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Why Liberals Don't Stand a Chance in the Corporate Media
Last March, when President Obama announced he was fast-tracking a bunch of deepwater oil leases, mainstream media commentators told us what a politically sophisticated move it was. He was showing the "courage" to defy his base among the anti-drilling crowd and when those dolphin-huggers screamed foul, he stood his ground. A few weeks later, when the Deepwater Horizon/Macondo oil disaster demonstrated how ecologically devastating this type of drilling can be, Obama's previous pandering to Big Oil didn't look so brilliant after all. The environmentalists among the Democratic base were right, the corporate media talking heads (and Obama) were wrong.
The president is fond of telling us that for real "change" to take place he needs to be pushed. People need to be organized and mobilized and move him in the direction they want him to go. He can't "do it alone," he says. But the environmentalists who opposed expanding deepwater drilling tried to heed his call and were brushed off like so many dandruff flakes. So were the people who tried to tell him that escalating the war in Afghanistan was a mistake. Maybe it will take a progressive challenger in the 2012 Democratic primaries to give Obama the push he's longing for?
Commentators like the Wall Street Journal's Gerald F. Seib, who penned an article a year ago titled "Irked Extremes May Mean a Happy Middle," welcome any evidence that Obama is willing to forsake his base as a welcome dose of Realpolitik. The more "the professional Left" complains, the better. In Washington-speak it's just assumed that the path to political success lies in Obama's willingness to beat up the people who put him in office.
The corporate media reinforce this trope constantly. Unfortunately, MSNBC's liberal news and commentary line-up, which is the best thing going for the Democrats right now in the television ether, presents a disjointed ideological message, like hosting a vegetarian cooking show while your sponsors run commercials for steak, pork, and veal.
Over at Fox News and on the right-wing talk radio dial there is no such disconnect. Hosts prattle on about how wonderful giant corporations are and how anybody who calls for more corporate taxes or regulations is a Communist or a Fascist (or both). On Fox News, after each eight-minute segment of cheerleading for greater corporate power, there's a seamless segue into a barrage of commercials extolling the virtues, products, and "services" of giant corporations. The ads simply amplify the dominant narrative. Hence, the Fox News Channel is ideologically far more consistent than anything the liberals could ever muster on television.
It's probably this ideological disconnect that makes it so hard for liberals on MSNBC and progressives on talk radio to compete with Fox or Clear Channel. In November 2006, after Democrats took control of both houses of Congress some of the suits at MSNBC woke up and realized for the first time that not everyone in the country was a supporter of George W. Bush. They belatedly allowed a few Phil Donahues into the realm. The Rachel Maddows and Keith Olbermanns and Ed Shultzes and Lawrence O'Donnells at MSNBC are welcome alternatives to the right-wing fare of Fox, CNN, and the networks, (although it would have been nice if MSNBC didn't shit-can Phil Donahue at exactly the time we needed his anti-Iraq war voice the most.)
Progressive radio hosts like Randi Rhodes and Mike Malloy and Tom Hartmann are all talented analysts of the American political landscape, but they too must turn their airwaves over to "sponsors" that represent the interests of the oligarchy they rail against on their shows. Even the comics who thrive on biting political satire, like Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, (who are among the only people in the corporate media who can think critically), are beholden to sponsors that represent ruling powers and their political servants who are often the butt of their jokes. This ideological crazy-making in trying to get a liberal message across from within the corporate media is why a news show like Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, which is under no such restraint, is infinitely better and freer to pursue tough stories that cut across the grain of American political discourse.
I've heard Anderson Cooper and others on CNN claim a thousand times that they hold down a virtuous spot between two extremes: Fox on one side, MSNBC on the other. Cooper and the other middle-of-the-roaders on CNN, when confronted with the idea that Fox is a Republican Party mouthpiece, always point to MSNBC and say: "See, the Democrats have one too!" This dichotomy fits well into the faux balance CNN tries to project so it can carve out a market niche that capitalizes on "neutral" sponsors and viewers. But it's fallacious. MSNBC not only includes right-wingers like Joe Sarborough, its sister station, CNBC, has so many Republican flame-throwers it nullifies any "liberal" bias the network might project elsewhere. And CNN has a lot more Republicans in its stable of commentators than Democrats, and its "go-to" Dems are people like James Carville and Donna Brazile, hardly fire-breathing progressives. But there's nothing going on at MSNBC that can even compare to Fox. Fox's entire 24-hours is dedicated, day-in and day-out, to cheerleading for greater corporate power. (And when I use the word "cheerleader" I really mean it: just look at Megyn Kelly.)
Thus, our political spectrum, as refracted through the lens of corporate media, runs from center-right to far-right. No wonder the conventional wisdom in Washington holds, without evidence, that the United States is a "center-right" country. Those making that argument might not be real, informed commentators -- but they play them on TV.
The only real choice for Democratic politicians today is to either emulate weak and characterless hacks like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln or move in the opposite direction toward a willingness to stand up and fight for the interests of the people out there who don't show up at $2,000-a-plate fundraisers; who don't control armies of lobbyists, and who don't dole out tax-deductible bribes called "campaign contributions."
The real political story this election year should be: If the Republicans are going to rely on an extremely well-financed constellation of right-wing think tanks, Astroturf groups, and post-Citizens United corporate slush funds, like Karl Rove's "American Crossroads," or the new group the Bush "Pioneers" are forming, then the President (and other Democrats) should explain to the American people how this development skews our politics toward serving the interests of a dishonest and unworthy ruling elite. These past two years they could have at least tried to explain to us how egregiously the Republicans were abusing the Senate filibuster instead of capitulating to the notion that it's just "normal" to be forced to win a supermajority of 60 votes every time you want to pass anything. Obama and the Democrats might have tried to educate voters on their terms, push the debate forward, and control the narrative before the maw of Fox News and right-wing radio masticated it into slurry.
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35 Comments so far
Show AllThe title of the piece says it all.
Although MSNBC may not be the liberals equivalent of FOX, it will appear to be the Democrats' network as long as the Democratic Party's only remaining mission is to get more "tax deductible campaign contributions" from corporations than the Republican Party is getting,
I'll answer before I read the article: Because the mega-rich own the media, and they are heartless sociopaths who are only interested in maintaining their wealth and power.
Ditto Hamster. Why read it. We already know the answer as your posts so aptly points out.
What we need is some mega-rich people, who are not heartless, to buy a media outlet so we can counter the Right Wing, Corporate controlled, Israeli-Centric media in this country.
No, we need a REAL, generously funded public media, financed through an earmarked tax so it isn't subject to politics, like the appropriation-dependent CPB is.
This is how the BBC works in the UK and while their Iraq war coverage showed that can still be influenced by politics to some degree, they still produce hard hitting programming and reporting that is impossible in the US.
Yes SaboCat, the BBC at least have the best documentaries. For example, producer/academic/writer, Adam Curtis, (The Power of Nightmares, The Trap, Century of the Self etc.) in my opinion, is the best documentary producer in the English-speaking world. These works were originally aired on BBC2 in the UK.
They have also aired on TV in many other countries (even many non-English speaking countries, subtitled) however they have never been shown on TV here in the "land of the free". I spoke to the program manager at KQED in SF and they said they have no plans on showing them, due to "lack of interest". I told her diplomatically, in so many words she was a liar. And then remarked:
This PBS program was made possible by:
Boeing
Exxon Mobil
Lockheed Martin
Monsanto
the Archer Daniels Midland Corporation
and by...
Yes, Adam Curtis's documentaries are primarily what I was thinking when I wrote my post. One cannot even get good quality DVD copies of these documentaries in US and there are no plans to make them avaialable - supposedly due to US copyright law problems with footage in the documentaries.
Good points.
Do check out the 3 part Power of Nightmares documentary, if you haven't already.
It just might just give some you some much needed insight, in regard to one particular subject.
Signed,
Kook
Yup.
And the sad thing is so few in the liberal world acknowledge that. If we want to effect change we will have to do it at the neighborhood by neighborhood level, producing immediate results helping people with whom we are on a first name basis. It means community gardens, local neighborhood banks like seen in Vietnamese communities, it means repairing homes using repair parties, it means teaching each other basic skills so we have a deep bench, and it means voting in a bloc when it comes time to deal with the outside weasels.
Ultimately, we can win if we break through the television cult of isolation and embrace the social reality of community. This is happening all over the country, but it is receiving scant coverage because it seems both irrelevant and non-threatening to the corporate world. But, once it catches on, once people look to the next neighborhood and see what they have and begin to emulate it, LOOK OUT!!
Unlimited growth is impossible.
This would all be very true Mr. Palermo, if Barack Obama and the Democrats viewed the American people as their constituency. But we on the left have realized for a long time that their main concerns are for the needs of the down trodden minorities of Corporate Heads, Wall St. types and big time Bankers. You do remember that the Democrats have always been the champions of minority causes, don't you?
"If the Republicans are going to rely on an extremely well-financed constellation of right-wing think tanks, Astroturf groups, and post-Citizens United corporate slush funds, like Karl Rove's "American Crossroads," or the new group the Bush "Pioneers" are forming, then the President (and other Democrats) should explain to the American people how this development skews our politics toward serving the interests of a dishonest and unworthy ruling elite."
More academic/Huffington Post blindness to the fact that the Democrats are just as compliant and complicit with the corporatocracy as the Republicans. How can anyone who considers himself informed possibly say that Obama and other Dems should step up and show the American people how a "dishonest and unworthy ruling elite" is doing all the nefarious things this writer alludes to, when Obama and the Democrats ARE that dishonest and ruling elite? Corporate media is every bit as center-right to far right as he says it is, but SO ARE THE DEMOCRATS! When will these Lakoff liberals ever wake up to this basic, obvious truth? I suppose Ariana, Rachel, Keith, Lawrence and Ed have made their point. It's either support the Democrats from here to doomsday, no matter how much they kowtow to the far right, or we're doomed to Sarah Palin!
AND ...
MSM also benefits from campaign fund financing --
they get 80% of the campaign money for TV political ads!
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Good point. The corporate media oligopoly largely control what most see and hear (or dont'). As you say it is HUGE business.
The Obama/McCain campaign alone was the most expensive in the history of the world, costing over a BILLION dollars. Now that's what I call good for bidnez baby!
Democra$y Inc.
" . . . then the President (and other Democrats) should explain to the American people how this development skews our politics toward serving the interests of a dishonest and unworthy ruling elite."
Obama and the Democrats ARE the dishonest and unworthy ruling elite.
Yup.
And the sad thing is so few in the liberal world acknowledge that. If we want to effect change we will have to do it at the neighborhood by neighborhood level, producing immediate results helping people with whom we are on a first name basis. It means community gardens, local neighborhood banks like seen in Vietnamese communities, it means repairing homes using repair parties, it means teaching each other basic skills so we have a deep bench, and it means voting in a bloc when it comes time to deal with the outside weasels.
Ultimately, we can win if we break through the television cult of isolation and embrace the social reality of community. This is happening all over the country, but it is receiving scant coverage because it seems both irrelevant and non-threatening to the corporate world. But, once it catches on, once people look to the next neighborhood and see what they have and begin to emulate it, LOOK OUT!!
Unlimited growth is impossible.
"if we break through the television cult of isolation" Aye, there's the rub. Conservatives congregate in churches enriched with tax breaks, but Liberals who want to take neighborhood action in more secular ways must pay full taxes in doing so. And, I might add, submit to government surveillance since, ya know, all hippies are one-step from terrorists. We have a government that discourages what you have prescribed, take a look at the tax structure: its pretty obvious you are supposed to get a job, buy a house, wage-slave for 20-30 years, worship on Sundays, and retire without making a peep. The tax structure rewards you for those choices. Take any other choice and bad things could come your way.
Sadly, if we are to take matters into our own hands, neighborhood by neighborhood, it'll have to be against the very 'democracy' we initially constructed of like-minded neighbors.
The liberal intelligentsia has been forced to finally recognize the previously-radical idea that corporate media isn't democratic nor is the election system. But they still fail to put blame on the Democrats as being part of this problem as if they too are victims of it.
the whole article is predicated on the false if: the democratic leadership, obama inparticular, is any different than the gop leadership.
I see this point posted in lots of threads. However, what do you suggest is to be done?
I, at least, registered Green Party after the Democrats caved in on the invasion of Iraq.
Not sure what good it does to point out the obvious, unless there are solutions. Otherwise, we're left to debate the undeniable nuances between the two parties.
The people who said 'shoot your television' were right.
Its an outlet for money to change minds. Once you shoot it, you can begin to read for yourself, and the greater time involved, and de-emphasis on celebrity, allows you a greater chance to see bvllsh*t for what it is.
good...
yes, the current situation, where the coporate view squelches the liberal view, is functioning as designed...
the question we're not asking is: why is the design of the corporation the one in play, and not the design of the liberal?, well, we have an answer...
corporations use violence as a tactic...liberals don't...
Hey Professor,
You´re right, and guess what? For the past almost 2 years, since the Dems won the White House, the House and the Senate, they did no such thing. Nope. You know why? Because they are beholden to the same moneyed groups who fund those far-right to center-right corporations. The only difference is Dems are, by and large, in favor of abortion and gay rights. Some progressives. Otherwise, there are maybe a handful of decent progs in the Dem Party. No, professor, the President, who is as I called him 2 years ago, an "empty shirt" and whose stuffings are rigidly selected by the military-industrial complex, will not go against his paymasters. Nope. And the Dems will continue losing.
The GOP has a philosophy -- self-contradictory though it is -- that allows them the appearance of standing for principle. This is what gives them political impetus. Most donations to the GOP have been to the party, allowing party leaders to spend money in ways to promote an outcome favorable to their views.
Democrats offer the solution of muddling through, avoiding any philosophies or principles that could be labeled "extremism" by any extremist (as if "extremism" were itself some kind of philosophy). This leaves the party as the grab bag of everything not Republican. By far, most donations to the Democrats are to individuals and not to the party -- no one wants any "extremists" to be the beneficiary of a donation.
Our winner take all political system creates a set of rules that cannot sustain third parties, which need a proportional representation system to develop. Third parties are not a realistic option until our constitution has been altered, a task far greater than the problems giving rise to the task.
How can the constitution be rewritten at all while national security protects the current unrepresentative, elite form that our founding fathers intended?
Liberals don't stand a chance in the media?
Do these liberals that "don't stand a chance" question the validity of the "free market"? Are they not all in favour of 'liberalised' trade regimes (free trade)? Do they advocate for something other than economic growth to be the measure by which an economy is to be graded?
Liberals ARE the media. It's progressives that don't stand a chance.
In the US, you are dominated by two liberal political parties as we are in Canada. None of the 4 would seriously 're-visit NAFTA' despite the hundreds of thousands left unemployed in its wake. The four may squibble about how large of a bone to throw at the massess, but they agree that only a bone is to be thrown to us (the meat is for their consumption only).
What is the difference between liberals and progressives? Are you saying that progressives are calling for being engaged in class struggle, and fighting for the working class? If not, what serious difference could there be between liberals and progressives?
There has always been a contradiction in liberalism that is irreconcilable. You can't stand with and against the ruling class at the same time without there being a lot of confusion. Liberals think that standing with the ruling class, but having the right "beliefs" and "caring" and being smart will somehow result in a good outcome for the working class, and then they are always surprised and disappointed and feel betrayed over the real world results. "Progressive" merely means escalating the cognitive dissonance to bizarre new levels, and outright reactionary things get expressed by progressives that you would not hear from liberals, and progressives have an even more serious disconnection between beliefs and results than liberals do.
Liberal politics will give you leaders such as Kerry. Progressive politics will always lead to worse, to politicians like Obama. The more you stray off into the realm of beliefs, the less power you have, the smaller the following, and the bigger the political vacuum you create. Ruling class interests and programs will fill that vacuum, as we see happening now.
For some reason, each time liberal and progressive politics fail, the more people think that they need to believe harder, need to focus yet more intensely on their personal values, personal choices, and beliefs. But it is the focus on personal values, personal choices, and beliefs that caused the problems in the first place. Focusing on personal values, personal choices, and beliefs allows people to on the one hand imagine that they are in some sort of opposition to the ruling class agenda, while on the other not be called upon to actually take a stand against the ruling class agenda.
The sad part is the people he refers to aren't even really liberals. Both the republicans and democrats have moved so far to the right that these people are viewed as being left, Hell Richard Nixon was more liberal than they are.
ABOUT THE LIBERAL LEISURE CLASS
a. there is a lexicon that stratifies everyone politically
b. there are people wholly versed in said lexicon
c. there are (presumably, likely) elaborate tracts and justifications for each strata
d. one should know precisely where one fits on this topological map
e. if you find the whole thing mysterious you are probably in over your head
f. those who "get it" should probably be deferred to since they get it and you don't
g. rhetorical skills are the method of conveying that you grok all of the above
h. anyone incapable of articulating -- at great length -- exactly where they stand in relation to all of the above points is probably a lightweight
i. ad infinitum
CONCLUSION: Let the smart people who drafted the above About Us page do the thinking and planning and talking..they are way more involved and adept than we could ever be. They are called liberals and they are the enlightened ones. Just ask them.
================
Liberalism is tied closely to avoidance of political ideas and quickly distracts us towards personal idiosyncrasies ("Choices", "Lifestyles" etc.) in order to avoid substantive challenges to it's vapid discourse.
The trouble all started way, way back, we are to believe, and the solution is psychoanalysis, "being the change we wish to see" and "taking a different spiritual stance" and making "better personal choices." Those are the only solutions – personal, mystical, spiritual, within the unexamined context of consumerist corporate capitalism.
This thinking is highly Eurocentric and arrogant, although in the usual kindly paternalistic liberal fashion. As with so much of modern liberal thinking, collective action is not considered, and personal development is seen as the path to social change. Capitalism is not even mentioned, nor is class warfare. As with much liberal thinking, "they" are seen as quite different and special when compared to "the rest of us" although they are not feeling the appropriate guilt for what they have done to those poor inferiors, though they are now wondering as they muse in their cappuccino reveries if perhaps they did not know something that they have lost.
B'wana in the jungle. The great fucking white liberal hope.
What to DO about the Hottentots?
Does it matter if you are liberal or progressive as long as you want to do something good? I think I am both. Anyone have a litmus test to measure myself on that?
Politics is not religion. It is not about personal beliefs. Politics is about economics and power, about conditions, not about people's interior subjective moral or spiritual states. Thinking that you are "doing good" has nothing to do with politics necessarily.
Asking people were they stand is not a "litmus test."
National Enquirer was always selling better than Nation magazine and didn't boast about it. Fox News is boasting trumpeting its inferiority to National Enquirer.
edweg
Actually, the right-wing crazy corporate media do Obama a tremendous service. Fox News and others generate labor rallies [for Obama] in Washington, D.C. You get editorials about how people have to vote for the Dems, otherwise you'll get Teabagger candidates campaigning against masturbation, etc.
It's all great for Obama and his right-wing corporatist policies. Fear of Repugs is the only thing going for the Dems. The joke is on voters, of course. The two parties are one when it comes to exercising the will of their corporate benefactors. It's just a question of which manager gets to serve corporate interests and hold the plebs in line.
The author asks Obama to tell the people about the media skewing the debate in favor of the elite. But Obama was funded by Goldman Sach, BP, AT&T, etc. Some of the biggest and most regressive corps on the planet. Besides, Obama's press secretary just told "progressives" to shut up - like the O'Reilly show. It's true that the press secretary didn't tell "liberals" to shut up. Liberals will vote for Obama because of Fox News and Teabagger Repug party front groups - in other words, out of abject fear.
It's all good for the corporate-facing Dems. They don't have to put up much of an act when the people vote out of fear. This is a time-worn formula that works. I'm not sure how Obama would be motivated to explain all of this.
-TIA
It's funny how the "Irked extremes mean a happy middle" meme only applies when there's a Democrat in power. I don't remember the same calls for Bush to sell out the people who voted him into power.
“…the President (and other Democrats) should explain to the American people how this development skews our politics toward serving the interests of a dishonest and unworthy ruling elite.”
Are you stupid, Joseph Palermo, deliberately misleading, or were you just sleeping through Political Economy 101? Your ‘President’ will not stand against the “dishonest and unworthy ruling elite” because he is *part* of that elite, a capitalist politician whose job it is to serve the interests of capitalism.
You can’t make capitalism work for “the American people.” You can only destroy it, and replace it with a system in which the means of production (factories, transport systems, oil fields, mines etc) are owned by those who work them and controlled by them in a rationally planned manner to satisfy the needs of all.
The MSM promoted the Hell out of Obama, who was presenting himself as a liberal. I don't see how people can claim the MSM is biased against liberals.
Biased against the Left, yes, and promoting right wing ideas, yes. But against liberals? Not at all.