With guarantees of round-the-clock press coverage and their insatiable appetite for violence-driven news stories, media outlets in America continue to participate in a tenuous but symbiotic relationship with the nation’s unhinged angry gunmen and their collective longing for attention.
Recently, a new public relations firm has emerged with the explicitly-stated purpose of helping bridge the gap between sensation-craving news networks and media-savvy homicidal maniacs with axes to grind.
“Whether you’re a backwoods loner of dubious education with clumsily-articulated grievances against the federal government, a disgruntled employee who wasn’t given the success you were expecting or simply a guy who can’t get a date and is tired of being rejected, the quickest ticket to 15 minutes of fame in America is to get a gun and take out your frustrations against a crowd of people who haven’t done anything to harm you,” said TargetMedia Promotions CEO and founder Tim Schwartz.
Schwartz, a former talent agent and television producer who worked on a number of daytime talk shows during the late 1990s, founded his company last year to provide what he insists is a valuable service in a country that has become increasingly defined by rampant gun violence.
“Anytime some heavily-armed malignant narcissist decides to shoot up his workplace to avenge his bruised ego over some perceived slight, suddenly there are media outlets tripping over each other to find out all about the guy,” he said.
“My organization is dedicated to assembling press kits for opportunistic, trigger-happy sociopaths and submitting broadcast-ready content to meet the networks’ demand for multi-market, mass-media saturation. We can work with just about anything, whether it’s a half-assed manifesto hastily scribbled across the back of a Tea Party newsletter or a YouTube channel chock-full of pathetic, whiny videos of some pistol-packing obnoxious turd who hates every attractive woman on earth for not lining up to marry him.”
While it’s evident that Schwartz doesn’t think highly of his clients or the cultural climate they were born into, he remains dedicated to making his living by facilitating connections that, he says, would have happened anyway.
“There’s a lot of money to be made in America by catering to marginal personality types that have persecution complexes and a fondness for firearms,” Schwartz said. “I look forward to retiring in 20 years if I don’t get shot first.”
