If you saw the movie version of The Office, you will know what I mean by Flair. In case you didn't: Jennifer Aniston played a server whose employer required the waitstaff to display a lot of it on their uniforms. Flair consisted of badges and buttons and whatever else could be pinned on a pair of suspenders without causing a safety hazard, like a ribbon that could get caught in the milkshake rotors.
If I were a patron of the place I might wonder, on some level, what the Flair was supposed to be diverting my attention from. The fly in my soup? The bats hanging from the ceiling? Or the old guy in the corner booth with the binoculars and notebook.
Somewhere in the 70s, the Reich managed to propagate the myth that the press, because it was telling the truth about Watergate etc., had a liberal bias. Since then the press has been training in gymnastics so it can lean over backwards and stick its head up its ass to prove otherwise.
They have been applying the Seesaw Principle. (No, it doesn't mean they go see what's happening so they can report that they saw it.) The principle is derived from the physical properties of the playground apparatus which consists of a long board placed over a fulcrum, so that a person on each end of the board can go up and down if they are of somewhat equal weight and push off with their feet.
As we all know, it won't work if a Sumo Wrestler sits on one side and a toddler sits on the other. The toddler will remain up in the air at the mercy of the Sumo wrestler. To balance the board, ballast is required. The ballast needs to have Flair (distracting badges) to keep attention off the Sumo wrestler.
So let's say you have an insurrection on one side and a blooper on the other. To balance out the Sumo insurrection, the media creates balance by adding more toddler "news" to the other side. Like ...
... the president's dog bigger problem than previously reported
(Badge: I have sources inside the White House)
... deciding while at Camp David
(Badge: what's he hiding from?)
... tripped ascending stairs to plane
(Badge: no country for old men)
... picked a dandelion for wife
(Badge: she must have been pissed at him)
The problem arises when another Sumo wrestler joins the first one and the press has to run around looking for more toddlers for ballast and meanwhile miss the action when a horde of wrestlers pull the board off the fulcrum and go on a rampage destroying the playground.
