The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, may have ignited the fire that has driven the United States in the direction of a more authoritarian system. But the kindling was put in place over three decades. The conservatives who set the United States off in this political direction in the ’70s had no idea where the journey would end. Their… return to article
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Reader Comments (15)Page 1 of 1 pagesThe greater outrage is the abdication of the WH Press Corps - that has resulted in a Free Pass Prez and a shamefully uninformed electorate. At the very least! The questions should have been asked!
Must Read:THE PITIFUL PRESS CORPS!
ASK NO QUESTIONS - REPORT NO LIES!
A TvNewsLIES.org ANALYSIS - October, 2004WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?
Because of the capitulation of the Press Corpse, and the abdication of its historic role, tens of millions of Americans are dangerously ill equipped to make a truly informed choice in the voting booth.
Where the hell is the outrage? We’ve just had three benign debates, all shamefully limited in scope and embarrassingly bland in content. But that’s par for the course in the world of politics. The array of questions was anticipated and the answers were well rehearsed. Once again, that’s par for the course in the prelude to Election Day. The questions were interesting, if not enlightening, - and I’m certain the nation is more prepared to make an educated choice in November after learning about the candidate’s love for their wives. But, as we said, that’s the way it goes.
Reality check: It was not the job of the debate moderators or even John Kerry to challenge George Bush on his dismal and dangerous record in office. That role has traditionally been the responsibility of the men and women of the White House Press Corps. They are supposed to ask the questions and pursue the answers all through the President’s term of office. They are supposed to be independent and undaunted. They once were. They no longer are. Where the hell is the outrage?
Where the hell is the outrage that the White House Press Corps has not asked the President a single spontaneous question in all these years? Where the hell is the outrage that the White House Press Corpse has not held George W. Bush accountable for his actions for all the years of his disastrous administration? Where the hell is the outrage that this most secretive of administrations in memory has been allowed a free pass by those who are supposedly responsible for guarding our Constitutional right to know? There seems to be no outrage, whatsoever.
Because of the capitulation of the Press Corpse, and the abdication of its historic role, tens of millions of Americans are dangerously ill equipped to make a truly informed choice in the voting booth.
A myriad of terribly important questions have never been asked of George Bush at press conferences that never materialized. They surely were not asked during the handful of staged press conferences that were held only sporadically in almost four years. No president in history has held fewer or more controlled press conferences than the present resident of the White House. And no president in history has so successfully intimidated and suppressed the media and the Press Corps. Where the hell is the outrage?
SOME QUESTIONS THAT WERE NOT ASKED!
Had there been an honorable and responsible Press Corps, and had there been a President willing to explain himself to the nation, we might have witnessed the following:
(List of questions in the full article)
http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/the_pitiful_press_corps_.html
Posted by Reg on Oct 19, 2004 at 8:59 AM For those who believe Bush was joking when he said in 2000, “If this were a dictatorship, ...”, go to www.iconoclast-texas.com, the website of Bush’s hometown Crawford, Texas , newspaper that endorsed Bush in 2000, but chose Kerry this year. In the Guest Op-Ed is an eyewitness account by Trish Bowcock about the confict in her hometown of Jacksonville, Oregon, when Bush visited recently. The people of this small Oregon town of 2,226 were able to have the “Brownshirt Experience” of Hitler’s Germany of the 1930’s. The shadow of the Limbaughs, Fox News, The Sinclair Group, The Christian Right, The Patriot Act, ect. is growing and darkening a fading Democracy.
Posted by Mark Cartwright on Oct 19, 2004 at 10:24 AM “His contribution was an intuitive grasp of how hardball Republican strategies, aggressive conservative news outlets and mystical Christian fundamentalism could blend into a potent political coalition and consolidate the Right’s dominance of U.S. government power.”
Given this, how is it so easy for the right wing to continue to portray itself as the minority, as the victims, etc., fighting against all that ails the country?
I’m happy to read Mark Cartwright’s comment above, however, for it is quite remarkable that a newspaper from Bush’s hometown would endorse Kerry!
please vote for kerry!
virgin mobile sponsored a contest encouraging young people to create PSAs on why it is important to vote--please go to www.psaupload.com and vote today for one of the five finalists.
Posted by sms81 on Oct 19, 2004 at 10:41 AM sms… the right wind has portrayed itself as a minority the way the hypochondriac endlessly complains of nonexistent ills and ends up outliving most of the family to take the spoils of inheritance. That is one aspect of it. The other is, it appeals to something you will find in the flamer posts (which all sound identical in their narrow vocabulary), namely envy. I recall the wonderful quote by Mencken (whom I recommend in these tough times, a conservative/anarchist/wildcat writer), who said, Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somwhere may be happy. I could go on and on about it, but therein lies the clue, I suspect. What the piece above fails to take into account, something that fuels my optimism, is that the US-American electorate is very sanguine. And thene there is a generqation growing up that may be tired of slinging hamburgers and praying daily to the Ghost of Mr. WalMart and may well just rebel and say no. Say no to thugs.
There is a pessimistic side of me that also remembers “It can’t happen here” by Sinclair Lewis.
What can be done? Enjoy life, smile, say yes, keep your sense of humor about you, and be yourself and live up to your principles. I am 47, and I think I have been to MacDonald’s 5 times in my life (twice I was only a passenger). No TV, either.
Amen
Posted by Marton on Oct 19, 2004 at 11:53 AM What we need here is a good expose of many of the so called ‘conservative media’ - I say conservative but really I mean greedy media - right wing equals cash - left wing equals, eh, ethnic diversity? Social Justice? you cant run an SUV on ethical arguments can you? I mean, an example is Sean Hannity - I listen to him bang on about his Catholic faith quite a lot - where exactly in his faith does it say it is okay to pre - emptively kill someone? the same place where it says its ok to kill someone - nowhere. So O’Reilly is a perv, Hannity is a chickenhawk, Limbaugh is a big fat fucking junkie joke and as for ‘coulter’? Maybe she was molested by a ‘liberal’ as a child (I’m serious here folks!) - why else would she display such warped and extreme hatred of ‘liberalism? But above all, its murdoch and his son that need bringing down - remember, good ol’ rupert thought being compared to hitler was a compliment! FOX, does it stand for ‘fed on xanax’?
Posted by Ian C on Oct 19, 2004 at 12:33 PM There can be no argument about Parry’s points in this piece; only an additional observation needs to be presented. If the corporate media that pander to the Bush admin, that sells its journalistic integrity for a place on the embeddedment wagon, are so entrenched, then how come we have real competition in this election, how come Kerry (according to electoral-vote.com) is holding 284 EV’s as of this moment?
The answer is the great equalizer of the modern democratic society, and I’m writing on it this very instant. The credit in this election season goes, of course, to Howard Dean for starting the Internet momentum that has brought the Dems back into contention; but much of the credit going back further and up to this moment goes to the extraordinary grassroots e-society known as moveon.org, which has become the model for every web-based political advocacy group out there--left-wing and right as well.
I’m actually working on a longer piece for my weblog about this phenomenon (see www.homepage.mac.com/briandonohue/iBlog/index.html for a sampling), so I’ll leave the discussion there, with a reminder that creativity, no matter what form it happens to appear in, will inevitably win hearts, minds, and votes.
Posted by Brian Donohue on Oct 19, 2004 at 5:24 PM Brian, I agree with the Internet comment 100%. An enormous amount of work has been done via Internet, and as much as I decry TV, the Internet has a lot to do with reading and forming a personal view. It’s like sitting in a grand living library, surrounded by pearls and shit at the same time, and you have to roll up your mental sleeves and start deciding based on experience or further researech what is wisdom and what is wash. Somewheres in one of these posts I mentioned that, by the way, that the GOP may run up against the Internet. But thanks for pointing the way to Dean.
As for the business with the media… The US media in general, not in particular, have been cowed into submission in great part, while another block of them simply toes the corporate line. It’s interesting to note that movies are made about the Great Tradiion of American Journalism, but in reality, nothing seems to happen. I read interviews and wonder: Where is the tough question?
Another interesting point I would like to make, just throw out actually.. Vietnam, Watergate. These two names have grown hoofs and horns in the GOP mouth. Actually, the pullout of Vietnam was an achievemnet (but I don’t remem ber the US governmetn apologizing for the unbelievable destruction left behind and installing Pol Pot in Cambodia) as was the dumping of Nixon. It proved we as a nation can get rid of crooked pols. Instead, the media was “blamed,” yeah, accused of loosing the war and the international embarassment of Nixon. And here comes the next shock: I found Carter to be an excellent president in the balance: Two of his ideas stick to my mind: One, human rights! If we had followed that path, 9/11 would never have happened. But we didn’t: We supported monsters, and in the developming world nominated such freaks as Pinochet glowing examples of freemarket achievements. Reagan supported the death squads and created that band of thugs called the contras in Nicaragua. We suddenly discovered bombs where our ears should have been. The priviledge of power should make us humble and dignified, we, as a nation believe we have a right to that power, a concept that goes back to that scurvied bunch of religious fanatics who made it to the shores of the Indian Nation in the early 17th century. (Read Milton, read Hofstadter “The Paranoid Style").
Carter’s other point was: save energy. Well, we know what happened there. It could have been done in the late 70s, 80s, but coporate greed has inveigled people the world round to buy cars that are consuming MORE instead of LESS. Though the USA remains the number one fuel burner. We had lots of time to change our ways. Now, of course, we have to invade countries to get their oil. The media crucified Carter for ideas that fit perfectly in the American arena of Realpolitik and Christian faith. Bang. Now we have an allegedly Christian president who lies, lets corporate America devour national and international resources… need I say more.
... Gotta go to work now
Posted by Marton on Oct 20, 2004 at 2:23 AM Yup yup yup, God bless the internet, and God forbid any efforts to bring it under control of the factionally-minded! However, there’s no comparing the internet (which is only available to people with computers) with TV for audiovisual impact and visceral response. Even the choice of TV programs watched by the public reveals this; how many people watch stuff like Jackass or O’Reilly versus, say, PBS or A&E;? The “problem” with the liberal/progressive message is that it doesn’t tap into those gut-level responses in nearly the same way as messages like “defeat our enemies”, “show your patriotism”, or “defend God” (which is a bizarre formulation in itself, if you think about it). Somehow there’s got to be a mass-media approach that connects with the indignation of people who have lost good jobs and are now enduring crappy ones, or people who are furious at being duped by the Anglo-American “intelligence” community’s assertions about Iraqi WMD strikes in 45 minutes. The reactionaries have been good students of mass psychology, you have to grant them that, and their huge investments in controlling media organs have already been noted. The progressives have to be ready to enter the visceral fray; when they come off as a bunch of intellectuals or idealists, however mistaken that view of them may be, hardly anyone can identify with them.
Posted by Kuya on Oct 20, 2004 at 7:06 PM Hi Marton, yes Moore does a pretty good job provoking outrage, Bowling For Columbine was masterful, F9/11 less so. We gotta feed that momentum, though, get an actual progressive movement going that ordinary folk can get a handle on, something that guys like my dad could have appreciated. That’s the tough part, because people were so freaked by 9/11 and have such a habitual (and natural) response to the fact that their sons and daughters are getting killed in the Iraq war that they feel duty-bound to support the government, giving them coincidental “support” for all the other balderdash they’ve come up with since. Even if the pretext for the war was bogus, even when the preparation for 9/11 began years before Bush even thought of running for prez. Frustrating!
Posted by Kuya on Oct 21, 2004 at 12:34 AM Please read the attached story. Why is this not being investigated/reported by other media outlets? This is a critical story, yet the only way I knew of it was to go to airamericaradio.com!
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-scheer19oct19,1,6762967.column?coll=la a-util-op-ed
Posted by KW on Oct 21, 2004 at 7:28 AM For a long time I have been asking myself how the fundamentalist right could support without question this administration’s dishonesty (which violates the commandment “you shall not bear false witness")and other policies that are contrary to the teachings of Jesus. Writing in “The Christian Century” Bruce Lincoln said: “Many of those shaping these policies are tough-minded neoconservatives who share with political philosopher Leo Strauss a cynical view of religion as unfit for the elites, but useful for swaying the masses. To Bush falls the task of securing broad support for this team’s agenda from his fervently evangelical base. It is not an easy business, and it requires all the linguistic skill, theological acumen his staff can muster.”
Posted by jbcracker on Oct 21, 2004 at 9:19 AM Kuya, you’ve been snorting up the mainstream bullchips like a regular Orwellian dumbed-down addict, haven’t you? Afraid to sound like you have a mind of your own? Do your friends and neighbors all think like you do and actually believe that those progressives you think are afraid to get into the ring with the likes of you and your cowardly zombie clone android-heads don’t exist in numbers that would make you tuck your tail between your treasonous legs and run? Don’t you get it, pal? The fascist media hides all of this from you all and you suck it down like manna from heaven because it dovetails nicely into all of your pet biases and bigoted fears, you walking dead, you!
Get your head out of your ass and join the rest of humanity...that means 90% of the world’s population...and get to work making this a planet you can make your kids and grandkids proud of having saved from environmental collapse. Stop throwing your ever-devaluing buck on nonsense while our government’s policies are forcing whole countries to starve, be massacred by goon squads trained by us, and used to take away yours and your neighbors’ jobs.
You give yourself away by statements such as, “hardly anyone can identify with them”. What you mean is that the sort of people you exclusively hang out with are afraid of using their brains because Big Brother might not like something or other that might slip out.
Progressives is just a word...like neo-con, fascist, etc. The reality is a bit more frightening...it’s like comparing the flag to what it stands for and confusing one with the other. Its like looking at the Earth from space and NOT seeing national boundaries and lines of longtitude and latitude...that sort of stuff. But mostly its about people. Yeah, people like yourself who really try to change the world instead of scraping up the old and failed systems and putting a high-tech face on them. If you didn’t have this unspoken oath between yourself and the beer-dazed black and whiters you hang with, maybe you’d realize just how close this old Earth is to breaking down completely and then taking out it’s justified revenge on us...only it’s not revenge but Nature re-balancing itself after a few thousand years of human indifference, pillage, poisoning, and thoughtless monkey-ing around with what we can’t understand.
It is absolutely necessary for your manhood or womanhood to be a non-conformist. We were all born unique like everyone else and have singular contributions to make to ...if only we’d stop being afraid of believing in our own selves and stop trying to be like the bastards who don’t give a fig about you, me, or anyone but themselves and who rule the world because they know just how much you ridicule those who think for themselves and just how much you want to be like they demand you should be.
Posted by Dominick Mastroserio on Oct 21, 2004 at 2:11 PM That’s some pretty rough stuff, comrade, I guess you told me. Actually, if you want to take the Gaya thing far enough, I suppose we are just self-aggrandizing, overly imaginative apes who could very well, and may be in the midst of doing, abuse and poison ourselves into permanent savagery and eventual extinction. I do think that pretending humans can alone “destroy” the planet’s ecological processes is another attitude based on human hubris, however, more likely we could simply strafe tons of species and make decent life impossible for ourselves, but in the end evolution will proceed whether we’re around or not, and the leftover species we don’t kill off will evolve, diverge, speciate, blah blah blah for a few more billion years…
In the here-and-now, however, I’ll cling to the delusion that there is some sort of hope for human civilization via concerted and intelligent cooperation, when and if we get that clue. Guess I’m hypnotized, eh? Me and 90% of the human race, or more likely 98%.
I’m getting sleeepy, veeeeery sleeeeeeepy…
Wouldn’t mind discoursing with you, but gotta say, the venomosity inhibits that. Were you trying to teach me something, or just insult?
Posted by Kuya on Oct 24, 2004 at 4:30 PM For time imortal men have tried to control others. The current President Bush is nothing more than a person trying to impose his will on others. Nothing out of the ordinary there. The scary part of course is that he’s the President of the U.S. so he can start a war and thousands will die. Or he can change the economy and thousands suffer, etc.
Posted by Chris on Oct 25, 2004 at 12:55 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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