It’s hard to quantify the contamination of free thought that your mainstream media have exacted on this grand republic. But I’ll give it a hearty shot. The primary culprit is the cold-blooded impuissance and intellectual surrender. Perfidy meets mindless fecklessness. Sheeple plain and brutally simple.
Can you spot the difference? One of these is part of a trained circus act doubling as entertainment that some observers have even considered to be inhumane and exploitative in fact. The other is a seal. But be not mistaken, Jon Stewart is the king of timing. Had he attempted the Stewart bit now, it wouldn’t have taken off. And success is in great part due to his 300+ writers who gave us such gems as, “The Internet is just a world passing around notes in a classroom.” Wow. Move over Mort Sahl. Leibowitz is in the room.
At the convention in Philly, Truthdig founder and editor Robert Scheer ran into Thomas Frank, whose latest book, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened To The Party Of The People? is a must-read for all progressives and, hopefully, for some Democrats who aren't already too far gone. Frank admitted Democrats aren't paying the book any serious attention.. His critique-- "that what we have today is a liberalism of the rich...
How I see mainstream media news.
Believing ≠ Hoping. Look at what you believe you believe and what you know you know. You don’t. You wish and hope and trust. There’s a big difference, Sparky.
The lies your being handed are by design. “When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.” Thus spake Walter Lippmann.
In Part 1 of this article I argued that the 2016 US presidential race is the Alien vs. Predator election. The joke, which is at the expense of everyone on this planet, is that they are both aliens and both predators. Many ordinary people understand the situation perfectly well.
“News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And it’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead.” Evelyn Waugh
This approximates the problem. It’s much worse. It fails to take into account the role that the media play in softening up our collective psyche. Our beloved republic is witnessing a disintegration of the Left. The necessary counterbalance. A viable vision of direction. We’re unable to appreciate neoliberalism and statist perversions camouflaging as platform. No clue as to class warfare. We’re prisoners of an autocratic oligarchy. But don’t hurt our feelings or abrade our think skin. The SJWs will find you and you’ll taste their wrath.
Devoid of message and vision. But plenty of feigned mirth and overreaction. Loaded with schmaltz and hype. Contrived merriment and infectious glee substituting for a determined plot and plan. The first woman, the progressive, her turn – whatever. But never a word about qualifications, record and platform. Though she does have “experience.” As Willie Sutton had banking experience, I suppose.
I love any excuse to embed one of my favorite old 415 Records songs-- my indie label in San Francisco-- "The Catholics Are Attacking" by the Pop'O'Pies. This time it has to do with a gaggle of right-wing bishops attacking Tim Kaine for not bucking under to their theocratic instincts and their bizarre interpretation of Jesus' religion as one where women are relegated to staying home, ignorant and pregnant.
Terry McAuliffe is a long time crooked operator from the corporatist wing of the Democratic Party. Don't ask how I put myself in this awkward position, but Dick Gephardt once tricked me into shaking hands with him. But, of course, of course, of course, he's the lesser evil than whatever horrid diarrhea Satan crapped out in the form of a Republican opponent-- much lesser evil.
