|
The Bush Whores, How Much
Propaganda is Enough for America?
- By Anthony Wade
-
- January 29, 2005
-
- Have you noticed it unraveling America? Have you noticed the
Bush propaganda machine start to decompensate in front of your
eyes. Most importantly, have you even considered what it all
means?
-
- It started with a fellow named Armstrong Williams. Mr.
Williams was a relatively popular conservative commentator on both
radio and TV. When Bush carved the school vouchers out of his new
“No Child Left Behind” back in 2001, Armstrong Williams was none
to pleased and said that “Mr. Bush scooped out the soul of his own
education proposal." Pretty harsh language but soon, Mr. Williams
changed his tune. In fact, he eventually became one of the
champion’s of the NCLB legislation. What changed his mind you ask?
One would be logical to conclude that it would be the $240,000
payoff he received from the administration to tout the law, that
changed his mind. Once he received this payola, Mr. Armstrong
commented in his weekly article a numerous occasions the value of
the very bill he demeaned just a few years earlier. Of course, he
also never revealed to his readers that he had been paid off,
permanently ruining his ethical reputation.
-
- If this was an isolated incident, it would be frightening
enough, but this week it has been revealed that Armstrong Williams
is only the tip of the propaganda iceberg. He only represents one
opinion Bush is trying to buy from you. Next up this week was a
woman named Maggie Gallagher. Ms. Gallagher is a syndicated
columnist who may have violated the law in promoting the Bush
marriage initiatives to Congress, without revealing she had been
paid by Bush to promote those initiatives. Did you get that
America? In 2002 and 2003, Ms. Gallagher received over $40,000
from the Bush administration to pimp their vision of marriage as
the panacea for all social welfare problems. On September 4, 2003
and again on March 3, 2004, Maggie Gallagher appeared before
Congress as a witness for the Majority (GOP) during the Federal
Marriage Amendment. At those hearings it appears that Ms.
Gallagher did not bother to inform Congress of the fact that her
opinion had been bought. It is unclear at this point if this was
technically a federal violation of law or a violation of Congress.
-
- Let’s walk through this again. Ms. Gallagher was paid $40,000
by the Bush administration to tout its marriage initiatives. From
that point on she began to promote the initiatives in her columns
extensively. These columns graced the pages of The New York Times,
The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, among others.
She was also paid to complete a report entitled, “Can Government
Strengthen Marriage?” Considering she was paid tens of thousands
of dollars, I am going to guess her answer was “yes”. Then,
because she had now written so much about the subject, she was
called as an expert witness before Congress when they were
deciding whether to fund the 300 million dollar “marriage
promotion initiatives”. The problem is that she did not tell
Congress that she had already received over $40,000 in payola to
push the same initiatives she was now pretending to be an “expert”
on.
-
- When she was busted this week her comment was, “I should have
disclosed a government contract when I later wrote about the Bush
marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it”.
I don’t know about you, but I forget people who hand me $40,000
every day, don’t you? This excuse is so preposterous that while
Ms. Gallagher may play an expert on marriage before Congress, she
is obviously divorced from reality. .
-
- So, we have yet another example of George Bush taking your tax
money, buying a media opinion, to then try and convince you (and
Congress in this case) about a plan he knows won’t float on it’s
own. Are you outraged yet? Are you disgusted yet? If not, let’s
discuss Michael McManus.
-
- Michael McManus is
another conservative syndicated columnist who was revealed this
week as another Bush whore. Mr. McManus writes a column,
Ethics & Religion, which appears in 50 newspapers, and he
has been trumpeting the Bush marriage initiatives as well. It
turns out the reason why, is he was paid $10,000 for doing so, by
the Bush administration. Now, despite the fact that Mr. McManus
needs to get a hold of Ms. Gallagher’s agent, this is yet another
egregious violation of the public trust. He is a microcosm of a
growing and apparently pervasive problem within the Bush
administration.
-
- This problem is that Bush has plans that he correctly
recognizes will not be greeted popularly by the people. So, he
takes our tax money and buys people, who are supposed to be
experts, to convince you to pass his initiatives. It is so
underhanded and Orwellian, it borders on fascism. President Bush
is buying your opinion to pass legislation he knows you do not
want. You will hear officials denouncing this tactic and swear
that they are moving on from it but that is only because they have
been caught with their pants down. What you also must realize is
that these three only represent the tip of the propaganda iceberg.
To see how far it goes, we also need to look at the press.
-
- It has also come to light this past week that there are actual
“plants” within the White House press pool. For the first four
years of Bush’s reign, he shunned press conferences because of his
propensity to become petulant. But even when it was Scott
McClellan (White House Press Secretary), the press pool always
seemed relatively tame. Now though, there are clearly people
planted there to serve up softball questions, probably submitted
by the White House, so McClellan or Bush can just knock them out
of the park. The questioner is never interrupted, a favorite
McClellan tactic when dealing with a subject matter he does not
wish to spend a lot of time on or the patented Bush “can I
finish?” answer is never implemented.
-
- These plants have been discovered to be from Talon News and at
a recent press conference, this is what they thought was an
appropriate question:
-
- “Thank you. Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very
bleak picture of the U.S. economy. [Senate Minority Leader] Harry
Reid [D-NV] was talking about soup lines. And [Senator] Hillary
Clinton [D-NY] was talking about the economy being on the verge of
collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social Security is
rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work
-- you've said you are going to reach out to these people -- how
are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced
themselves from reality?
-
- Say what??? This is such a loaded non-question I am amazed
that McClellan did not fall over laughing, except I am sure he
probably wrote the question for the Talon rep to ask. The
questioner was Jeff Gannon, who has also served up this meatball
for McClellan,
-
- “Scott, when you talk about the unemployment -- or the jobs
being created, is that based on the payroll survey, or the
household survey? Because there's -- because of the tax cuts,
there's been a tremendous increase in the number of entrepreneurs
that have started their own businesses, and those numbers aren't
reflected in the payroll survey.”
-
- Digging a little deeper into Talon News, Media Matters has
discovered that Talon News' editor in chief, Bobby Eberle, is a
Republican activist who served as a delegate to the 1996, 1998,
and 2000 Texas Republican Conventions and to the 2000 national
Republican Convention. In 1999, Eberle "was recognized with a
unanimously approved resolution of commendation by the Republican
Party of Texas for service and dedication to the Republican
cause." Eberle is also the president and CEO of GOPUSA.com, a
"conservative news, information, and design company dedicated to
promoting conservative ideals" that carries articles and
commentary by Gannon and Talon News. GOPUSA is also affiliated
with MillionsofAmericans.com, a conservative advocacy organization
run by Bruce Eberle, a relative of Bobby Eberle and a conservative
fundraising consultant. Gannon's articles for Talon News
frequently appear on GOPUSA.com. Bruce Eberle and his company have
made extensive financial contributions to Republican Party
candidates and committees.
-
- Gannon is not only a shill, he is a careless one. He has also
been busted this week by Media Matters as having lifted, verbatim,
GOP talking points into his own journalistic pieces. The link
here,
http://mediamatters.org/items/200501280001 will outline the
obvious plagiarism perpetrated by Gannon. Gannon’s own resume
posted on the Talon News site lists that “he
is also a graduate of the Leadership Institute Broadcast School of
Journalism.” Well, as haughty as that sounds the truth is not
quite as glamorous. It turns out that this is actually a two-day
seminar in conservative journalism which cost Mr. Gannon all of
$50. That is his degree, that is his expertise. It can all be
found here,
http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/02TRAINING/001BJS/001BJS.cfm.
-
- Mr. Gannon’s bio can
be found here,
-
-
http://www.talonnews.com/bios/jeffgannon.shtml
-
- How exactly do you
“graduate” from a two day seminar? What exactly makes Mr. Gannon a
journalist? Why is he selected for questions by the White House
Press Secretary, over far more qualified, real journalists, who
may have actually studied journalism? Why when he is called on,
does Mr. Gannon, so obviously compromised, continue to serve up
the most ridiculous softball questions, setting up the
administration to state their talking points?
-
- Have you connected
the dots in this article? Your government is in the business of
buying propaganda. It is in the business of buying your opinion.
It has now been caught shelling out $240,000 to a conservative
commentator to sell you the No Child Left Behind bill. Bush has
been busted paying a syndicated columnist over $40,000 to pretend
to Congress that it is her expert opinion that the Bush marriage
initiatives will work at a price tag of $300 million of your
dollars. Not convinced that was enough, Bush paid another $10,000
to yet another conservative syndicated columnist to pimp the same
marriage initiatives to you.
-
- In each case, the
whores who have been bought insult your intelligence by suggesting
they were unaware they were doing anything ethically wrong, one
even suggesting she forgot she was paid $40,000. In each case, the
pimps from the Bush administration all want to make it go away as
quickly as possible, saying they do not approve of it, and will
ensure it does not happen again, sure. Move along, nothing to see
here citizens.
-
- Meanwhile, the
government allows a plant within the White House Press Pool. A
go-to “reporter” that McClellan or Bush can call on if the heat
gets too much, knowing that a nice easy softball will be tossed up
that will result in perfect quotes for the evening news. It is a
propaganda machine. Then those answers make it onto talk radio, as
the Limbaugh’s and Hannity’s of the world will then pretend that
it is “news” when all it is, are talking points. Soon, it filters
down to Fox News, and other cable outlets. Soon, Chris Matthews
will be chatting about it with Ben Ginsberg, a GOP lawyer. Then at
ten o’clock Joe Scarborough will hash it out with the conservative
voice of insanity, Anne Coulter. By morning, the seeming innocuous
statements by Maggie Gallagher, or Armstrong Williams, or the
questions asked by a reporter with fake credentials have become
accepted fact through the vast propaganda machine the Bushies run.
We wake up in the morning and go about our lives not knowing that
the opinions we read, the news we trust, the sources that we base
our daily opinions on, have all been bought.
-
- This is all too real
America. The next item up for sale is your opinion about social
security. There have already been experts out there lying to you
about a system that is in “grave danger”. I wonder how much they
are paid for that opinion. There will be softball questions posed
by Jeff Gannon as he plays catch with Scott McClellan about how
Bush just wants to allow a greater return on investment. Limbaugh
and Hannity have already weighed in and surprise surprise, they
agree with the talking points. It is starting to be bantered
around “mainstream” media now, with folks like Matthews and
Scarborough, warming up in the bullpen to pitch the
administration’s propaganda to you. This link will take you to an
expose by Media Matters which addresses some of these concerns,
-
-
http://mediamatters.org/items/200501270012.
This
is not Orwell and we are way past 1984. This is your America. George
Bush thinks nothing of using YOUR money, to buy YOUR opinion, to
promote HIS agenda. If his ideas were that good, he would not need
to cheat to convince you otherwise. The fact is that the social
security scam will suck 2 trillion dollars out of the current system
and Bush has no way of paying for it, especially in light of
multiple wars and permanent tax breaks. He cannot tell you that
though because the truth would render his proposal defunct. So
instead, he gets his propaganda machine in motion to persuade you go
along with him. The next item up for sale is your democracy, are you
selling?
Anthony
Wade, a contributing writer to
opednews.com, is dedicated to educating the populace to the lies
and abuses of the government. He is a 37-year-old independent writer
from New York with political commentary articles seen on multiple
websites. A Christian progressive and professional Rehabilitation
Counselor working with the poor and disabled, Mr. Wade believes that
you can have faith and hold elected officials accountable for lies
and excess.
Anthony Wade’s
Archive:
http://www.opednews.com/archiveswadeanthony.htm
Email
Anthony:
takebacktheus@gmail.com
|
Contribute
$$ to OpEdNews
|
|
