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Breaking Down Media Spin on Obama and Stimulus
The ideological battle continues as progressive leaders seek to save the U.S. economy from collapse. Conservatives in the federal government and beyond have rallied together to challenge the will of the people with the most sophisticated propaganda machine known to politics. Last week, in Calling Out the Conservative Lies on Stimulus, I drew attention to the hidden motives of conservative leaders in Congress. This week I'd like to shift focus and call out some of their spin agents in the mainstream media for their less than savory attempts to undermine the progressive movement.
First a recap of what has happened in the last few weeks:
President Obama was inaugurated in the presence of more than two million people who came together to show their commitment to a fundamental change in the course of our country. Obama immediately set to work fulfilling campaign promises - the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, closure of Gitmo, an end to torture, and a bold recovery plan for an economy crippled by years of conservative mismanagement.
President Obama also made good on his promise to change the tone in Washington, calling for unity and reaching across the aisle to invite Republicans to help rebuild America. Days on end were devoted to gaining Republican participation in a landmark bill to envision a nation prosperous in its shared infrastructure, outstanding in the education of its populous, and equipped for the energy demands of the future.
President Obama's inclusive approach stood in stark contrast to the block of Republicans who unanimously voted against the recovery plan in the House of Representatives. Senate Republicans then took to the political stage to grandstand against the plan, halting the delivery of true relief (in the form of jobs that provide stable incomes to millions of unemployed). They preferred to obstruct the process to allow time for allies in the media to organize a counter-attack.
The stage has been set. Editorial pages are starting to fill with opinion articles by members of the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and hundreds of other conservative think tanks. Talking heads in the cable news parrot memes crafted and disseminated through a consolidated, and largely conservative owned, media apparatus.
No matter where you turn, you'll now find messages about runaway "government spending", the need for more "tax cuts", and seedlings of doubt about Obama's character. My favorite of these disingenuous mumblings is the deeply ironic framing of bipartisanship. What once meant something akin to "working across party lines" has been twisted to mean something else. Now we hear nonsense like this from Steve Holland of Reuters UK:
"President Barack Obama showed he is willing to cast aside talk of bipartisanship and flex Democratic muscle to push opposition Republicans out of the way in the battle over a U.S. economic stimulus."
This came from an article titled, What the stimulus battle tells us about Obama. Holland goes on to note the"Republican charges that the plan was stuffed with wasteful Democrat spending items" - a hat tip to the conservative idea that the efficiency of markets are superior to pesky government programs. This is followed with a claim that Obama "changed his tune, reverting to some of the rhetoric he used on the campaign trail to win the White House."
Here is our first inkling of what bipartisanship is supposed to mean. Working across party lines is only about party boundaries. It says nothing about ideology. After all, there are a few very conservative-minded people in the Democratic Party (Joe Lieberman anyone?). President Obama's efforts to work across party lines can be ignored when bipartisanship means granting conservative ideology as the centerpiece of the plan. More than a week of meetings with Republican leaders doesn't count because there is no change in ideology. As long as President Obama continues to attempt the unthinkable - a recovery plan that delivers millions of jobs and a promise of advances in renewable energy, education, health care, and more - he will be treated as an obstructionist by the media.
Never mind that President Obama won a landslide victory in November. Ignore the millions of people who happen to agree with his views about government and the economy. Pretend that conservative principles of governance are not the root cause of this disaster. None of these things matter so long as we have a Bad Apple in the barrel. Our President is a flip-flopper. He's the real problem.
Okay, back to reality. The truth is that our economy is in dire shape. Every day ends with thousands more people out of work. Where's that story? I'm still waiting for the news article pointing out how Republicans are obstructing the process. Hundreds of elected officials, all from the same party, are refusing to budge from their ideological stance like defiant children on the verge of throwing a tantrum. Yet, we're expected to question the character of President Obama after he offered a hand of friendship to the most extreme and reckless band of ideologues to hold the reigns of government in U.S. history.
A series of yarns with the stench of truthiness are expounded daily to the detriment of our democracy. Our challenge as progressives is to overtake this massive message machine - or bypass it entirely - and tell our stories. We can speak out about the promise of opportunity that only comes through investments in common infrastructure. Our voices can ring with joy at the progress we've made expanding the boundaries of human dignity to include women and people of color. And we can speak truth to power, shifting the locus to an empowered citizenry, by calling deceptive media narratives out when we see them.
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35 Comments so far
Show AllIf you want to learn more about how the media is covering the stimulus debate, check this out: http://mediamatters.org/issues_topics/economic_recovery
Thanks, just from a rough check to your link, not one article on the Federal Reserve system.
I think the media wants to avoid the Issue which is the Central One.
Media Matters reports on the media...it doesn't do original investigative journalism.
exacly the media is not doing it. investigating everything but the brains of the monster.
The Federal Reserve System...
When that bee get's into one's bonnet it never stops buzzing.
May as well go back to "the hidden meaning of the Constitution" or some such.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of
patriots and tyrants. ....Thomas Jefferson
So far, I have three (yes, there are certainly more, but for the sake of brevity, these are my choices) possible ways to see Obama.
1) He's sincere, but lacks the political ability and ruthlessness (when in Rome......) to push through his ideas.
2) He's the "annointed" one and we have been fooled again (not me, I voted for Nader)
3) He's being careful and biding his time to protect his ass and gain enough power and knowledge by using the structure that he inherited. When he's done, he'll show his true colors and be the progressive he was elected to be.
All these possibilities and more are feasible, I am sure.
What throws me off as to his sincerity and believability is his support of AIPAC, his ignoring of the Gaza genocide and his support of the first bailout. ....along, of course, with his reluctance to support prosecuting the previous administration and to re-open an investigation of 9/11.
Iknow, he's only been president for barely a month. BUT, after the last FIASCO and those eight years of HELL, we are all very impatient to see results....and may I add, rightfully so!
The list of "achievements" of Obama so far in providing redress to various Bush/Cheney policies are not redress at all. There are enough loopholes and vagueries to drive a fleet of Mack trucks through. Now Obama has expanded the scope of the NSA in foreign and domestic policy. The police state dictatorship clicks right along. All the smoke and mirrors cannot camoflage this any more than it did for Bush and the neocons. I can barely wait to see what next week brings.
A major obstacle to progress is the inability to know who to trust in politics. My colleagues at Cognitive Policy Works and I are developing educational resources to help train progressives about the deceptive use of language in political discourse. We believe the antidote is to democratize knowledge about how our brains process information so that the public can recognize when these manipulative practices are used.
Simply identifying when misleading or false narratives are pushed through the media will not be enough. We're going to need new skills and insights, combined with alternative media platforms, to bring lasting power to the grassroots.
This article is an awareness-building exercise to call attention to the problem. In the coming weeks and months, we'll offer some solutions.
Politics determine whether or not the stimulus will be passed. In trying to do what's right for America, we can't discount the role of politics in Washington. As long as we are ruled by two parties, we'll not have real representation.
Conservatives aren't conservative at all--look at Bush's military interventions and runaway spending. The truth isn't the truth--it's what politicians say it is. We don't see many real progressives among Democrats, either.
Trying to factor out political bias in the stimulus debate is impossible. Now, as President, Obama must transcend political differences in order to help the nation. He will need to cajole, influence, manipulate perceptions just like any other politician. Even if he can convince enough people that the stimulus is in their best interest, he still needs to play politics to get the desired result. This is why going to the people won't really work. They've had their say in the election. Now it's time to succeed inside the Beltway, which is a far more difficult challenge, regardless of how good the stimulus is, or how much it's needed.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of
patriots and tyrants. ....Thomas Jefferson
IMHO, there is no REAL success inside the beltway for We the People...only for the elite and the bankers who run this world. We get the crumbs and that's all we will ever get until we have had enough....and we're getting close.
Hi JBPeebles,
I disagree with your suggestion that "He will need to cajole, influence, manipulate perceptions just like any other politician." Much of recent history in politics has indeed been about elites manipulating perceptions of the populous, but this is not a natural thing. It's not as if the reality of politics requires manipulation. People in influential positions can (and should) speak authentically and express the truth as they see it. Of course, not everyone will agree with their perspective, but there is no need to manipulate others.
I also find your assertion that the only role of people in politics is to show up and vote, then go home. A major part of the problem with our politics today is that a powerful minority has taken over - in part by promoting the idea that civic participation is limited to checking a box on a ballot.
The success of President Obama's campaign is principally due to the fact that millions of people got involved in a movement to bring change. These same people are now part of a large community of concerned citizens who are looking for ways to play an active role in the process of delivering change. We forget this at our peril.
Best,
Joe
This is what happens when you try to hold hands and play nice with these lying bullies and greedy thugs--instead of holding them accountable.
WHERE IS THE MONEY COMING FROM!?
The government has no money. It does not have $1 billion dollars. It does not have $1 trillion dollars. The Federal Government is flat fucking broke.
The so-called "stimulus" is as intelligent as an unemployed prole with $20,000 in credit card debt buying a $5000 plasma screen television on still more credit in hopes of getting a job at a tv manufacturing plant.
The problem is not too little debt. The problem is too much debt! You can't solve the problem of too much debt by borrowing still MORE MONEY you fucking idiots.
The stimulus is obviously a done deal. His Holiness St. Obama humbly requests it, after all.
We are in a hole! LET'S STOP DIGGING ALREADY!
You have said it as clearly as it may be said. Indeed, how many Americans really understand that we deal in a debt based currency that will always leave the people and this country in debt to the Rothchilds................................................ ....AND......'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.' ......THOMAS JEFFERSON
I was duped by Bush in 2000. I thought I was voting for a small government conservative who was against high taxes, against the deficit, against foreign intervention. Boy did I get fooled.
Now I see people getting fooled by Imperiator Obama the exact same way. He calls for peace and dialog while launching missiles into Pakistan. He calls for economic stimulus while sending us spiraling down a flushing toilet of debt. He calls for personal responsibility while bailing out failed banks.
Obama is to liberalism what Bush was to conservatism - a cipher, a hypocrite, and a liar without shame.
It didn't take any time for the mantle of "compassionate conservative" to hit the trashbin after Bush's first inauguration. The "audacity of hope" may hit the skids even faster. Neocons and neoliberals basically follow the same corporatist, globalist agenda and get along quite well together, regardless of the intrafraternal backstabbing they frequently engage in. It's this agenda which I pray to fail. As another crass puppet, Obama means nothing. I still see the strawman of left vs. right, conservative vs.liberal,etc., distracting and confusing too much of the dialogue. I think you "get it", Dammerung. Frustrating, isn't it??
I'm confused, or this guy's confused or simply out of touch with the rest of the planet USA. "Talking heads in the cable news parrot memes crafted and disseminated through a consolidated, and largely conservative owned, media apparatus." CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC were the prime deliverer's of the Obama victory; they were completely in the tank for Obama. My guess, and it's based upon questions of co-workers and friends, is that the only people who anymore watch these outlets are of one of three types, 1) so-called Progressives who need a daily reminder of the party line, 2) a few detestible old white men who want to watch Lou Dobbs salivate over problems with no solution and 3) equally detestible old white women who live to hear endless screaming about about the florida dead kid/guilty mom case, (how long has that been on now, a year?). Then.......there's the Fox Leg Show; which can be tolerated for about 15 minutes but then they drivel on with canned pundits about endless stuff no one can do anything about. Fox suffers from terminal ADHD; it's a sure fire way to get a migraine.
The: "Editorial pages are starting to fill with opinion articles by members of the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and hundreds of other conservative think tanks." Newsflash dumba.., no one under the age of 50 reads a newspaper. Second newsflash dumba.., everyone between 16 and 40 is only accessing the internet and they watch precious little t.v. and even less t.v. news. Final newsflash dumb.., the younger set that elected Obama thinks that, (if they've even heard of these conservative think tanks), they are some wacko site like PBS or C-Span, or worse, Religious nut case anti-abortion sites. They don't go to these websites for opinion pieces. They don't need opinion pieces, they've already been trained in what to think in public school, then it's reinforced at CNN, if they have that much interest.
So here's the real deal guy, 1) no one watchs the t.v. news anymore unless they are in agreement with Obama, 2) precious few read any newspapers, and 3) only the Obamacans read newspapers online or have subscriptions to Time/Newsweek. Everybody else has tuned out/dropped out, lost interest or never had any interest to begin with.......so, the problem isn't the few Conservative wackjobs, the problem is the few Republican Senators/Congressmen.
2 years, 4 years at the max, they won't be a problem, so who ya' gonnna blame then?
"hundreds of elected officials, all from the same party, are refusing to budge from their ideological stance like defiant children on the verge of throwing a tantrum." well put, mr. brewer. no where was that more evident than yesterday when pouty-boy pence showed his poor loser attitude on meet the press.
seriously, the only record these guys can stand on is the last eight years of hell. oh, and let us throw in a world economy on the brink of absolute and total collapse. granted, there are a couple of democrats with sets of balls, however, the real question is when will this current new majority develop a collective spine?
mr. brewer, how do we empower the citizenry when 46 million of them think sarah palin is qualified to be an "elected official/?"
Hi lino,
That's a great question. We start by challenging the propaganda machine that has set the tone of our politics for nearly three decades. Of course, there are always going to be people who hold extreme views. Our objective cannot be to "convert them... but rather we need to get better at two things that we can change about ourselves:
1. Get organized. A key of the Palin appeal is incredibly effective organizing among fundamentalist churches around the country. We need to bring our superior numbers into greater concert with one another so that we stop being a silent majority and start influencing things with the bulk of our numbers.
2. Develop new skills. Many of the political tactics used by the left have been less-than-satisfactory at advancing our goals. We've learned a lot in the last few years, especially with regards to internet media and social networking technologies. Now we need to develop new skills at a personal level. One thing that will help will be to learn how the political mind works. This is very empowering because it helps us understand ourselves better. And it has the added benefit of helping us understand the motivations of people who all-too-often just don't make much sense to us.
Of course, there isn't just one answer to this question. Luckily, we've got a great community of people on our side with tons of talent and valuable experience to offer. As we get better at organizing ourselves, this will become a major asset of our movement.
FYI, I've posted a blog on our website (http://www.cognitivepolicyworks.com) to ask members of the progressive community to help guide our work. Come on over and suggest ideas you have about which skills we most need to develop as we seek to counter the deceptive practices of many elites.
Best,
Joe
How is politics going to get us out of a problem that politics got us into?
This has LONG SINCE passed beyond the simplistic left v. right political dialectic that has been poisoning this nation for decades. Clinging to one of the horns of a false dilemma is not going to rescue us. Leftists and rightists fight over trivial details, but they BOTH seem to have an unshakable faith in the goodness and ability of the Federal Government to save us.
Joe,
This is a great article, and all the more important - indeed critical - at this moment because of President Obama's apparent unwillingness to relinquish his cherished goal of "bipartisanship," his efforts to woo Republicans to support his policies.
Paul Krugman in Monday's NYT described it this way, explaining why Obama was reduced to bargaining with so-called centrists (ie, conservative Democrats and Republicans) to get his stimulus bill passed:
"All in all, the centrists’ insistence on comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted will, if reflected in the final bill, lead to substantially lower employment and substantially more suffering.
"But how did this happen? I blame President Obama’s belief that he can transcend the partisan divide — a belief that warped his economic strategy.
"After all, many people expected Mr. Obama to come out with a really strong stimulus plan, reflecting both the economy’s dire straits and his own electoral mandate.
"Instead, however, he offered a plan that was clearly both too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts. Why? Because he wanted the plan to have broad bipartisan support, and believed that it would. Not long ago administration strategists were talking about getting 80 or more votes in the Senate."
It may be that Obama has let all the adulation he's received go to his head, that he expects the bastions of entrenched power in Washington to fall before him without protest or opposition. The only hope we have is that progressives come together in a mighty voice and wake him up to his real chance to be a great president, by rescuing the nation from economic catastrophe. History will not judge him on whether or not he rescued the nation from political partisanship, a chimera in fact since the two parties are all too like one another and the "partisanship that divides the nation" is mostly a myth created by MSM. Our only hope is for Obama to get real and get down to the real work he was elected to do. Not only Republican media spin agents need to be challenged, as you write, but those in the Democratic Party, including Obama himself.
As Krugman concluded in his column:
"So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren’t good.
"For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. 'Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,' he declared on Saturday, and “the scale and scope of this plan is right.'
No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t."
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of
patriots and tyrants. ....Thomas Jefferson
Having seen the indifference of our citizenry following the fixed election of 2000, the false flag of 9/11, the illegal invasion of two sovereign nations, the stolen election of 2004, the trashing of the Constitution and habeas corpus. genocide and the illegal use of torture, I seriously have NO IDEA what it will take to wake up the citizens of these United States.
Sometimes I think the only thing that will wake Americans up (and this will NEVER happen) is the mass confiscation of TVs. This of course is a fantasy. BUT, if the last eight years of criminal plunder have not gotten millions upon millions to march on DC, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT WILL TAKE.....Open to suggestions.
And to those of you that believe Obama is the savior, understand this....if THE POWERS THAT be did not want him in that position, he would not be there. Stop fooling yourselves and start dealing with reality.
Once the power grid fails, folks will pay $20/gallon for gas to run their TV's off of generators...
We need a two pronged approach for the people. We need some fancy phrasing and framing to start moving people in the right direction, and we also need some educational and developmental programs to move past being suckers for fancy phrasing and framing, and the mythology of the culture. We also need a third prong: dealing with power and the miney behind the media which control the information flow and public dialogue. People need to hear the message, accept the message, and then understand the reality and philosophy behind the message.
One of the things people need to understand is that money is a frame -- a metaphor even. Money is not real, but an abstraction which is suppposed to symbolize actual wealth -- the good and services which people need and want. Those have been disconnected through chicanery and becoming attached to abstractions: hence inflation, overleveraged debt with no real possibility of returns in real wealth for the risks. People have learned to expect real value in exchange for their money -- a solid link between the abstract money and the stuff they want when they go to buy.
A 'stimulus' has to do a few things. It need to maintain liquidity (people having money to buy), and it also needs to increase production of tangible wealth (wanted products, or the ability to provide needed service). We need to stop thinking in just terms of money, but focus on the real economy it's supposed to represent. This is a fundamental story we have to tell -- a true story, but one which is obscured by the politicians and media. Money has become more that a representation of real wealth; it now also represent power, which is why the powerful accumulate it, and manipulate it. It's much easier to manipulate money than a product -- no one wants a million pigs in their vault. In fact, it's often not even actual money which is manipulated, but ciphers on a spreadsheet of (electronic) accounts book. No one could be a billionaire in a barter economy -- no one has room for that many pigs or can perform that much labor. The stimulus program has to be evaluated in terms of production and consumption AS IF we were in a barter economy, and then let the abstraction of money follow along. That's a message people need to hear.
I usually listen to Rush for entertainment, However, in today's spiel he
explained how Obama took orders from Dashle on how to screw the elderly from
proper care, as part of the Stimulus A very enlighting day,
What a doublcross for the working classes again. Obama is begining to sound
like Bubba.
Check out
http://www.worldreports.org/news/194_geithner_to_launch_worlds_biggest_ponzi_scam
for another view on the shenanigans in Washington
nowhere is the context of this article more evident than immediately before and after tonite's news conference. media whores influencing the viewing audience before the president even speaks, and cementing their simpleton mentality upon completion of the president's words.
of course, if we really want a nightmare, just imagine gwb still standing there.
This is a story Mr. Obama should remember.
One day a man was walking along a dirt road. He came upon a sick but poisonous snake. The snake said to the man: "Sir, I am dying, please help me." The man, feeling sympathy for the snake, picked it up, and took it home. At his home, he cleaned the snake, put it in a warm box. Everyday, he would feed it fresh milk and keep it warm. Day by day the snake got healthy once more.
After weeks of care, and when the snake seemed healthy, the man reached into the box of the snake to carefully move him into the sun, but the snake bit the man and filled him with poison.
The man was shocked that this snake which he had brought back to health from certain death would bit him. The man, as he lay dying, asked to the snake: "why did you bite me after I have taken care of you, and brought you back to health from certain death?"
The snake replied: "You knew I was a snake when you picked me up from the road, didn't you?"
LeeAnnG
Awesome comment. I have heard this story before in slightly different forms, but it's quite wonderful in this context.
Most Americans know - and Obama should know - that the Republicans are poisonous snakes. It was a nice idea to attempt to keep the enemies inside the tent looking out instead of outside looking in, but it obviously is not having the desired effect. The snakes need to be defanged and removed.
I live in the country, and I found two copperheads living under my porch last summer. I did not bring them into my house and try to incorporate them into my life. In fact, we killed them, and it turned out that one was pregnant with quite a few young. Uh oh.
This kind of thinking is incredibly hateful and dangerous. It sounds exactly like certain elements on the Right who claim that all leftists are terrorist-sympathizing anarchists.
Can't you even hear yourselves?
Not all leftists are hateful, terrorist-sympathizing anarchists, just a few of us like me -- but I can't get anywhere near as hateful or terroristic as the typical right winger. Heck, I don't even support genocide, conquest of other nations, or even letting the poor starve to death, or die of the cold or lack of medical care.
It is a little soon to be running President Obama down. He has only been in office for a couple of weeks, and probably faces the worst mess that we have ever had in this country, It is not his fault that a band of crooks, liars, and warmongers took our country from a functioning nation to near collapse in eight years. Do any of you complainers think you could have handled the situation better if it was your job to get the country moving again, with the sorehead Repugs doing their best to wreck everything that is proposed? If Obama has not made any progress in a year or so, it might be time to question his methods.
Pan
What a refreshing day Obama on the radio and TV ( Taking all reporters , no one excluded not even the Corporate Schills) , a delight to hear reason and leadership concern of the people.
Hail Hail the idiot is gone.
His Minions still do Corporate Radio and TV and the ignorant still listen.
But hail Hail the Fool and His Court are Gone.
Secrecy is gone Hurrah.
Liberty and Justice for All ................
May it Live again and Flower
A significant minority of commenters maintain that 9/11 was an inside job and that international bankers control the world. These are our conspiratorial friends.
But this viewpoint seems untenable to me, if only because 9/11 shut down Wall Street.
Ask yourself: would international bankers fund a plan to shut down Wall Street?
Of course not. It makes no sense whatsoever. The bankers would have told the perps to find another target.
I cite this as a prima facie disproof of the conspiracy paradigm.
Going Back in Time
Mr. Brewer would have us believe that any and all criticisms of the annointed one in the oval Office must come from the hated republicans. Therefore this article is simply a propaganda piece of little merit. I might suspect , were it not for the depth of deception and the bit of sophistication involved, that this was penned by Joe Hope himself.
Mr. Brewer, my dead Grandma could have beaten McCain/Palin, after eight years of the very worst administration in American history it was not a great chore to understand that even the GOP knew it was doomed in that election. Why else put that old man out there, saddle him with that loony woman and concede the election. Now the GOP works for failure and the next election.
You prattle about an end to torture and the closing of Guantanemo as if they were accomplished fact. Last time I noticed there are still prisoners in that wretched cage, folks denied due process for seven years. You extol the virtues of a stimulus package the results of which are unknown as yet and the thrust contains much to be skeptical about.
But your greatest canard is in claiming the mantle of progressive. You arent that at all, you are a shill for the centrist President who carries on a love affair with the financial community that gave him a large portion of the seven hundred million dollars he used to trick the voters and as much as you might dress up that horse it is, in the end, still a horse.
"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell