If you've memorized most of Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt as I have, you're familiar with the concept of "cutting." It's what a drug dealer does when there's more demand on the streets than they have drugs. For instance, cocaine dealers will mix, or cut, their product with Sweet N Low, baking soda or some other cheap and relatively harmless substance. It's dishonest, but it works because drug addicts tend not to be the most discerning customers. It's also exactly what the mainstream media did with the news of Bin Laden's death.
Everyone was working with the same handful of solidly sourced facts -- "Bin Laden is dead," "shot in the head," "by Navy Seals" and "in Pakistan" -- which you'll notice fit together nicely into a sentence that can be read aloud in under four seconds. The streets, however, were demanding eight hours of non-stop coverage. And so the media, both online and off, just cut those facts with enough speculation, debate and general bullshit to make it seem like there was more there than met the eye. And we, as a nation, were tweaking hard enough to not notice.
For instance, if you tuned into CNN immediately following the president's address, you saw one of the thousands of on-air personalities buzzing around CNN's Situation Room read the following tweet on national television ...
![Why The Reaction to Bin Laden's Death Proves We're Screwed]()
Spooky.