Greeson: War of the message now benefiting messengers

Did you know this week is U.S. Constitution Week?

That visionary document was officially signed Sept. 17, 1789.

In fact, there has not been a weekend in which the Constitution has gotten as much attention since maybe the first Sunday that Colin Kaepernick bent his knee during the national anthem.

Over the weekend, a self-made sports entity named Clay Travis said he believes in the First Amendment and boobs on CNN. The overwhelming - and over-the-top - handwringing has been hard to avoid.

And very educational. In fact, maybe it's time to add what has become a universal truth in our society today.

photo Jay Greeson

There's no such thing as bad publicity for any celebrity. (Well, unless you're University of Tennessee football Coach Butch Jones. Man, how was your Saturday? Odds are, regardless of what you did, you did it better than Jones coached.)

Travis wrote online that he added 40,000 Twitter followers in about 24 hours.

He's far from alone. Look around. A whole lot of D-level celebrities and opportunistic "news" people are making their marks and advancing their careers by lobbing the shock-and-awe version of "hot takes" on a variety of platforms.

Maybe it started with Howard Stern or even Rush Limbaugh, guys who realized that if you outraged half of your audience and entertained the other half, you could be doubly connected, and doubly as popular, and in turn doubly as rewarded.

Stern famously has mocked that his haters listen to his show twice as long as his fans and has a contract from SiriusXM radio for a billion dollars. Yes, billion - with a B.

A wide variety of media platforms now shape stars, and stars in turn are shaping opinion, rightly and wrongly. They also are widening the divide between the sides.

If we don't like the message - especially from those offering opinion - we attack the messenger. It's always been part of the deal. You put your name on your opinion, and you are going to offend some. If not, how thought-provoking is that opinion? (Yes, we could write puppies are cute and everyone would be fine with that. Unless, of course, you hate puppies, in which case, well, not sure if there is a scenario in which that works.)

This is not a new scenario per se. There have been diverging views and dissenting voices in the media for ages.

The difference now is that the angles are calculated. It's a cash and attention grab. MSNBC, CNN and Fox have long since catered to their customers, leaning left and right, respectively.

Now a growing number of individual commentators are in the game, building their personal brand.

I can see the thinking here. The increased attention for Travis, who really did nothing wrong in a cable interview that tried to exploit the moment for its own attention-seeking, or ESPN's Jemele Hill, who is twice as well-known this morning as she was this time last week, or Megyn Kelly or any number of folks who have embraced a persona or place to seize the platform makes good financial sense.

For them.

But now that we are in a place where going viral is more important than being vital, well, we all are worse off than when the Founding Fathers secured those freedoms of speech.

Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6343.

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