Alright y’all, if I promise to forthcome with a post of well cited academic thoroughness, will you accept this youtube video in lieu in the present? Besides the ROFL factor, it does do an excellent job of presenting every aspect of the debate, and frankly, despite the hyperbolic satire, I feel this is only inches away from our current media environment. Has anyone watched CNN lately? Yikes! DISCLAIMER: NSFW
Prefatory theory: “There is no real and no imaginary except at a certain distance. What happens when this distance, even the one separating the real from the imaginary, begins to disappear and to be absorbed by the model alone? Currently, from one order of simulacra to the next, we are witnessing the reduction and absorption of this distance, of this separation which permits a space for ideal or critical projection.” (Baudrillard)
I believe what we have here is these ideal and critical spaces collapsing into one. And they said irony was dead.
***ADDENDUM: Sorry to smut up the front page like this, Youtube had to select the raunchiest frame from an otherwise visually tame piece.