The Savannah Bananas. The Bee. The Naked Gun. Saturday Night Live.
Americans are proving to have an unquenchable thirst for things that make them laugh, entertain them, or question life. These are all spoofs.
When did mockery replace the real thing? Can we even tell the difference?
The top-drawing team is nothing more than a show. There are no high-priced sluggers or post-season sports to compete for. Instead, the bright yellow-jerseyed team will have pitchers on the mound atop stilts, an umpire that dances in between pitches, and fielders who do backflips before catching a ball. Think more Harlem Globetrotters or WWE - and not the MLB.
The Bee is like The Onion, a fake news site that is so good at mocking our mockable reality that you are almost thinking The Bee is as accurate as Fox News or The New York Post.
The Naked Gun is a reboot of movies made famous four decades ago by actor Leslie Nielsen. Now, with new actors, this movie is like MAD magazine in Hollywood form.
Saturday Night Live, with its wit, sarcasm, and political snark, celebrated 50 years of late-night comedy this past season.
Some may even say we have a president that mocks the real thing, as Trump seems to make one outlandish statement, alternate fact, or outright lie every other minute. He is a caricature of himself, living a lampooned life.
Then there’s AI generating all kinds of nonsense. The information highway is littered with bias, misinformation, lies, opinions presented as facts, and twisted data.
We co-exist with a world that simply is not truthful, but nevertheless exists. Some of it we are aware of and can laugh at -- but other times that joke is on us. Our information is compromised and this undermines the views we form, the discussions we have, and the action we take.
There was a recent article in The Wall Street Journal that should concern all of us. It was about how tens of thousands of fake scientific studies and papers have made it into our scientific journals. Publishers are now fishing out the junk science in hopes of preserving a higher standard of scientific debate and discussion.
Are books any better? Probably not --but they need to be.
We now have books that are:
- Published without a third-party editor
- Riddled with errors, lies, half-truths, and without
attribution
- Written with an agenda in mind, and are not neutral or
unbiased
- Filled with slanted content to fill an unjust narrative
Few people are punished for writing, publishing, or selling books that are garbage. You hear of libel and deformation lawsuits from the rich and powerful, but few other people file or win such lawsuits. There’s really little that stops a person or entity to publish books that harm the nation and its readers.
Having funny or entertaining institutions that help us question reality, such as SNL, are welcome. But when we can’t tell the difference between what’s fake and what’s real, we have a big problem. There is a greater obligation and burden for the public to educate itself against the compromised content floating around. But it is hard for the TikTok crowd to step back and see truth with 20-20 vision.
Do You Need Book Marketing Help?
Brian
Feinblum, the founder of this award-winning blog, with over four million page
views, can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com He is available to help authors like you to promote
your story, sell your book, and grow your brand. He has over 30 years of
experience in successfully helping thousands of authors in all genres. Let him
be your advocate, teacher, and motivator!
About Brian Feinblum
This award-winning blog has generated over
4.7 million pageviews. With 5,400+ posts over the past 14 years, it was named
one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2021
and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” Copyright 2025.
For
the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He
formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the
head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the
director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many
first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with
best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen,
Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard,
Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C.
Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.
His
writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s
The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully). He was recently interviewed by the IBPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BhO9m8jbs
He
hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and
has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah
Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association,
Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and
Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the
2024 IBPA Book Awards.
His
letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal,
USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester)
and The Washington Post. His first published book was The
Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook. It
was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.
Born
and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids,
and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.