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Published on Monday, October 18, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Mainstreaming the Extreme Rightwing
The strong case that Eric Alterman’s book What Liberal Media? made in 2003 against the propaganda-style claim by rightwingers, that the mass media has a liberal bias, is an expanding understatement. Just read recent issues of The Washington Post and The New York Times to see the most extreme reactionaries getting the kind of coverage their publicists love.
Just last Sunday in the October 10, 2010 New York Times, two very lengthy features appeared on the rancid Ann Coulter and the blogger Pamela Geller—a grotesque anti-Semite against Arabs who flaunts her sweeping bigotry as a badge of pride. Geller even called herself a ‘racist-Islamophobic-anti-Muslim-bigot’. One veteran reporter called the sprawling two page feature, with all of twenty color photos “an advertisement.”
Anyone with such open and flaunted hatred against Jews would either be ignored or slammed paragraph by paragraph with denunciations consigning the sick character into media oblivion.
The latest Coulter feature, one of many in the mainstream media over the years, chronicles her efforts to reinvent her shouts since she is being outflanked “on the right by the Tea Party.”
The Times called her a “conservative,” besmirching conservatives instead of what she really is—a burlesque performer throwing red meat to audiences looking for off-the-wall entertainment. Coulter even denounced the New Jersey 9/11 widows as exploiting their husbands’ deaths for enjoyment.
One of the editors at the New Yorker wondered what is happening to the Times sense of featureworthiness. I replied that no one on the seriously important Left gets this kind of promotional treatment, no matter how flamboyantly personal they may be. If there are counterparts, calling themselves leftists, who compare with Coulter and Geller, no one knows their names because they don’t have the Times, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck to promote them via the mass media.
National and local talk radio, using our public airwaves free of charge, is dominated by extreme ranting rightwing soliloquists who often pull the plug on the few callers who get by the screeners. Cable political TV, apart from MSNBC (which fired Phil Donahue in 2003 for presenting both sides of Bush’s fabricated drive to invade Iraq) is a race between the wildly hysterical Beck-types and Bill O’Reilly pantingly trying to out-do Beck, even though O’Reilly knows better.
Take the comparative news and feature coverage of Glenn Beck’s rally in Washington, D.C. on August 28 with the rally at the same place a month later, organized by 400 progressive labor, religious, civil rights, student and environmental groups.
In the Washington Post, it was not even close. For the progressive rally of comparable size, representing tens of millions of Americans, the Post devoted a short article presaging the event and a regular news story that day on page 3, which cited Mr. Beck’s preposterous estimate of 500,000 for his meeting (A CBS-retained consulting firm estimated Beck’s rally drew just under 90,000).
For the Beck rally, the Post went all out. A huge page one story spilled generously onto the inside pages. The FOX network talkers’ assembly got articles proceeding and after the gathering. The Times, while not so gushing, did manage to give Beck a startling ego-inflating headline—“Where Dr. King Once Stood, Tea Party Claims His Mantle.” And Beck is a TV media man promoting political action, a role that formerly was taboo.
The op-ed pages showcase the news media’s rightwing bent even more than the news articles. The op-ed pages of the Post are over-represented with war-mongering columnists and contributors. The media watchdog FAIR reported in their monthly magazine Extra that, in one nine-month period during 2009, the ratio of op-ed’s supporting wars and interventions outnumbered op-ed’s by the anti-interventionists by ten-to-one. This in an overwhelmingly liberal Democratic city, no less.
Professor Andrew Bacevich, a former professional soldier and author of acclaimed books, has had five submissions rejected over the past two years or so by Fred Hiatt—the Post’s editorial page chief. Hiatt doesn’t even bother sending him a rejection, unlike his rejections by the more courteous David Shipley, his counterpart at the Times.
On the day President Obama announced the end of combat activity in Iraq, who appears with a lengthy unrepentant op-ed piece on Iraq in the Times? None other than a major architect of that illegal, criminal war of aggression—Paul Wolfowitz. John Bolton, the falsehood-prone former State Department wildcatter, whom Secretary Colin Powell could not stomach, managed to get an op-ed in the Times and the Post on the same day! Other viewpoints are infrequently solicited by the Times or Post.
The right-moving trend of the mainstream media, absurdly deemed liberal by successfully intimidating corporatists and ideological aggressors, continues year after year. Dissenting groups produce reports and actions that used to make the network television news, but are now shut out. Exposés by civic groups about rampant corporate crime and political corruption are regularly ignored.
Civil rights, women’s rights, environment, labor, consumer issues were once given voice on the Phil Donahue Show and occasionally by the Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin Shows. No more. Many of the shows that followed, except for Oprah, showcase crude, violent, aberrant, sadomasochistic personal behaviors.
The media bends over backwards to avoid being called liberal by featuring many corporatist or rightwing think tank views. Media executives should pause to contemplate how their predecessors in the Sixties and Seventies embraced balance and, in so doing, resulted in our country being improved in many ways.
Why not now?
Just last Sunday in the October 10, 2010 New York Times, two very lengthy features appeared on the rancid Ann Coulter and the blogger Pamela Geller—a grotesque anti-Semite against Arabs who flaunts her sweeping bigotry as a badge of pride. Geller even called herself a ‘racist-Islamophobic-anti-Muslim-bigot’. One veteran reporter called the sprawling two page feature, with all of twenty color photos “an advertisement.”
Anyone with such open and flaunted hatred against Jews would either be ignored or slammed paragraph by paragraph with denunciations consigning the sick character into media oblivion.
The latest Coulter feature, one of many in the mainstream media over the years, chronicles her efforts to reinvent her shouts since she is being outflanked “on the right by the Tea Party.”
The Times called her a “conservative,” besmirching conservatives instead of what she really is—a burlesque performer throwing red meat to audiences looking for off-the-wall entertainment. Coulter even denounced the New Jersey 9/11 widows as exploiting their husbands’ deaths for enjoyment.
One of the editors at the New Yorker wondered what is happening to the Times sense of featureworthiness. I replied that no one on the seriously important Left gets this kind of promotional treatment, no matter how flamboyantly personal they may be. If there are counterparts, calling themselves leftists, who compare with Coulter and Geller, no one knows their names because they don’t have the Times, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck to promote them via the mass media.
National and local talk radio, using our public airwaves free of charge, is dominated by extreme ranting rightwing soliloquists who often pull the plug on the few callers who get by the screeners. Cable political TV, apart from MSNBC (which fired Phil Donahue in 2003 for presenting both sides of Bush’s fabricated drive to invade Iraq) is a race between the wildly hysterical Beck-types and Bill O’Reilly pantingly trying to out-do Beck, even though O’Reilly knows better.
Take the comparative news and feature coverage of Glenn Beck’s rally in Washington, D.C. on August 28 with the rally at the same place a month later, organized by 400 progressive labor, religious, civil rights, student and environmental groups.
In the Washington Post, it was not even close. For the progressive rally of comparable size, representing tens of millions of Americans, the Post devoted a short article presaging the event and a regular news story that day on page 3, which cited Mr. Beck’s preposterous estimate of 500,000 for his meeting (A CBS-retained consulting firm estimated Beck’s rally drew just under 90,000).
For the Beck rally, the Post went all out. A huge page one story spilled generously onto the inside pages. The FOX network talkers’ assembly got articles proceeding and after the gathering. The Times, while not so gushing, did manage to give Beck a startling ego-inflating headline—“Where Dr. King Once Stood, Tea Party Claims His Mantle.” And Beck is a TV media man promoting political action, a role that formerly was taboo.
The op-ed pages showcase the news media’s rightwing bent even more than the news articles. The op-ed pages of the Post are over-represented with war-mongering columnists and contributors. The media watchdog FAIR reported in their monthly magazine Extra that, in one nine-month period during 2009, the ratio of op-ed’s supporting wars and interventions outnumbered op-ed’s by the anti-interventionists by ten-to-one. This in an overwhelmingly liberal Democratic city, no less.
Professor Andrew Bacevich, a former professional soldier and author of acclaimed books, has had five submissions rejected over the past two years or so by Fred Hiatt—the Post’s editorial page chief. Hiatt doesn’t even bother sending him a rejection, unlike his rejections by the more courteous David Shipley, his counterpart at the Times.
On the day President Obama announced the end of combat activity in Iraq, who appears with a lengthy unrepentant op-ed piece on Iraq in the Times? None other than a major architect of that illegal, criminal war of aggression—Paul Wolfowitz. John Bolton, the falsehood-prone former State Department wildcatter, whom Secretary Colin Powell could not stomach, managed to get an op-ed in the Times and the Post on the same day! Other viewpoints are infrequently solicited by the Times or Post.
The right-moving trend of the mainstream media, absurdly deemed liberal by successfully intimidating corporatists and ideological aggressors, continues year after year. Dissenting groups produce reports and actions that used to make the network television news, but are now shut out. Exposés by civic groups about rampant corporate crime and political corruption are regularly ignored.
Civil rights, women’s rights, environment, labor, consumer issues were once given voice on the Phil Donahue Show and occasionally by the Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin Shows. No more. Many of the shows that followed, except for Oprah, showcase crude, violent, aberrant, sadomasochistic personal behaviors.
The media bends over backwards to avoid being called liberal by featuring many corporatist or rightwing think tank views. Media executives should pause to contemplate how their predecessors in the Sixties and Seventies embraced balance and, in so doing, resulted in our country being improved in many ways.
Why not now?
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88 Comments so far
Show AllRalph Nader omits an important event in his piece; Grandpa Caligula (Reagan) doing away with the 'Fairness Doctrine' in 1987.
Additionally, Nader needs to realize the current crop of suits in the American mass media are craven idiots compared to the douche bags he ran into during his halcyon days (60's & 70's) that he refers to. Nader, as well as CD habituates, need to realize that US mass media is more like its' predecessors from the Robber Baron era than anything else.
The robber barons would be green with envy if they could see how much more successful today's corporations (via the media and politicians they own)have been at hoodwinking the US electorate.
The Robber Barons had nearly 50 years of Tweedledum / Tweedledee government from the end of the Civil War until the Progressive Era. Part of how they accomplished this their almost complete domination of that era's mass media, newspapers.
So perhaps the characterization of 'green with envy' maybe a bit inaccurate, whereas 'comparing notes' might be more apt.
In all likelihood the right wing TV shills are bribed to tow the company's line by its advertisers.
So you want to remind Nader of whom he's omitting? And then all you do is list what he's complaining about.
I'm sure that Nader and "CD habituates" realize what they "need to".
Why refer to the media people of the 60's and 70's as "douche bags"?
Weird tone, really.
The fact that Nader omitted Grandpa Caligula's doing away with the Fairness Doctrine simply can not go unstated, as that one bit of administrative destruction did more to create the toxic media stew than anything else, and must be mentioned for context. Context is always needed, period.
As for referring to the suits of the mass media business as 'douche bags,' and you objecting to it, it is fairly obvious you have never had the extreme displeasure to spend any decent amount of time with these people (I have), and know what sort of craven corporate creature one has to be in order to do well in that industry.
Lastly, if you don't like the tone...don't read it!
I've been saying it for ten years now. If the media was in reality "liberal" why the hell would you hear all over the media that the media is liberal? No, if they were truly liberal they would be pushing the the dialogue further left by claiming the media was to conservative which is exactly what the conservatives (really rabid corporate right) has been doing for decades now. Only in reverse
Another example is claiming Hollywood is liberal or leftist when in fact Hollywood hasn't made a leftist movie (excluding Michael Moore (more liberal then leftist)) since Norma Rae or China Syndrome. No Hollywood has become just another profit driven corporation enterprise with constant product placement for the mini MIC( gun manufacturers). Right wing shouting heads get lots of mileage out of labeling Hollywood "liberal" with the red state types because they are envious of all the sex, drugs and rock'nroll the "stars" are pre-ported to be getting, when they actually watch television just like they do.
V for Vendetta
Fight Club
Avatar
These come off the top of my head.
"Media executives should pause to contemplate how their predecessors in the Sixties and Seventies embraced balance and, in so doing, resulted in our country being improved in many ways."
Being "improved"? Not for the billionaires and their millionaire minions. Nope, for them this improvement was instead a setback, and they've been on the counterattack ever since, slowly and imperceptibly, but relentlessly, moving the media universe, and so the public consciousness ever further to the right, so that now the center of this universe is occupied by right wing wackjobs,stage-center in full spotlight.
the only liberal media I know of is Democracy Now and flashpoints on KPFA.......
there are also a few local free indy's out there i'm sure.......
no big newspaper in america is liberal -
heck telling the truth is now considered extreme and being a teabagger isn't......
the very worst is when they claim certain neo-cons or neo-libs - or whatever the favorite terms for these fascists are now - are liberal like that moron thomas friedman.......
now that pisses me off!
So True - even NPR falls all over itself trying to be "balanced" with respect to the truth-twisters from the right. Never thought I would need "fact check" to evaluate an NPR piece, but now it seems we do.
Very sad.
Judging from the number of pundits I have recently heard on NPR lamenting that if we don't dilute social security soon the earth will collide with the sun, you better use that "fact check" on EVERY "NPR piece".
As a regular NPR listener I would offer that I have never heard a single instance wherein NPR itself, in the form of its regular commentators and moderators, advocated "diluting" social security. I have, however, heard almost everything NPR broadcasts given the full fairness treatment with all points of view given an airing.
What you offered in this post, in my own opinion, is the exact same thing the extreme right offers; untruth offered as gospel. As NPR has an extensive and easily researched archive I am certain you can delve into it and come up with the proof of your claim .
One more point I think worthy of airing. Many of us seemingly cannot stand an opposing point of view, immediately leaping to a defense of our own position without, in many cases, taking the time to digest and assimilate what that "opposing" view really says.
I have not listened to NPR for some time and that is because, unless they have recently changed their stance, it is extremely unlikely that one will hear anyone on NPR give a full throated defense of the Palestinians while also condemning the murderous actions of the Israelis against the Palestinian people.
After stating that you do not listen you then claim to know what they say or do not say.
As a daily listener I have certainly heard criticisms of Israeli actions and defenses of the rights of the Palestinian people to have a state. "Full throated" is more a function of other places, both left (Pacifica Radio) and right ( about everywhere else). NPR goes in for a more civil discourse.
"the only liberal media I know of is Democracy Now..."
Sorry, but I took a dose of that a few weeks ago and all I saw was a democratic hack (i.e. "guest") with pathetic excuses, providing the regular exercises in silly finger pointing and of course selling his lame-O book of which a tight-shot of was taken at least three times in the process.
I realize its all we've got, but its still a pathetically democratic-party apologizing waste of time.
Yeah, we're screwed.
And yes, Friedman is a moron.
Heres his digs: http://cryptome.org/eyeball/friedman/friedman-mansion.htm
I'd give her another chance perhaps.......
sometimes I'm sure Democracy Now has apologist leanings but I've seen plenty of shows on the insane rightwing behavior of obama and the democrats and other pathetic corporate liberals - whcih you will not find on any other commercial news station.....
and the sellout of the environmental organizations to corporate "donors"
and the obama support of the war machine and his choice of neo-con advisors and the same clan of criminal that haunted us thru the bush years.....
and the rightwing slant of arne duncan and his attack on public education etc etc etc
i know it's not perfect but I like DN and amy goodman......
And you're probably right. I'll admit it. Its a bit unfair of me to let one show define the whole. Really unfair.
I think "Democracy Now"! is perhaps the only program, that still devotes coverage to Mumia Abu Jamal, and the coup in Honduras.
Pacifica is infiltrated by corporate plants who's job it is to make wacky/stupid statements to discredit and disrupt any viable opposition to the plutocracy.
Horace: "Force without judgment falls of its own weight.'
I hope Ralph and his near and dear have the means to relocate someplace safe where he can enjoy his golden years when our Humpty-Dumpty neo-lib/neo-con fascist global empire topples of its own now blatantly, unrepentantly evil corruption. He doesn't deserve to experience what's coming after the fall and the way things are going we don't have much longer to wait. I expect to see Capitalist Crunch Time between 2012 and 2017.
I doubt Ralph will be anywhere but right in the middle of where the action is.
But, if anyone deserves to retire and enjoy the rest of their days off from this sh*t fest call American Democracy, its damn sure him.
When he's gone, the Left will be officially DOA.
Sure hope he runs in 2012.
Agree -- and I'll just make the balance of my comment here ... that
obviously Ralph Nader is only reading the NY Times to keep ALL of us
informed as to what's really going on ---
I'm more fortunate, I stopped even looking at the NY Times when they
hired Karl Rove a few years back.
It was already a very far gone newspaper that it's owners can't seem
to wait to get rid of -- but I looked at it in monitoring it.
If FAIR's word on the death of PBS is really news to the public, we are
in great trouble! Americans couldn't have figured that our for themselves
decades ago? NRP .... ??
If Americans don't by now understand what's going on with right wing control
of our media they need their BS-meters turned way up!
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Some days ... I just get depressed. You see, there is nothing new about the false claims of "liberal" media. No matter how much evidence you present to prove how things really - well it will not matter. It feels like it is over.
I was born 1974 ... and sometimes I am thinking: would have been better to been born the late 50s. So I could have LIVED through the 70s; to participate in all the things ... that are now destroyed. And there wont be a counter movement.
Just have a look what is going on in todays schools. Kids learn to obey the zero-tolerance rules from day one; if they refuse ... they are stuffed with all kind of medicaments ... or thrown out. In the end, you will have a majority of "whatever-you-tell-me-gonna-do-it"s ... and a set of totally crushed victims.
And the most horrible thing - there are way too many people who buy all the lies. They applaud to the speakers that openly work on the destruction of the middle class and the "true" American values.
Sometimes, just sometimes I think the best thing to do: just drop all my ideas about decent human values and all that. Like they do; just flush all the ethics down the tube ... and make sure, that if we are all loosing ... at least "they" loose more than me.
To bad that there is no button to simply disable all my internal settings ...
Dumbo, I don't thing there's anything wrong with your "internal settings".
"Not in one man, or in one generation, can anything great be accomplished . . . mankind, and life in general, is a succession of generations in which it is enough to nurture a spark from hand to hand, always in the hope that the flame will catch at last."
--Isaac Asimov
Your time will come.
I'm depressed, too and find it difficult to talk to many people about what's going on. I shared information about the FBI being able to put GPS tracking devices on our cars- while parked in our own driveways- and people I talked to didn't bat an eyelid over this. You're right about younger people; the teens and college-aged people I talk to have that "if you don't have anything to hide, why are you worried" outlook. They're used to surveillance cameras everywhere and people constantly photographing or videotaping them everywhere; in fact, most of them photograph and videotape everything and nothing is considered private anymore. Most of the people I know seem obsessed with the 2nd Amendment but never discuss the 4th.
I was born roughly ten years before you, and have some memory of the tail end of many of the movements of the 60s and 70s, enough to remember what a shock it was when Reagan came in and changed everything. It didn't even seem real all the damage he did because it seemed so extreme, but in no time at all he had filled city streets with more homeless people than people had seen since the 1930s and started putting as many Blacks as possible in prison, as he shoveled money from social services and education into military, prisons, and police. And now the US has been moved so far to the right that all of that is considered normal and even Democrats would seem right-wing compared to what Reagan could get away with in the 80s (not that Reagan wouldn't have loooooved to be able get away with what right-wingers get away with today). In the 80s, at least at the start of the Reagan regime, there was still some public opposition, and some principled Democratic opposition, to the rightward policy shifts. But even though some of the biggest demonstrations of all time took place in the 80s (against nuclear weapons and against government AIDS policy), it seemed at the time the way it does now - like we were outnumbered and it was all hopeless, like fashion and time had passed us by, because the Reaganites had the media "on bended knee" via threats and intimidation.
And after Reagan rescinded the media Fairness Doctrine in 1987, opening the way to the rise of Fox News, Clear Channel, et al, that's when you began to hear on a nation-wide scale the now-standard tactic of the right denouncing the media as "liberal," which succeeded in moving the entire US media spectrum far to the right, where it remains today.
I understand your wishing sometimes you could just turn off your inner conscience and be a ruthless, callous motherfucker like everyone else around you. If in casual conversation you try to bring up anything remotely left-leaning in the US today, particularly among the young, you may not be able to socialize at all, people may shun you. Of course, they all say that they just don't like to be "political," but as you note, they've been raised in such a right-wing environment that right-wing assumptions are just part of them. The wisest people I know over the past three decades avoided all this by leaving the US for good, and I don't mean via the military. They emigrated - to the Netherlands, Japan, Mexico, France, Canada, the UK. Not a bad idea.
You can't balme the huge increase in prison population solely on Reagan. Mario Cuomo built a lot of prisons in NY.
dumbo - you're not so dumb. Hang onto your internal settings, please. You're not alone - so many of us get depressed, even we who did enjoy some of the benefits of the 50's and 60's. It's horrible to watch everything unravel, all the progress and hard-won gains of those decades. Even my mother, who is 91, sadly observed that nothing lasted longer than a generation. Her generation started out rough and ended well; mine started out well and ended rough; and yours never had a chance.
Never, never drop your ideals. Choose to live among people who deserve you for a friend. In a way, it may be liberating to let go of a certain degree of hope. I've reached a similar conclusion: when it comes to the human character, there is no bottom. But there are plenty of people who don't live there; those are the ones you look for, as Diogenes did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope
The world is in a bad place right now, but the pendulum will swing again. There are signs of good things to come in Europe and the Third World. It's just the ebb and flow of human activity. Nothing lasts forever, not even the bad stuff. Find a cause you believe in and lend your insights and intelligence to that.
If you surrender your internal settings, THEY will have won.
Dumbo: I too was born in '74, and my long meandering journey in politics has led me to one conclusion: people (especially the general population of the U.S.) are weak and overwhelmed with the exponential growth of everything in today's society and rely more than ever on popular media to show them how to live/what to believe/for whom to vote. A perfect storm, really, for the right: the explosion of the technology age has produced, both in the older and younger generations, a certain detachment from reality and an unhealthy reliance on outer stimuli as opposed to inner growth. This, at the same time as the shift in all relevant paradigms to the right continues its creep. Perhaps Reagan wasn't smart enough to envision all of this, but he certainly was the impetus...and his predecessors saw the opportunity he created and continued to the sinister tilt right.
I see things as pretty hopeless at this point. Outside of a major revolution, it seems to me that the right and corporate interests are firmly entrenched . I too get depressed quite often, and wonder if I should just finally give in and accept the world as it is. But there are certain reasons to keep going...those reasons likely vary from person to person. For me, it's my young children. It brings me so much joy to supplement my children's corporate-funded education with my thoughts, ideas and recommendations (and version of history). It keeps that glimmer of hope...no matter how dim it is...alive in me. I consciously choose not to think too much about their future world; I've elected to simply concentrate on the present and raise intelligent, responsible citizens. That's all I can do.
I agree totally. Except for one important difference: we're quickly destroying the planet for profit, current politics is all about that. Saving the environment, preventing further destruction are considered terrorist activities. And there will be no future for humans without at least a reasonably healthy, diverse planet. I only hope when that pendulum swings there's a planet left to live on.
If the mainstream media were truly liberal they would examine the claim that Obama is a socialist by having on its programs genuine socialists who would then point out to the American public what socialism actually is and how Obama really has more in common with the Republicans than he does with anyone on the true left. One suspects that Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! would then welcome the competition that she would be getting from the supposed liberal media.
the problem w/ the "socialist" tag that the teabaggers love to slam obama with - is when you ask them what is "socialist" about obama they always point out 2 things:
1. health care reform and making people buy insurance
2. the bank bailouts - which were actually passed under bush but hey who's counting?
Both are examples of the classic definition of FASCISM
that's the crux - when teabaggers say socialist they actually mean fascist.
"keep your gov hands off my medicare"
And the tea party is the most efficient and effective fascism delivery vehicle ever contrived.
Now that is a mouthful, and far from a proven fact, considering that they have not yet completed even one election cycle.
Very good point. I'm old enough to remember when NPR(!) periodically carried commentaries by Michael Harrington, a leader of the Democratic Socialists of America. I didn't always agree with Harrington's analysis, but I always reveled in the fact that he was out there regularly articulating a true left-wing perspective to counteract the corporately-dominated swill.
But ... I can't even IMAGINE someone like Harrington appearing on NPR or any other mainstream media outlet today. Imagine the backlash that would be mounted by the paranoid Tea-Partying masses.
What a sorry commentary on the current state of out Fourth Estate.
In addition to your worthwhile suggestion, Erroll, the media should host more guests from countries with (for example) public health-care programs that actually ARE socialist by U.S. metrics -- Canada, England, Costa Rica -- to contrast against the corporately-friendly version the Obama Administration settled for that bears no resemblence to "socialism" (regardless of what the Faux-brainwashed masses have been led to believe).
"Tea-Partying masses"
You bought into the media lie.
They are a dinky minority.
Maybe. But they ARE the ones turning out tens of thousands of people at rallies on the National Mall, while U.S. progressives and socialists are busy ... um ... pretty much just blogging and tweeting each other on sites like this, as far as I can tell.
Though you're correct in the sense that Faux News and their competitors continually hype any Tea Party news, while downplaying the significance of any progressive actions and rallies in the U.S. ... doesn't fit the corporate-controlled media narrative ...
High crimes and misdemeanors have gone on unpunished since the end of WWII in this country. We were allowed to believe for a while that things were changing during the 60's and 70's, but it wasn't real. The criminal corporate state was still plotting its eventual takeover which it has almost completely accomplished. After Vietnam, the plutocrats learned to never allow the press to report independently from a war zone thus we get sanitized invasions and occupations. Just like reports on the massive increase in poverty are rarely ever mentioned. The crimes that took place on Wall St. have gone unpunished leading the criminals to believe they are untouchable. Profits and violence against the people go hand in hand. Information is power and so must be controlled. Net neutrality will be next. The sociopaths are winning Ralph. And the media moguls are laughing all the way to the bank. It's not fun being a socially conscious person in this screwed up world.
The point is to tell the lie so completely, and from every angle, that no one realizes its a lie, or if they do they are shut out of the 'national conversation'.
So, in marching toward Iraq, the national discussion varied from 'liberal': 'gosh lets not kill too many Iraqis', to conservative: 'nuke 'em all'. This allows O'Reilly to split the difference with a centered, 'lets kill many of them, but not most' and we all feel as though we thought about it.
On a positive note, it seems a matter of time before we all watch our teevee and read what we want to online, where the corporate media has little control on what we see, hear and read.
And where your corporate internet provider will soon load Faux News propaganda in a few seconds, but DemocracyNow will take a minute and be subject to unexplained dropouts. (and where, of course, they'll be watching what you read and reporting it to the authorities).
Eze- I look forward to that day but please don't kid yourselves-corporate media won't be giving up control any time soon and without a long sneaky dirty fight. Have you heard about the "Scrapers?". They call it "Marketing".
The thing that gets me depressed is this willful ignorance that this country, aided by corp.media, is so utterly enamored with.Being educated-it used to be celebrated in this country. No More. If we could just stand to smart again the lies wouldn't be tolerated so easily. And Dumbo-please don't give up your human values. I know it's tough, but it really is the only way to sanity. And ther are many more that feel like you do so don't give up. When I have those days, I simply turn it ALL off and go hang out with Mother Nature. Peace..
The profession of "Journalist" is as dead in the USA as the business of "Buggy Whip Manufacturer"
There are only corporate propogandists and political butt-lickers.
I refuse to read/watch ANY Of the crap spilling over the border.
What the hell is wrong with the Left?
When the Right needs a unified chorus of voices to rise up and repeat their mantras of lies, do they ever have a difficulty getting the ranks to gather en masse and begin shouting? No.
When will we hear not only a unified chorus from the Left ceaselessly repeating – "This is not OUR liberal news media!!", but also, even more importantly: "This media is the enemy of the Left and all Liberalism stands for!"
Not only is the 'Liberal Media' not liberal, it is the establishment's greatest weapon against its greatest perceived enemy: We the reasonable people of America. After all, what is the War-On-Terror, if not really a war *of terror* against reasonable people, who are only seeking reasonable solutions, in a time when this can only mean reasonable governance by and for reasonable people. That threatens everything they are, far more than the boogey-man bin Laden, or all of Al Qaeda combined, because what the corrupt and powerful want from this country, in perpetuity, is to maintain their corrupt power, and this is not sustainable, sane or at all reasonable.
Liberals, every time you hear the words 'Liberal' and 'Media' used together, its time to start raising bloody hell, and not give the person who said it a minute of peace. Every time you hear this lie, it is the corporations throwing the blame on us for all their malevolent deeds. To not counter it, is to accept their lies as truth.
–SS.
Conclusion: We're screwed.
Don't kid yourselves- the internet is only making things worse.
This ain't '1984'
It's 'Brave New World.'
Yes. The internet has increased isolation.
It's all quite depressing. Including Nader's article and the replies. Nader mentions Alterman's book which was a piece of crap compared to Manufacturing Consent by Herman and Chomsky. Alterman apparently hadn't read Chomsky, and this in turn because he apparently dismisses him as some communist not worth his time.
I've read I think 7 books on media bias. The only one worse than Alterman's was Bernard Goldberg's which argued for a liberal bias. It's not good at all that Nader only mentions Alterman.
I think there's almost no one left at all who even realizes that the media is owned by billionaires and has an extreme rightwing bias on anything related to money. Despite the absurdity of believing in a liberal bias, that's the message we're inundated with and we're otherwise all quite isolated.
Bowling Alone by Putnam is a good book about the increasing isolation in American society.
This site is very depressing by the way as there doesn't seem to be any solution left at this point. And time spent here is just more time spent in isolation, which again, is a huge part of the problem.
It has shit to do with ego satisfaction and hiding inaction and why in hell so many of you hate-filled internetist come on here demonizing your fellow leftists is beyond me.
Originally the hope was to make up for the media bias by putting the truth out online. At this point I think it's clear that hasn't worked. I quit posting online (and reading for that matter) a few years back because there just isn't anything that can be done. All I was doing was destroying any possibility of having any personal happiness.
In truth I became so depressed for a while I decided it was best if people didn't know the truth. It is such an incredibly awful truth. This is a dystopia. How much better to be ignorant seeing as there isn't actually anything to be done about it. If there was, they'd just make it illegal.
How are people who point out that the internet has probably hampered activism and increased isolation "demonizing their fellow leftists"? Is stating the truth demonizing people?
And life isn't about personal individual happiness or about avoiding depression. One does what one is moved to do, as the French are currently demonstrating, as the Greeks have demonstrated in recent years, as Venezuelans and Bolivians have demonstrated over and over, as Americans have demonstrated at various times in the past, etc. The US is currently a dystopia but pointing out others' delusions isn't demonizing them. It may enlighten them.