Copps, A Liberal Voice on The FCC, Knows How To Get His Message Out
He speaks bluntly to the industry and rouses the grass roots.
WASHINGTON - His dark suits. His wing-tipped shoes. The nearly four decades he’s toiled in the nation’s capital, including the last six years on the Federal Communications Commission.Everything about Michael J. Copps screams bureaucrat — until he opens his mouth.
Copps, a Democrat whose crusade against media consolidation has helped make him Hollywood’s public-policy enemy No. 1, is more proselytizer than pencil pusher.
The public airwaves, he says, are filled with “too much baloney passed off as news.” The Republican-led FCC is so lax that “unless you’re a child abuser or a wife beater, it’s a slam-dunk” to renew a TV station license. “Our country is paying a dreadful cost for this quarter-century fling with government abdication and media irresponsibility,” he said this year.
Copps’ ability to distill the complexities of media ownership into plain English and fire up crowds like a revivalist preacher helped derail an industry push in 2003 to loosen restrictions on owning broadcast stations.
Now, as the FCC prepares to tackle the volatile issue again, with Chairman Kevin J. Martin proposing a vote on new rules by the end of the year, the 67-year-old former history professor is reemerging as a hero to the firebrands fighting media consolidation.
In a city where officials speak in bland pronouncements, blurring their message with acronyms and jargon, Copps stands out like high-definition TV.
“He’s the first FCC commissioner-rock star,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, a public policy law firm that has fought media consolidation.
Combining his historian’s skill of framing an issue with political acumen he learned on Capitol Hill, Copps is regarded by supporters and critics as perhaps the most effective FCC commissioner ever from the minority party. If a Democrat wins the White House next year, FCC observers said, Copps would be on the list of potential chairmen, although the 2005 retirement of his top political backer, former Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), lengthens the odds. At the least, Copps could serve as temporary head for several months until a new chairman is selected and confirmed.
The prospect worries media executives. While liberal activists laud Copps as a visionary who wants broadcasters to better serve the public in exchange for free use of the airwaves, industry lobbyists complain he’s stuck in the past.
The days when broadcasters and newspapers ruled the media are history, they say, overrun by new technologies such as cable and satellite TV and the Internet. In their view, permitting additional consolidation by letting companies own a broadcast station and a newspaper in the same city is crucial to cutting costs and surviving in the 21st century.
Copps’ opposition to major mergers and his strong support for FCC crackdowns on coarse language and violence on the airwaves put him at odds with Hollywood. Media industry lobbyists envy his effectiveness and praise him for always courteously hearing them out. But on their issues, they said, Copps is a lost cause and a potential threat should he become chairman.
“It’s ‘Ozzie and Harriet,’ ” said one lobbyist, who did not want to be named because of business before the FCC. “He’s mired in the 1950s.”
Copps readily admits that some practices from the early days of TV appeal to him, often referring to the role broadcasters played in educating the public during the 1952 presidential contest between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson.
“I remember two or three times a week in September and October, you’d have a half-hour for each of those candidates on television. Eisenhower would get up and talk about an issue. Stevenson would get up and talk about an issue,” Copps said. “Maybe it wasn’t the Lincoln-Douglas debates, but it was a hell of a lot better than what passes for campaign coverage now.”
Although he’s nostalgic, Copps denies living in the past.
“I think I’m Commissioner Up-to-Date. I’m a fellow who’s thinking about how to use this new technology,” he said. “The Internet is a wonderful complement right now to broadcast . . . but it’s not a substitute, it’s not a replacement. It’s not going to be for a long, long time.”
Copps’ office on the eighth floor of the FCC’s Washington headquarters is a bit of a time warp. The walls are covered with campaign posters from the early 20th century — Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and Copps’ hero, Franklin Roosevelt.
“I believe in government,” Copps proudly declared.
In his view, the public and private sectors must work together to build high-speed data lines as they did throughout U.S. history to build other vital networks, such as canals, railroads and interstate highways. Market forces alone aren’t enough to ensure the public’s interest will be served — particularly when it comes to broadcasters that are allowed to use the airwaves for free, Copps said.
“I like the broadcasting industry. I think there’s some really neat folks. But more and more it is difficult, almost impossible, for those folks to be the captains of their own fate,” he said in an interview. “They’re the captives of this new mentality. They’re captives of combination. They’re captives of the expectations of Wall Street.”
Copps’ New Deal-style view of government regulation contrasts with the perspective of the Republicans who have controlled the FCC since his appointment. He clashed often with former Chairman Michael K. Powell. Bolstered by his higher profile, Copps has developed a good relationship with Martin, who took over as chairman in 2005.
“While we have different regulatory philosophies, I think we actually share a lot of the same concerns,” Martin said.
Copps grew up in a Republican family in Milwaukee but became a Democrat in college. He was teaching U.S. history at Loyola University New Orleans in 1970 when he caught the eye of Hollings through a mutual friend and was offered a job.
Copps planned to go to Washington for a couple of years “to get politics out of my system.”
He never left.
After 15 years in Hollings’ office, rising to chief of staff, Copps worked as a lobbyist and then at the Commerce Department.
“No matter how thin the pancake, there’s always two sides,” said Hollings, who pushed for Copps’ appointment to the FCC in 2001. “He’d learn how to analyze them and get to the point.”
Copps is one of the few former Capitol Hill staffers to serve on the FCC, and his experience in that crucible of partisan politics came into play when Powell began pushing for an overhaul of media ownership rules in 2001. Copps decided the public needed to know the stakes and reached out to consumer and public interest advocates.
“He offered himself up as someone who would go on the road and talk to groups all around the country. That really galvanized activists,” said Gene Kimmelman of the Consumers Union.
Copps wanted the FCC to hold a series of public hearings, but Powell agreed to only one. So Copps tapped his own travel budget. Copps and fellow Democrat Jonathan S. Adelstein, who joined the FCC in late 2002, hit the road, participating in 13 unofficial hearings.
“He’s really tireless in his willingness to hear out people and to try to understand their concerns, which is very rare in the history of the FCC,” Adelstein said. “We hear from the Gucci-loafered lobbyists that ply the halls here . . . but he ultimately listens to consumers first.”
With his grass-roots outreach and fiery rhetoric, delivered in a deep, forceful voice, Copps whipped up opposition to loosening several rules. Among them was the ban on a company’s owning a TV station and newspaper in the same market. Tribune Co., owner of The Times and KTLA-TV Channel 5, strongly urged an end to that prohibition.
“The stakes are enormous,” he told a USC forum in early 2003. “We are talking about fundamental values and democratic virtues — things like localism, diversity, competition and maintaining the multiplicity of voices and choices.”
Powell derided Copps for conducting a “19th century whistle-stop tour.” But Copps’ road show dramatically boosted the issue’s profile outside Washington and helped torpedo the changes after protests from ordinary people flooded in.
Powell pushed the revisions through on a partisan 3-2 vote in 2003. But Congress quickly scaled back the major change — the percentage of the country a single broadcaster could reach. Federal judges halted the rest, sending them back to the FCC for reconsideration.
Martin, who when he was a commissioner voted with Powell on media ownership, has approached the issue more cautiously. He agreed to hold six public hearings across the country, though that was only half the number Copps wanted. The last is scheduled for Friday in Seattle.
Copps, who again is traveling with Adelstein to raise awareness, wants to return the length of broadcast station licenses from eight years back to three and make owners provide more evidence that they are serving their communities. Broadcasters complain that the paperwork was onerous before the FCC lengthened the licenses in 1997.
Copps had criticized Martin for moving at a “leisurely pace” on media ownership, which seemed sure to stretch the issue into 2008. But now that Martin is trying to accelerate the schedule and put media ownership rules to a vote Dec. 18, Copps hasn’t hesitated to blast away.
“The commission always seems to be on the fast break to help big media, but it’s slow as molasses when the topic is the public interest,” he said. “I will fight against any efforts to short-circuit the process.”
Media lobbyists privately complain that Copps’ congressional background has led him to politicize media ownership, mobilizing support like a candidate on the campaign trail.
“He’s got the sound bites. He’s activated the base. Those are all very Capitol Hill-type of things,” said a lobbyist who also declined to be named. “He’s good. He’s darned good.”
© 2007 The Los Angeles Times
I was at a forum where Mr. Copps spoke in Vermont, 5 or 6 years ago when I worked in radio. He was very clear, focused, direct, and intelligent. Even when the clear bullshitchannel rep, in her expensive outfit, was there mouthing lies, Copp was great. Kudos to him!
Media needs to be regulated as much as education does. We are all products of the quality of our own knowledge, which we learn largely by what is available to us. In this age of corporate-produced “video news relaeases” , FEMA fake press conferences, and demogogues like Bill O’Reilly we need oversight and regulation more than ever.
The Seattle Forum is this Friday, November 9th, 4-11pm at Town Hall (8th & Seneca, in Seattle). Come and speak out against media consolidation. Support our PUBLIC airwaves!
I also listened to a program by Bill Moyers about the FCC’s plan to allow conglomerates to acquire even MORE media outlets by next month, December. In addition to public protests and meetings, you are urged to write a letter of protest about his plan to Kevin Martin here:
http://www.fcc.gov/commissioners/martin/mail.html
There are only two Democrats on the board, and the remaining three Republicans say they’re going to do this by December 5. All it takes is a “ruling” by Kevin Martin.
We know already that the news media is horribly tainted by conservative politics and principles and does not represent the voice of American citizens or local cultural interests, much less minorities and women.
Don’t let them do this!!!!!
Another of the many glaring examples of neocon hypocisy and double standard.
The neocons push deregulation and apply Joseph McCarthy 1950s style rhetoric and oppression. When appropriate regulatory strategies are applied, they accuse the regulators of being “mired in the 1950s”).
They are mired in the 1950s as a RESULT of deregulation.
The effect of “Media” in our culture is a blockbuster campaign issue that Democrats ought to be screaming from the housetops going into 2008. Consolidation is a problem. Loss of Fairness Doctrine is a problem. Having to buy cable and satellite service in “packages” instead of by the channel is a huge problem. Violence is a problem. Sex in media, itself, is not a problem, but protrayal of sex implied to be somehow better (or even sensible)if it’s with other people’s wives, husbands, girlfriends and boyfriends is a problem of immense proportion.
I’m not saying they will, because as we know, Democrats are not always as smart as they should be, but finding ways to regulate what Republicans WON’T regulate is one of the many non-war, non-security issues that Democrats could lead on, and win on.
When they ask that famous question to the public in polls, “Is America on the right track or the wrong track?, a lot of the answer comes from what they think about media, especially TV media.
Earth to Democrats! Wake up! Lead where you can!
This article just came out on CNN today -
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/11/05/gates.china/index.html?iref=newssearch
It’s a blatant lie.
China isn’t pressuring Iran about it’s nuclear program. The purpose of the visit was to establish hotline communications between governments. See the real story -
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2E763A61-DAEF-4B37-8F96-286005AE41C8.htm
This is echoed on BBC.
The real reason for all this is because we have to establish some sort of emergency communications with Iranian allies for when we attack Iran. According to CNN and FOX, China will back us up if we attack Iran. Yeah right. This is why we need media reform. View the articles for yourself and you can see right through the lies.
LOOK WHO SUPPORTS COMPETITION
by Barry Payne, Economist, Ph.D., ex-FCC staff
bbpayne@earthlink.net
It’s more than irony that conservatives used to support competition and liberals did not, at least in the traditional sense of “private competition” versus its absence in the form of “government regulation”.
Michael Copps is asking for what conservatives used to support - private competition in the context of more owners for a given media market.
It is exactly the technological efficiencies of media content origination, transmission and distribution that is bastardized in economic studies to justify media ownership concentration.
From a supply side perspective, the conclusions of these studies are not that far from the absurd recommendation to collapse ALL media into one, super-efficient funnel run by one owner.
Similarly on the demand side, the same studies will point to substantial “substitution effects” by media consumers among newspapers, broadcast radio and tv, satellite radio and tv, the internet and cable.
In economics, once something is “substitutable” with something else, that implies less market power to force up price and control content, which in turn is used to justify more concentration of ownership.
But the usual economics applied to media are making less sense for three essential reaons:
1) Program content versus it’s transmission and distribution has become increasingly complicated through concentrated, overlapping centers of market power which control pricing and content;
2) Genuine news, by definition, is a “supply-push” phenomena in the sense that it arises from original sources. But at the same time, the suffocation of news occurs thorough a supply-push effect as well, when all stations report the same news at the same time day in and day out to CROWD OUT other, original news that never makes it past the edit cuts.
3) The public relations industry controls a substantial sector of news, interviews, announcements, appearances, reactions, follow-ups and so forth through NEWS CYCLES, all of which CUT ACROSS the technological modes through which these communications flow.
This type of “market power” can be countered ONLY through substantial diversity in OWNERSHIP WITHIN similar technological modes of communication.
What Commissioner Martin and his Republican colleagues are doing is playing footsies with “competition at the margin”, i.e., awarding, for example, Verizon the right to provide digital movies over DSL and FIOS as “competition” to cable. The problem is, there’s two owners before the “competition” and still two owners after.
This is how Bush was elected both times and the Iraq war started, through a carpet-bombing of staged media events that crowded out opposing viewpoints with such force that ANY resistance at some points was tarred and feathered as “soft on terrorism”.
If conservatives cherish so much the outcomes of free trade and markets as manifestations of free will, why don’t the same principles apply to media ownership and competition?
Why aren’t the conservatives busting up the exclusive franchises and market power centers that stifle competition instead of going in the opposite direction with even more concentration?
What’s happening in telecommunciations is the same thing that happened in the energy sector as described by Amory Lovins - If the free market were allowed to function COMPETITIVELY as claimed by so many, fossil fuels and nuclear power would have ALREADY been replaced substantially by the alternative energy sources.
And Michael Copps is not even close to serious, head-to-head competition as discussed in other businesses. He’s just trying to keep us from falling off the cliff of what little EFFECTIVE media competition we’re clinging to now.
The media needs to take a stance on the public characters who afflict us, stop hiding behind the skirts of faux-objectivity, be Wolfeian, Mailerian, Capotean, Naderish, Ridgewayish, Michael Mooreish, Naomi Kleinisch, Amy Goodmanish — these are the moral ones, the good ones, the new journalists.
The ones trying not to be like them are complete hacks.
We career consultants do a little better. At least we consider the person under the hype; e.g., we would like to help the president find his next job. Clearly, he should be a Pinkerton man or security guard at a bank.
This secret wish of his has driven him through a governorship and the presidency, trying constantly to come out.
The well-being of the United States is first, its security second. Reasonably, if you get hit by a car or a bomb, you’re equally dead.
A trillion dollars spent on the United States would be a wonderful thing.
Here is a pertinent link that explains much of what is going on. The link is to ‘George W. Bush and the 14 points of Fascism’. Point number 6 is listed below, and A-E are links to stories on the site:
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm
6.) Controlled Mass Media: Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
A) FBI Acknowledges: Journalists Phone Records are Fair Game
B) Report shows U.S. government has been engaged in illegal propaganda aimed at its own citizens and the story gets only 41 mentions in the media
C) Free Press details recent governmental propaganda efforts, from faux-correspondent Jeff Gannon to paid-off pundit Armstrong Williams, and from the demise of FOIA to video news releases passed off as news. also… See a Whitehouse fake news release here
D) US seizes webservers from independent media sites
E) Bush’s war on information: US editors forbidden to publish certain foreign writers
Through the efforts of MoveOn.org’s 3.3 million members flooding Congress with e-mails, signed petitions (I think a million signatures), enough phone calls to jam the switchboards, call ins to radio & TV shows, and letters to the editor across the country, we managed to stop the FCC ‘ruling’ in 2003, but they’re back at it again. This is too important an issue to let slide, so let’s all get active once more. Keep in mind this was just a ‘ruling’ NOT legislation, but regardless it would still change the media ownership paradigm, and once it consolidates it’s hard to undo.
I doubt we’ed be in Iraq today or that Bush would be threatening attacks on Iran if our country’s press corps had simply been asking the simplest, honest questions all along, like a truly free press is supposed to.
Through 7 years Bush’s blatant lying and congress’s worsening corruption, millions of us shook our fists at establishment news media people who were more than just bungling. It didn’t take long to see that most mainstream reporters, columnists, and editorialists were purposely avoiding common sense questions and judgments on the entire range of Bush’s policies, and in addition were pro-actively sponsoring the official line as though they were paid PR employees of the government.
The general public, as dumb or detatched as it seems on other issues, does care about this issue (about 300,000 regular citizens protested another recent media centralization attempt by the FCC, and the FCC backed down.) Most people instinctively understand that they can’t control their government if their government controls the news by regulatorily centralizing it into a few, government favor-obliged voices.
Like Daniel David mentions above, Democrats have a painless political opportunity here to fight for media decentralization, and show what they’re about — with almost guaranteed public support.
Democrat defender Mr David, though, should take note that, so far, the Democrats aren’t even willing to do THIS!
anney,
Thanks for the link, and I DID send a letter to the FCC chairman. Here’s what it said:
The American people expressed displeasure by rejection of the attempted 2003 FCC ‘ruling’ in huge numbers so why are we wasting time revisiting such an unpopular attempt at consolidation once more?
Americans overwhelmingly want, no DEMAND, more diversity in the media NOT more consolidation.
We also DEMAND the FCC investigate instances of false ‘news’ reports put out by government agencies, and hold those responsible liable to firing and/or prosecution.
PaulMagillSmith
Excellent. Your letter was even stronger than mine. I didn’t even mention the 2003 attempt to subvert the free press and media, which Congress apparently got concerned about only after the fact.
Waterboard Kevin Martin.
Or better yet, take the advice of Kurtz from “Heart of Darkness” — there is nothing left but an immense midnight pit of a heart in America.
All this country needs to make it totally ignorant is more conservative news outlets passing themselves off as legitimate news sources. That is the reason people have been so ‘dumbed down’ they live in Fox News fantasy world. We have had close to 20 years of the ‘right wing fringe lunatics’ putting their spin on the news to where most of the country is to ignorant to make an intelligent decision at the polls anymore. The misinformation they disseminate every day is a crime against the American people. Which is why most of us tuned them out years ago. The only way anyone with a brain can survive in this country and remain fairly well educated is to read books, magazines and have a computer. These are the sources a lot of us get our news from. But, at the same time I deeply resent people trying to regulate the coarse language in movies and on television. I consider myself an intelligent person who learned a long time ago how to switch the channel on my television set or take the DVD disk out when I am offended by language. I don’t need ‘better than thou’ holy person doing it for me. So, if he is considering censorship for a second I am against him!
In 1985, 50 companies owned the major media outlets. Today there are only five:
CBS-Viacom
NBC-GE
ABC-Disney
CNN-Time Warner (American Online [AOL], the internet giant, is now part of this conglomerate)
FOX-Rupert Murdoch News Corporation
You can see who owns your favorite station here:
http://www.nowfoundation.org/issues/communications/tv/mediacontrol.html
FCC Martin’s ultimate goal and corporate dream is that one mega-company will own all the news and other media with total control over the information dispersed into everyone’s living room and on the airwaves. We are already perilously close to that now. The new ruling, currently due to go into effect on December 5, is one step closer to this corporate dream because the FCC would permit corporations to acquire even more outlets — that means MERGERS of the existing corporations, not a gathering up of a few strays that have stood fast against buyouts by these giants.
Let me say again, protest, raise hell with Kevin Martin. There isn’t much time left.
http://www.fcc.gov/commissioners/martin/mail.html
This tweaking around the edges will only give the media moguls more time to increase their stranglehold and gain a larger share of the viewing audience.
This will give the handful of conglomerates an opportunity to make a fortune in the entertainment arena and allow them to promote their vile right wing political propaganda via, Sean Hannity, Bill Oriely and their distorted news outlets.
It will be difficult to put the brakes on these corporate giants unless we get a radical progressive like Kucinich elected but this time around it appears unlikely.
Although any of the democratic candidates would be better than anyone in the republican field, we cannot expect major changes with these corporate funded campaigns.
Yesterday was a stunning disconcerting defeat for progressive democrats.
I am of course referring to the decision of Schumer and Feinstein to cast their vote for Mukasey and thereby in essence throwing their support behind the practice of water boarding.
This type of behavior gives a great deal of credence to the anti Democratic Party bloggers who keep insisting the two parties are joined at the hip.
Unfortunately these two biased democrats are a big disappointment to liberals everywhere.
Their indefensible decision seems to break down to a simple matter of 2 Jewish senators supporting a conservative Jewish nominee who is no better than Gonzales and who are bought and paid for by AIPAC.
With humble deference to my progressive friends who keep admonishing us to abandon any hope that the dems will develop a cohesive spine, today you guys admittedly make a lot of sense.
But regrettably I still see no alternative to supporting the Democratic Party? Come on Dennis start kicking some butt and give us a real choice.
Ah if only Howard Zinn were running on the Green ticket and showing 50 percent support in the polls then I could easily vote for a third party candidate.
If you don’t like what they present and what they represent; don’t watch them.
Most of the stuff on TV isn’t worth the time it takes to tune in: —– tune out!
In a culture where institutionallly-dominant Right wing forces are trying to normalize the sale of every thing and every process to the highest bidder (including public truth and the government itself), the promulgating of government regulations that decentralize news media ownership is absolutely crucial to preserving what remains of democracy…. but for the reasons mentioned above, it’s also now more difficult than ever, to do.
Add to this the phenomenon of mainstream media self-censorship (i.e., herd mentality among the privileged), and it’s clear that news media reform can only come about - if at all - by The People furiously demanding it.
There could be no greater threat to the elitist-controlled underpinnings of America’s new ‘Ayn Rand Living’ zeitgeist (plutocracy, plain and simple) than a diversely decentralized/owned, critical-thinking Fourth Estate which presented reasonably un-spun facts to, and stimulated critical thinking and alternate ideas among, our shackled, spoon-fed citizenry.
For this reason, I oppose predicating media ownership reform arguments exclusively on free-market principles, such as ‘competitiveness;’ and find it unrealistic to expect pseudo-Conservatives (the only empowered kind there are, anymore) to go-along with Free Market competition arguments out of shame-of-inconsistency.
The first reform approach, it seems to me, is politically naive, and the second approach, more-importantly, is philosophically insufficient to the dynamics of a democracy.
Naive because: Today’s empowered ‘Conservatives’ have sold even free-market principles to the highest bidders (viz, to now-entrenched elitists/fascists in government and industry who, at a personal level, believe only in maximumizing financial profit for themselves via total functional domination of government, mainstream news media, and major economic institutions — despite their loudly-announced loyalties to the contrary.)
Philosophically insufficient because: The accuracy of ‘news fact’ is too-vital to democracy, and too fundamentally undercut in a mega-corporate Capitalist economy, to leave its reliable production to a mindless numerical expansion of market-competing ownership fonts, alone.
There must also regulatory reforms which distinguish, thru declared licensing-intent, news from opinion, which, in turn allow citizens to easily challenge abuses of such licensed intent.
While such enhanced regulation would, to some degree, only reproduce at a legal level what pseudo-free-marketers claim is best solved by ‘consumer choice,’ it would at least have the clarifying effect of helping news consumers regulatorily penalize what they deem to be a licensing abuse, when news-as-propaganda chroncially and egregiously poses as news-as-disinterested reportage-of-fact.
With such enhanced regulatory reform, the public could ‘vote’ not just by private commercial choice-of-news product, by the power to legally penalize what they deem news-license fraud.
While such reforms might help the average citizen to ‘level the common epitemological playing field’ in a society whose common members perceive, but can only impotently object-to, their own hypnotize-abily-from-above, what I realize that what I propose here is ultimately no real solution, if it’s any intermin solution at all.
Something seems almost-fatally wrong with America’s popular culture, as-is. Like a child that’s been fed increasing doses of body-poisoning junk food and then suddenly starts, at later age to falter and die-by-degress before its normal life span, the average adult American has been fed poisonous ideas in the name of ‘individual freedom;’ ideas that have been bombarded at and inculcated by the last four generations. Provably false ideas that claim:
Community is bad; private greed is good –calling such atomized greed ‘rational self-interest’;
Your Criticism of and dissent toward a system that has given you more material wealth and ease than any other system in History, is perverse, stupid, unholy, irrational, and disloyal.
You’re only on Earth for a short time, and you are obliged so get all out of life, materially, that you can.
Your leaders (even if they’re not provably elected by you) are nonetheless always dedicated to providing you with your privileged American life, and you’d be Truly Selfish to think otherwise.
You must Stop thinking about ‘the poor,’ ‘the environment,’ ‘the Constitution,’ your government’s policies — and just gratefully accept your place in the great American Experiment which your leaders adminstrate according to Your Wishes and Needs.
________________________________________________
–> That so few Americans feel the instinctual urge to explode aginst and cast-off such now-incessant existential poison, such unvarnished bullshit ——- what does such passivity signify?
At minimum it signifies that many of our fellow humans have become deeply hypnotizeable by cynical, clever, but ultimately stupidly-banal, self-defeating manipulators.
Nor can those of us who aren’t so-hypnotized, really figure out why ‘we’ seem not to be, while so many of our fellows are such easy pickings for instituionalized representations of a provably false Reality.
I’m not a Christian. But, in groping find to solutions to what is happening to America and the World, I do observe that when the apparent historical figure, Jesus, saw a similar human tragedy deepening, 2000 years ago within the wrongly gone world-dominating Roman state, there came forth words, from him and his fellows, that named transformative knowings about human creatureliness that somehow elicited a radical measure of [at least theoretical] human betterment.
Arguably, a similar how-to-live-life re-epiphany is needed now, especially in America. But this time, not from a closeted cognoscenti following an allegedly divine-savior font, but instead from one decently aware person talking to another about what’s Real - and about how to bring a peaceful Good out of that Reality.
“While liberal activists laud Copps as a visionary who wants broadcasters to better serve the public in exchange for free use of the airwaves, industry lobbyists complain he’s stuck in the past.”
Not only is Copps NOT stuck in the past, he is NOT stuck in the pockets of the lobbysists making the accusations.
“The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.” - Alex Carey