I grew up Catholic, Save Jerseyans, and I went through 12 years of Catholic school (including college), so I’m fully familiar as are many of you with the Church’s opinion on pornography. Specifically, the Catechism (which for the benefit of you non-Catholics in the audience is the Church’s collection of core teachings) explains how porn “immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world.“
The Church focuses on one kind of porn (the sexual kind). In 2021, I think a different type of porn represents a far more significant clear and present danger to modern humans and our civilization. I’m talking about panic porn.
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The concept is pretty simple:
While good old fashioned porn attacks your brain’s erogenous zone, panic porn takes direct aim at your amygdala (the part of your brain where your fears foment and reside).
What makes panic porn so much more dangerous – in my humble opinion – is it’s harder to detect on its face. In his 1964 opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously conceded “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”
Naked or semi-naked people engaging in sexual acts = traditional porn.
Panic porn? I think Justice Stewart would have an even more difficult time finding the right words.
Take this story from The Times of Israel which was Matt Drudge’s top story for most of Monday morning. Drudge: “Israeli data shows South African variant able to ‘break through’ Pfizer vaccine.” Drudge turned it into “REVEALED: PFIZER CAN’T STOP SAFRICA STRAIN…“
But if you actually READ the damn story, folks, the professor who led the study gave the Times a hugely important caveat:
“She said that the results show that the South African variant, compared to the original strain and the British variant, ‘is able to break through the vaccine’s protection.’ However, she said that the sample size is too small to put a figure on its increased ability.
‘We can say it’s less effective, but more research is needed to establish exactly how much,’ she said.”
That’s a far cry from “Pfizer can’t stop” the new COVID-19 strain, right? We’re talking about 8 people out of 150. Worth following up? Sure. But no, the headlines are misleading and, in the case of Drudge at least, deliberately so. The singular goal is $$$$$$$$$$$; they make money by making you think “oh shit,” panic, and then click. Advertising is priced and sold based upon how many people click and how regularly they do it.
Politicians have been trying to play on your fears for as long as there’s been politicians. War, immigration, police violence, global cooling warming climate change, etc. Phil Murphy is a leading panic pornographer, routinely using aggressive language and manipulating the reporting of state COVID-19 data to make things seem worse than they are. What’s arguably a bit different about our current age is the extent to which the financial interests of the media AND the ends of self-interested politicians are completely aligned where panic porn is concerned.
The panic porn industry is entering a desperate new phase as the prevelance of vaccinations – and the natural course of the virus – forces panic porn profiteers to find new angles (like “variants”) to keep you on edge. Big Tobacco was callous as to whether your lungs rotted out of your body from using its products. Similarly, these media outlets could care less if your kids end up in therapy – or worse – owing to a steady drumbeat of apocalyptic spin.
Don’t fall for it, Save Jerseyans. It’s illusion. Fantasy. Don’t lose yourself in it, or you risk losing a hell of a lot more than your sanity in the process.
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Save Jersey’s Founder and Blogger-in-Chief, MATT ROONEY is a nationally-noted and respected New Jersey political commentator. When he’s not on-line, radio or television advocating for conservative reform and challenging N.J. power-brokers, Matt is a practicing attorney at the law firm of DeMichele & DeMichele in Haddon Heights (Camden County).
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