One of the Most Depressing Video I've Ever Sat Through

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/iGeU3DAv1cVwAZHIl2WjxUZyc,rT1iYc

by Kevin Gosztola (186 articles, 95 quicklinks, 63 diaries, 769 comments) on Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 7:21:16 PM
 

Note that in the NYT coverage of this debate, Kucinich's

name is not even mentioned. As far as the article is concerned, he doesn't even exist. Nor does Mike Gravel. The newspaper makes no mention of either of these guys, who "just happen" to be the only Dem candidates seriously opposed to the war.

What does this say about our media? Wouldn't fair coverage of the debate include some mention of the exclusion of both Kucinich & Gravel? Reading this article and seeing that both are now "un-persons" resembles Stalin's accounts of the Russian Revolution, in which Trotsky suddenly didn't exist anymore. That's what we've come to.

by Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1087 comments) on Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 8:23:14 PM
 

The State v. the People

Take what corporate media tell you and flip it 180°; you’ll be closer the truth.

If it’s corporately owned, then it’s biased toward its owners’ political and economic ends.

That’s why Gravel, Paul, and Kucinich are treated as alleged enemies of the state, and are getting just slightly better corporate media treatment than Ahmadinejad.

by Dan Alba (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 52 comments) on Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 10:55:09 PM
 

What was missing was spark and sparkle

If you understand certain principles involved in the relationship between entertainment, education, and information, it becomes that there is a more insidious and subtle effect resulting from the exclusion of Kucinich from the latest debate than the obvious which comes to mind from the undemocratic exclusion of one man from such national exposure. I say "effect" rather than "motivation" because it renders irrelevant whether this effect is accidental or deliberate. Some might think it cynical to presume that certain influences are so subtle and Machiavellian as to actually calculate these things. For myself, personally, apply any label you wish, I believe that it's deliberate. These planner and movers are very smart people and they do indeed think about many, many factors when planning events.

This principle that I speak of is that something which livens up a performance like a debate has an effect which benefits all participants in the performance, or in this case, the debate. Not only directly in that all participants are galvanized, energized, relaxed, and/or become more spirited from the general atmosphere. But also indirectly in that all participants benefit from a more concentrated, enlivened, and interested audience. Make someone laugh from stage right and they will pay more attention, with interest, to whatever occurs stage left.

The exclusion of Dennis Kucinich on some flimsy bureaucratic and arbitrary technicality must be seen not only as an event in isolation, though surely that in itself may be quite revealing. But it must also be seen in combination with tandem events. In this case, it must be seen as part of a broader whole which also saw the inclusion of Alan Keyes in the republican debate, a candidate who is virtually nonexistent in this race and one who clearly wasn't even campaigning for himself during the debate.

When one considers the snooze factor from the democratic debate, one must also consider, whatever else Alan Keyes may have provided to the republican debate, that he provided a spark to that debate which very simply put made it more interesting. In my case too, even though I naturally find myself in far greater sympathy and empathy with the democrats in this race and even though I personally think the democrats are clearly more informed on their various issues and have much clearer perspectives, I found the republican debate much easier and more enjoyable to watch.

Iowa polls may have put Kucinich at only 1%, but Keyes has not even ranked that highly, his poll numbers being so low. 9 republicans took the stage, yet only 6 democrats, so surely the crowding doesn't enter into the picture. Given that the same organizers set up both debates, held only one day apart, I find it more than coincidental that Kucinich's absence (not to mention Gravel's absence) left the democratic stage with far less sparkle and colour than otherwise would have been the case, yet the very opposite was the effect of Alan Keyes inclusion in the republican debate.

Does anyone think for a minute that this net effect, in the case of either debate plus the combined effect of the two, doesn't have an impact upon the American voter? Doesn't all of this make one wonder even more than they may have previously about the state of democracy in the United States? Now it seems that unfair financing has an improper effect upon the democratic process, but the machinations of corporate owned media may be even more directly and deliberately interfering in the democratic process.

I remember how derisive we as a country were for so many decades over the single party system in the communist USSR. I remember how derisive we were over what we saw as a pretense of a parliamentary system which, in our view, simply rubber stamped anything put before them. And I also remember something Krushchev, former Premier of the Soviet Union once said about the different between Russian and the United States - in Russia, he said, people have a choice of one man to lead them; in the United States, he continued, people have a choice between two men to lead them.

That may be significant, that difference between one and two. But is it democracy? 

by Terry (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 28 comments) on Friday, December 14, 2007 at 8:04:52 AM