What? Nothing on the president's speech last night?

Not really, I most skim (but a lot of times not even that).

 

she's done with you

(please tell me you get that reference)

 

I'm not saying I love the President, but public opinion is starting to move towards positive territory. The new WP poll:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10538012/

 

Exactly. There was no new content to Bush's address. "Blah blah blah... We're winning the war. No, really, we are... Blah blah blah... Stay the course... Blah blah blah". I half expected to see a "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him. But at least the delivery was less unpolished as he was able to read from a teleprompter. And Bush can get away with this because he's not trying to convince the 65% of America that has figured out what a mess his Presidency has been. He already appeared to be at his BTKWB level so all he had to do is throw these panglossian bones to his fanboys.

The press conference, however, was a different story. There he was trying to talk the 65% of something - namely that he should not be impeached. Or, to be more accurate, he was trying to convince the conservatives in that 65% who have changed their minds about him and now disapprove of him. Even worse, this new scandal may yet change his BTKWB level and this is something new as, unlike with Iraq, Bush now has to convince people like Matt-in-the-Hat, who are still in the 35% and want to keep cheering Bush on but whose faith is wavering in the light of this spying on Americans. Outright totalitarians like McCracken and btousley may not care about having their phones tapped but that prospect just might push a few - but only a few- more people into the "disapprove" column. And that, combined with a further erosion of support from mainstream conservatives who are already in the 65% may embolden Congress into an impeachment, especially if the cumulative effects of 6 years of Bush's dishonesty and mismanagement cause the Reeps to lose Congressional seats. If that happens, then Congressional Reeps may decide it's better to throw an already unpopular President under the train in order to put some distance between themselves and him.

 

Took me a minute, and I forget exactly which Al Franken book it was - probably Lying Liars, though.

 

With any luck, the stadium deal will fall through and MLB will move them (again) to Las Vegas.

 

Speak.

Greg Palast illuminated this a while ago, in a specific circumstance that happens, imv, to be almost perfectly characteristic of the larger dynamic not only of the press pool humps, but of most MSM "news" coverage most of the time (bold mine):

It's in this context that we find BushCorp. operating outside the law with little impunity; it's in this context that we wait for the follow-up questions that would set into motion the various democratic (small "d," not the party humps) momentum that would end up hanging this man and his oligarchic, plutocratic cabal for his illegal activity, and we wait...and we wait...and they never come.

They never will come. Get some investigative journalists in the room, and kick out the career reporters/commentators, and we could knock this so-called Presidency out in one half hour, including commericals.

Because what is "reporting," anyway? What is "commentary?" Oughtn't we define reporting as acting as a megaphone for power? When reporters employ the contextual language and phraseology that the Pentagon, or the WH, employs, what's the difference between Britt Hume going on about the specifics of the "War on Terror," "Desert Storm," and "Al Qaeda" and everything else Hume has been told to go on about, and PRAVDA, or other notorious state media? What is the difference? Is commentary an informed take on the knowable facts or it is wild, unsupported unsubstantiated opinion based on nothing (at least nothing investigatory or scientifically methodological)? Is it effective and insightful, or a simpletonic spouting that is as far from meaningful “comment” as one can get without becoming Dr. Laura, Dr. Phil, or Sean Limbaugh?

In looking at the Bush speeches and talks and other spoutings from this man, I can't HELP but look at it in this context.

 

No, I don't think people can tell the difference. The reason fox news is so damned popular, IMHO, is that it reinforces people's innate feelings. Just like advertisements. Advertisements against drugs don't work all that well, because those who want drugs are going to go get them, even if a commercial says its bad.

The sports team mentality of American politics makes people want to watch a show that proves the people they vote for are good and wise, and anyone who says otherwise is a terrorist, commie-pinko, or whatever.

Seriously, the greatest threat to this country is the terrible parenting and worse school systems that are designed to destroy critical thinking, and ensure that we all become good little consumers.

I would say that a large, large majority of the people who watch Fox News think that everything on there is gospel, and a large, large percentage of people who read the L.A. Times think everything in there is gospel.

Come on, there are people who buy and believe the National Inquirer for crying out loud.

 

Fair and balanced says what?

 

No.

Ah, if only television worked this way, but it does not and cannot. You could double the amount of stations you have on your cable/sat box right now, and it still wouldn't be able to accurately reflect the nuance of all POVs out there among the citizenry. Television, like radio, is a scarce resource that, the way the mainstream culture has been established, results in a few folks reaching a whole lot of folks with a particular message. Now, we USED to have a Fairness Doctrine, that took the next best position to acknowledging the often capricous nature of one-way media and abandoning it altogether, which was to ensure that WHATEVER POV was offered on tv or radio as "information," or "news," that an opportunity to offer a counterpoint, at least, had to be offered, with equal time. That went away with Reagan, and in swept the Limbaughs of the world.

The idea that because you stand unabashedly, unapologetically right-wing (or any "wing") doesn't in and of itself mean anything at all. If you stand unabashedly and unapologetically for chattel slavery, or for wife beating, or for plutocracy, that's, to me, immoral and unjust. If you are going to spout something across the airwaves that each of us own that's immoral and unjust in the minds of many citizens, they ought to have an opportunity to respond as comprehensively and with as much time as you took to spout.

Not every POV is valid. Every POV has a right to be held, but not necessarily to be put into action or to be validated simply because it is a firmly held belief. Science is what we know it to be; if you want to continue to hold to the notion that the Sun goes around the Earth, that's fine; you cannot submit that as "news," or as authentic information however...not on the public airways. The reason is that we in part buy into Reason; scientific method, reasonable doubt...reason. So much of what's offered today on one-way information implantation mediums LIKE television and radio is simply unreasonable, often intentionally so. When that's drama, that's one thing. When that dynamic claims to ground offerings of "news," or of giving citizens actionable information by which they can both make informed choices about how to engage their representatives and take informed action to hold the entire system to task, it's something else entirely.

In some ways, it springs from how we come to understand what freedom is, and what our relationship to our rights is. I teach my son that the USA offers one of a number of conceptions of "freedom," with strengths and weaknesses. The idea of freedom as embeddedness, connections and community - the more connections I have, the freer I am to conduct myself in ways that maximize both my own interests and the interests of the community I definitively value - is missing from the conceptions of freedom as located in the MSM. A free-market fundamentalist, singular consumer - not citizen, but consumer - conception of freedom reigns here. That conception of freedom is good for the corporate form, in that it unitizes humanity and maximizes the possibility of sales/revenue/EBITDA, but fails to suitably acknowledge that the flip side of the right to do whatever is the responsibility for whatever you do. Not just - or even primarily - in the sense of criminality and the justice system, but more importantly in the daily civic construction of communities, local to global. Indeed, if we agree that the fundamental nature of our knowable reality is one of interdependence, then that conception of freedom is wholly mythic, totally out of touch with the way the universe appears to work, and probably counterproductive at best and dangerous at worst.

There are real opportunities here, in the Great Experiment. But they fall to the wayside because we elevate illusion over a whole set of (admittedly tough, admittedly difficult, admittedly change-inducing, admittedly transformative) realities that are workable were we to apply ourselves.

The inability of the persons closest to Ceasar to tell Ceasar the truth to his face (the WH "press corps"' inability to ask or challenge this man when he is clearly outside of the law) is symptomatic of the above condition. And at its worst - when it produces murder and death abroad, indifference to suffering at home, an astonishingly poorly allocated 1.8 trillion dollars in taxes every 365 days and a failure of authentic vision from every corner of ostensible leadership, be it in spirit, governance, academy, media - it undermines the entire Project, fundamentally.

As the Project has gone from whatever it had a chance of becoming to Empire, that might be a good thing. I hope we do not throw out the baby of Possibility as reflected in the various movements that have gotten most humans this far with the dirty, dirty bath water of the various and sundry rapacious fundamentalisms of the Bush, interlocking class.

Now I know that there's alot you like about the way certain folks in power have decided to define certain notions, like "freedom." There are all kinds of folks, down the line of history - USA and otherwise - that have a substnatively different conception of those things, that's all. The hallmakrs of that battle, of that struggle, can be seen in every major issue that the USA has wrestled with...an economic conception of media is just another along the line...but the DIFFERENCE here is that mass information to SHAPE the debate on such a struggle is controlled by one side. That's the difference here. And it's a signficant difference, one that ends up making all the difference in the world. It's why Saving Private Ryan has been on television umpteen times already, and I've never seen Hearts and Minds on CBS...and I never will. It's why Afghan Massacre is on the shelves of not only individual Germans, Italians, Scots, French and Dutch folsk I know,while you don't evne know what it is (I'm guessing - maybe you do), but more importantly it's on their shelves because they went out and bought it after seeing it in prime time on their television stations. It's why THe Power of Nightmares, and its take on how we got to this point, has garnered awards, and continues to do so, around the world, but cannot be seen in the USA. It's why FAIR's Counterspin will never be on ABC. I could go on and on.

You - and all of us - don't have nearly the amount of actionable information that you would have if we - you and me - used the media not to just give one side or the other, but returned a framework by which we had to live up to our responsibilities regarding the media and citizenship and didn't just rest replete in an exploitation of our "rights."

The problem with that? You watch the problem with that every time this so-called man, the current POTUS, breaks breath to speak, and the so-called media doesn't take him to task for his words and his actions, which in their "ends justify the means" justifications, align themselves in terms of the reasoning behind such words and actions directly with the wagers of terror acts. They too fall back upon an "ends justifies the means" way of being in the world.

We ought to reconsider our frame on events anytime our thinking aligns with terror-mongers, oughtn't we?

You know Bill Maher, prior to the 2000 election, said something once that I've been wrestling with ever since; if he's right, it explains alot. If not, then the answer lies somewhere else.

He said "We [the American people] have come to think that death is the worst thing that can happen to you. We are the first society TO think that."

Do we actually think that? Or, if not death, the discomfort that comes from standing up (not, note, having someone else stand up for one) and actually being about the business of producing a democratic peaceful society?

Do we actually think that death, or discomfort, is worse than dishonor? Worse than failing to identify the truth of the core issues of our historical moment? The Founders were on their way to being William-Wallaced (gutted, quartered and having their body parts spread to the far corners of the Brit Empire) had theylost the struggle for independence. They knew this. MLK was getting death threats every single day at a variety of points in the struggle. He knew this. Carrie Lane Chapman Catt was emblematic of thousands of women, getting beat by cops in the street for the right to vote, then getting beat at home by their husbands for being in the street. For them, there were all KINDS of things worse than death/discomfort. Ten "Molly Maguires" were hanged in Pennsylvania in 1877 for the right to better workign conditions in the mines. Hell, 1986 concluded a battle flight attendants were willing to wage for 18 years against United Arilines, which had fired them for getting married...

And we don't see the need to stand up, where we are, and demand better government and better accountability of government through our institutions, in this case the media?

I love Democracy Now! But I've neither turned on DNow!, nor any other MSM "news" source, and ever been told what happened in my representatives', local to global, various chambers today, as a matter of crucial, critical informative course. You have NEVER heard any "newscast" open with - or offer in any segment - "These were the bills that [inser governing body here] dealt with today, this was the result, this is how the votes went, this is what it might mean for you, this is what it DOES mean for some, here's how to contact whomever you need to contact, this is what's on the docket for tomorrow, here's who is manipulating the flow of bills, here's what's in committee..." Isn't that the very MINIMUM the citizens of a representaitve republic claimign democratic sensibilitites HAS to provide its people in any "news?" MAybe it's me, but to lead with the most sensational story is not media serving a democracy, but media serving the titillated interests of the consumer. I'm not talking about consumerism in "news," nor do I conflate consumer with citizen. When it comes down to things like the mother********ing President breaking the law, telling us he'd do it again, and shifting the focus from his criminality to "Who told?", that type of distinction seems to be utterly missing, while that Maher sensibility seem so rife, and present, and in our midst that I can smell the whole thing's stench from here.

The ONLY time the focus lies on the institutions and mechanisms of democraqtic governance is NOT to give us actionable information, but to titillate. When there is something JUICY AND SCANDALOUS that is taking place...for ratings - again, an ECONOMIC conception of the news that as a result doesn't give us as citizens actionable information, but treats us solely as consumers.

We're so far removed from the daily doings of citizenship that we don't even notice how far removed we've been made from the actual process of governance, local to global. We vote, yes; but voting is the end-result of a daily process of citizen engagement. It cannot in a democracy, be characteristic of our once-every-two-years "finest hour" of citizenship.

We don't get that; we don't get much of the above. It's why we have the leaders we have, who, knowing that we don't have our sh!t together and lack the ability to use the MSM to get across a conscience and a consensus (the two things media definitively establish) of citizenship, rape and pillage the American possibility for all its worth.

 

lol, hmmm indeed.

 

Hope you don't lose too much money when that venture fails.

P.S. It's hard for me to believe you can pat yourself on the back for this unless your small business goes by the name of Blue Cross or Aetna.

 

Universal health care, of course.