Originally, I thought that the sound of bias was a pundit (eww…pundits) spouting constant spin on a topic they dislike (more accurately, a topic their overlords dislike). While on the surface this may seem like a good guess, I was naïve to have ever thought this. As my canary-owning career has progressed and my ability to detect bias has sharpened, I’ve learned many things along the way. The sound of bias is not, downplaying, discrediting, throwing logical fallacies or other poorly thought-out arguments on a topic. It is indeed much more sinister and overt; the true sound of bias is silence; utterly deafening silence. Hello bias, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again…
My red canaries are frequently guilty of this omission bias. One such example was Henry Kissinger’s death. For those not in the know, Henry Kissinger was a former Secretary of State that served under the dishonest President Nixon. Despite Nixon’s misdeeds in office, Nixon’s average approval rating was 49% while Joe Biden’s approval rating to date sits at a measly 43%. Nixon, and his proxies, enjoy a modern-day fanbase purely because of radicalization, facts be damned. Knowing that they couldn’t mount a viable defense of Kissinger’s actions, my red canaries chose not to chirp at all. Luckily, I own a diverse fleet of canaries, and the blue canaries chirped loudly and frequently about the passing of Kissinger.
“Well Dan, that’s just one isolated incident” the misguided reader will incorrectly quip. The red canaries were also silent about the firing of Tucker Carlson back in April. Tucker Carlson was Fox’s biggest star by a long shot, a status he inherited after Bill O’Reilly was ousted for sexual misconduct allegations several years ago. Carlson wasn’t just a star on Fox News; Tucker Carlson had become a far-right celebrity in his own right, and this is evidenced by his independent venture into punditry (gross); his audience was more portable than Fox realized. However, the red canaries remained silent on this issue as well; luckily for a skilled fleet owner such as myself, the blue canaries filled me in on the pundit’s termination.
There are older examples of red canary silence on talking points that they chose not to acknowledge. The January 6th breach of the Capitol building was an event that the red canaries were silent about at first (yet another score for the blue canaries). Later on, the cardinal-colored canaries (yay alliteration!) spoke dismissively on the incident, often downplaying it as not a big deal and throwing up red herrings such as inflation to divert the conversation away. The reversal of Roe v Wade in June of 2022 was another issue that the red canaries were silent on, yet the void was filled in by the blue birdies. The Red canaries would use the same tactic on Roe V Wade as they did with January 6th: downplay and divert (pay attention, this maneuver will come up later).
“Well Dan, all you’ve done so far is pick on Republicans. You’re showing bias right now by not beating up on Liberals!” an observant reader of mine will complain. Don’t you fret; now I’ll set my sights on the blue canaries. The blue canaries were awfully silent on the wildfires in Hawaii this year. Fortunately for me (because that’s what I value most: me), my red canaries swooped in to report to their canary owner that large swaths of the Hawaiian rainforest were burning down. It’s easy to see why; Hawaii is a Democrat stronghold and hence the blue canaries want to portray the island chain as a left-of-center paradise. When confronted on this blatant omission, many liberal informants downplayed the importance of the event and attempted to shift the focus away from our 50th state (yes, the same playbook keeps coming up again and again).
Similarly to the firing of Carlson, the blue canaries were equally silent on the firing of Don Lemon. Lemon was the face of CNN in recent years, thus the blue canaries had nearly every incentive to stay silent about the termination. Luckily, a red canary of mine notified me of the termination amidst a rant about liberal bullshit (though was silent when his ideology’s poster boy was axed). Canaries writing songs that voices never share…
The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse was another issue that my left-leaning canaries were mum about, despite their incessant chirping during the trial. On paper, America’s legal system is built on the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven, though much of my blue fleet missed that memo. Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal came to my eardrum not in an enraged protest from the blue canaries, but in a celebratory cheer from my red canaries.
Silence is the sound of bias because what someone openly refuses to talk about, no matter how obvious, is telling of where their worldview truly lies. Confronting shortcomings in your own thought process is hard, hence nobody does it voluntarily (yes, that includes you). Forcefully holding up a mirror to someone’s way of thinking and aggressively pointing out flaws in their ideology is equally difficult as it rarely builds a relationship with the other person. Humans are hard-wired to be liked and to crave acceptance, so often flaws go undiscussed. Hence, as Simon and Garfunkel (or Dave Draiman, for you Millennials) aptly stated silence like a cancer grows. Thankfully, this cancer is limited solely to the flavor of radicalization said canary comes from; the other party will be more than willing to fill in the void, much to my benefit. And in the naked light I saw: ten thousand canaries, maybe more!
Here is where I’m going to be overtly hypocritical; balance for me, but not for thee! I need my canaries to be as segregated and perpetually pissed off as possible. Their limbically-hijacked brains will further pull them down one radicalized rabbit-hole after another, and as stigma-induced isolation kicks in, they’ll have nobody to report news updates to but me. However, my brain works differently than yours and hence is far too valuable for me to allow it to get limbically-hijacked or radicalized. After all, if I’m off getting radicalized over [insert random issue here], then who else will speak the truth about the Case Against Memes or why we should be allowed to own landmines? Thus, I need to maintain a diverse fleet of canaries, a fleet n which both red and blue are represented. Without a balanced fleet, I’d have to actually watch the news myself rather than delegate that mind-numbing and time-consuming chore away.
And no one dared disturb the sound of bias…
Home Page 