When the Bush administration made the preposterous suggestion that plastic sheeting and duct tape should be used to construct air-tight safe rooms in the homes across America, we eagerly anticipated a tsunami of ridicule to appear in the mainstream media but nothing was said. A few days later when a story appeared in the New York Times reporting a sudden spike in the sales of plastic sheeting and duct tape, we fired off a letter to the editor and sent it off via e-mail to their east coast main office.
The next day, Valentine's Day 2003, there were about a dozen letters to the editor commenting on the feature story in the previous day's issue. My effort was one of the ones selected. We had mentioned the fact that the absurd suggestion was the recipe for a tragedy involving asphyxiation and the drawing that accompanied the letters on the topic depicted an anthropomorphized house struggling to catch a breath because it was wrapped in plastic.
About noon, later in the day, SecDef (aka Secretary of Defense) Donald Rumsfeld held a press conference and stressed that the suggestion was meant to be metaphoric because if the safe room was air-tight the occupants would die of asphyxiation. To our way of thinking this was the best Valentine's Day gift we have ever received because it validated our perception that the World's Laziest Journalist was capable of producing unique and insightful political commentary.
Subsequently, we acquired a collection of books on the esoteric subject of the inadequacies of America's Free Press. The Preface to "Manufacturing Consent," by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, says: "If, however, the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what the general populace is allowed to see, hear, and think about, and to 'manage' public opinion by regular propaganda campaigns, the standard view of how the system works is at serious odds with reality."
We had wondered why the media seemed quite lax about a long list of questions. Who did profit from selling airline stocks short right before 9-11? Why was the story about the Bin Laden family being hustled out of the USA quashed? Where did the WMD's go? Etc.
Was the Stepford press fooling the Stepford voters as part
of a mass example of irrational thinking or was there some kind of effort to
manufacture consent? If so, could the
bottom line be that after years of grumbling and criticizing, the people could
be bamboozled into complete unquestioning obedience if the Christian majority
in the United States Supreme Court legislated from the bench and declared gay
marriages unconstitutional? We'll soon
find out if the conservatives can get away with such outrageous politicizing of
the judicial branch of American government.
Could the liberals be coerced by the Free Press into believing that another theft of the Presidency and a restoration of the Bush Dynasty was a valid example of Democracy in action?
The Koch brothers blatantly admitted that they intended to donate $889 million to the Presidential Campaign for the 2016 Presidential Election and it is obvious that not one goddamn cent of that will be used to subsidize the liberal point of view in an effort to bolster the illusion that a national debate will precede the charade that will accompany the election of JEB Bush as the 45th President of the United States.
The media is constantly running new scare stories about how new and elaborate computer hacks are compromising security and ruining lives but the idea that the hackers could work their magic on the electronic voting machines which leave no way to verify the results is universally denounced as a conspiracy theory.
If the electronic voting machines, which have a security Des Key number that is available online, are that good, why isn't their security program being used to guard the personal data that is being lost everyday online? If it isn't that good, why do the media persist in promulgating the myth that it is?
When George W. Bush suggested that it might be a good idea for the United States to insert itself into the military situation in the Middle East, some snarky liberals suggested that since the situation was a perpetual series of vicious reprisals in response to barbaric outrages, it might not be such a wise move.
Recently, Jordon announced that it would bolster its efforts to bomb ISIS as a result of the barbaric execution of one of their pilots. The recent Jordanian validation of the Bush decision to become an integral part of what he called "the forever war," gives the Stepford voters an indication of just how futile dissent has become.
The World's Laziest Journalist has produced many columns skeptical of the Bush war crimes and policies. Now that President Obama has asked for a renewal of the War Powers Act, we will drop our criticism of the Bush Forever War and assume that America's Democrats will have a Prodigal Son moment when Obama sends additional troops to fight the bad guys in the Middle East. [Note: Since the name of the bad guys is constantly changing this columnist will just use the generic term "Viet Cong" to designate the enemy in the Middle East.]
If, as some of the Orthodox members of the staff of the Amalgamated Conspiracy Theory Factory assert, some nefarious strategists on the good guy team alerted the Viet Cong about the itinerary that Bob Woodruff would be taking, then the conservatives have scored a trifecta by successfully removing the anchor at all three liberal media TV networks. Dan Rather and Brian Williams might be prone to also suspect that a conspiracy explanation for the downfall of Don Imus might be well founded and not be an example of a paranoid imagination at work. (For extensive coverage of the Brian Williams story check out the media news site done by Jim Romenesko (Google hint: jimromenesko dot com)
When George W. Bush stated that there were WMD's in Iraq, it led to a war and caused the deaths of many American troops and left many more wounded, crippled and damaged for life, but that was OK with conservatives because the President didn't know that there were no WMD's to be found. Brian Williams, has told lies, caused NBC to lose credibility, and stolen valor and therefore, according to the Conservative code of ethics, the liberal media star's life must be ruined and his career must be destroyed.
Conservatives give complete amnesty to Republican politicians who commit crimes if they ask for God's forgiveness but liberal media anchors must be held to a much higher standard.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
