I hate journalists. The journalist, by default, sees you as an article. He doesn’t listen to what you say, doesn’t read what you write. Words, to him, are news items. He never reads anything, he scans, scans your words like a hunting dog would, looking for an exhausted rabbit. And when he finds the exhausted rabbit, usually an imaginary one, he parades it in front of an imaginary crowd as some sort of hunting trophy. The imaginary crowd cheers as the old dog carries the half-dead, imaginary rabbit to his doghouse, the newspaper.

You might think I write this because I got negative reviews. I didn’t. My book was launched last month and got about 7 reviews, 5 from people one would call ‘common readers’ and 2 from journalists. All reviews were positive. However, what really struck me as relevant: even though the reviews were ‘positive’ the reviews that were laundered with observation failures were never the reviews of the common readers, but rather those of the journalists. A ridiculous statement is a ridiculous statement, no matter if the statement is ‘positive’. It’s a really mind boggling phenomenon: I am supposed to be ‘happy’ with a bunch of terribly incorrect statements because the review as a whole would be ‘positive’. I’d much rather read a negative review with correct statements than a positive review with incorrect statements. Does that make me weird? Am I the last of the Mohicans?

Journalism is a disease. It’s a relatively new phenomenon, hardly a hundred years old. The basic operative: propaganda. It’s hardly possibly to comprehend the modern day world without becoming an expert in propaganda techniques. Most people do not understand this. They don’t understand that there is a ‘Guantanamo Bay’ because these people want there to be a ‘Guantanamo Bay’. They want us to have a certain image of them. Guantanamo bay is the exhausted, imaginary rabbit they parade in front of us because someone, somewhere, thinks it will be to their advantage if the world is terrified.

Propaganda, by definition, is a lie. It’s the smiling facade, the fake smirk on the face of the Eurovision singer who wants to look happy when he’s deadly nervous. Propaganda is a mask. It doesn’t matter what the mask says – it can be a happy mask, a terrifying mask, it makes no difference. It’s an attempt to manipulate impressions. The journalist creates masks out of words. It’s the mask-crafting guild of terror, preying upon our world.

I don’t care what sort of mask anyone would put upon my book. What an incredible insult to suppose one should be happy to see ones work wear some idiotic, smiling mask meant to lure some imaginative audience. I was very happy with the reviews of common readers. Their reviews might not be ‘professional’ but they were at least reviews. Real people reading a real book. That is, in these sort of times, something to be really thankful for.