enough wallet decides to belly-flop into the political arena by announcing that he'll be throwing f'real money around like Mardi Gras beads to run for president on the platform of no greater depth or vision than "But Both Sidez!", it is Beltway Christmas in January!

Which is why coverage of Howard "The Paler Vortex" Schultz has all but colonized cable news, and the haircuts in front of the camera are creaming themselves at the joy of being able to take a break from

Republican treason and

Republican corruption and

Republican barbarism

to squee about Democrats in Disarray and Both Sidez!

How much of a gift is Howard Schultz to cable news? So much that the were able to haul discredit farce of nature Ron Fournier out of mothballs and put him in front of a camera to recite the only poem he knows: The Road Not Taken Because The K'rupt Duopoly Ruined Everything!

When I was coming up, I was taught (at the wee schoolhouse shanty I walked to five miles both ways uphill up to my knees in snow) that the five basic forms of literary conflict were: Human versus Human, Human versus Nature, Human versus Society, Human versus God and Human versus Themselves. Which, as basic Lit 101 lists go, isn't terrible, although it does omit legitimate variations like Human versus Technology/Science.

However given the absolute mindlessness with which corporations pursue their own ends often to the detriment of humanity, it really is long past time to add Human versus Corporation to the canon of recognized forms of literary conflict. As writers from C.M Kornbluth and Fred Pohl to William Gibson have shown, corporations -- which are not quite nature, and not quite society, and not quite human but are composed of humans -- can make splendidly relentless and aggressive antagonists and should be officially blessed as such by whoever bestows such blessings.

Point being, Ron Fournier may be a clown and an embarrassment to his former profession, but he isn't the main villain here.

The main villains here are media corporations which will grant priceless air time and column inches to virtually any talentless clown who will help advance their agenda of not paying taxes by poisoning healthy public discourse with Both Siderist bullshite.

excerpted with permission from Driftglass