i had to look this bozo up.

she was the WH correspondent for ONA (a formerly obscure far right crank site that trump promoted when he got mad at Fox) during the trump admin, and then went to Newsmax (a more traditional, established far right crank site) when probably the biden team stopped giving OAN access lol. she was fired from Newsmax in 2022, after being suspended by twitter, for serious effort tweeting that the COVID vaccine was a plot by bill gates to do Mark of the Beast-style satanism by implanting bio-luminescent (Luciferase) trackers in people.

last year she tweeted out that the COVID vaccine had caused a meteoric rise in breast cancer for women under 50.

now she hosts a TV show on the Mike Pillow social media site called, no joke, The Absolute Truth. she has tons of other wacked out tweets, but those were kinda my faves.

anyway, before she became a trusted source in news for the kind of people that inject bleach, eat horse paste, and think JFK Jr. is going to materialize from heaven to install Trump as president of earth, Emerald Robinson was an actress with experience in being tall, maintaining an incredible head of blonde hair, and reading prompters well enough to imitate an informercial wonderbra salesperson, an entertainment news anchor, the host of corporate promotional material segments.

...

the existence of people like this is an indictment of many of the "prestige" televised news formats, because it's pretty clear that if you have someone attractive, well groomed, and articulate say things on TV, lots of people will believe it. legacy media rested for so long on their exclusive access to technology and platforms that delivered the faces/personalities they chose onto the 1-2 screens people watched. it's one of the reasons the onionTV and "weekend update" works so well, because it uses that simple format we've all normalized to be satirical. who would put a serious person in formal wear in front of a TV to read things in a professional tone if they were FAKE!? it's for true facts only!

anyway, now anybody conventionally attractive with like OBS, $400 worth of equipment, and a personal grooming budget can be on any screen, available 24-7.

in the hell on earth / 30 years war podcast series, Matt said this thing about how the printing press had a destabilizing effect on the defacto monopoly the church had held on the written word and the ability to transmit cultural information, including peoples' conception of the word of god with the bible being translated into languages of the common people but also printing press stories of peasant uprisings spreading quickly. he said it a lot clearer than that, of course. in effect, to see "god's message" or "truth", you no longer had to go to the church. of course, this was limited to people of means communicating with other literate people, but it was still a major shift in power and information distribution, taking centuries to fully unwind.

then he drew the parallel to today, where the internet and its technologies had made gods of us all and one doesn't even need to be all that literate to send or receive their truth to millions.