Don't get me wrong,
Kid Oakland's diary is dead on. The media has failed us. Things have grown horribly out of kilter. We all know that It's freaking obvious! What apparently
not everyone realizes is that this is NO FUCKING ACCIDENT! It is a result of a deliberate and conscious decision by the people now responsible for delivering our news to us. Judging by the comments left in Kid Oakland's diary -- the reason I called us all idiots -- what we don't get, IS THAT THEY'VE FAILED US
ON PURPOSE!
This has been happening for some time. I remember myriad stories about it in the early nineties when I was in high school. That was before the corporate takeover was complete. The calm before the storm where the media still had some semblance of a conscious. Don't you all remember the endless stories on the television and in the newspapers where the last vestiges of the responsible media were taking the hostile takeover to task?? They were warning us then that this was happening. I remember Ted Koppel trying to sound the panic alarm more than once. Some others did too. We didn't answer that call.
Well, we're witnessing the culmination. A president who lied relentlessly to this country over the gravest matters of war and national security has just been inaugurated for a second term while NOT ONE PERSON IN THIS ADMINISTRATION IS HELD ACCOUNTABLE. Not one.
Meanwhile a major news network is humbled into self-flagelation for aggressively investigating a story the entire media should have damn well been digging into before the president's first inaugural.
WAKE UP! The News media hasn't been tricked. They are active collaborators. Willing..., no EAGER to sell out the country and push the right wing's propaganda. The corporations own our national media and they own the Republican party. Dobson, Santorum, Falwell, and the Roy Moore's of the party are either dupes or know full well that the Religious Right is no more the masters of what is happening to our country any more than the Reverend Moon is messiah!
Remember what we've been saying around here about the Democratic party? "We bought it and paid for it. Now, we own it?" Right? Well, we need to wake up, because that is what the corporations - and their media - have been saying about the Republican party for quite awhile.
Oftentimes around here we conclude that the poor bigoted folk who make up the radical right... those people so easily swayed by the call to GOD, GUNS AND GAYS are the real dupes. Well, after reading the comments to Kid Oakland's exceptional post, I wonder who is the bigger dupes... them or us?
WE REFUSE TO RECOGNIZE WHAT IS IN FRONT OF OUR FACES!
For all of you who still don't get it -- MSNBC AND CNN ARE JUST AS IN THE POCKET OF THE REPUBLICANS AS FOX. Seriously. Every bit as much.
You folks who are hanging on to some idea that these major media outlets can be persuaded or cajoled back into some parity are in for a terrible reckoning. The only reason that the other outlets aren't as obviously licking the Right Wings balls as Rupert Murdoch?? It is to delude us poor folks. Pull the wool over our eyes. We're like the serfs in medieval times. Our masters do not completely starve us. They make sure to give us some table scraps. Leftovers aren't much worthy of a bound animal, but it's enough for them to be secure in the knowledge that we'll take it and think twice before biting the hand that feeds us. We can complain and beg for more, just as long as we don't revolt.
No, no, if we revolt, why look what will happen to us. HOWARD DEAN DID. Remember?
Many of us around here will recall the true moment when things began to turn for him. Howard Dean had the temerity to go before the media and use their airwaves to whisper sounds of revolt. Howard Dean used their airwaves to propose that perhaps they were getting a little to big for their britches. Perhaps the public would be better served with our fourth estate invested in a more diverse way. And with that, they declared war against him. AS FAR AS THE MEDIA WAS CONCERNED HE WAS TO BE COOKED. And roast him, they did.
We need to wake up around here. Fully wake up. Every once in awhile we get a clue and then forget. It is time to come to the full realization that the only way we're going to change this situation is one of two ways:
- Buy back the media from our corporate masters.
- Develop our own media to compete with it or supplant it.
I know, it is terribly hard to wake up, FULLY WAKE UP, because the task is too monumental to even contemplate. Hell, a significant portion of our party is in cahoots with the establishment.
Oliver Willis is beginning to get it. Hopefully, Atrios, after witnessing more days like this, will come around too.
Here is Oliver:
Ditching The Media
I think the news media is broken. Completely so.
This latest nonsense about Kos is just one more crime against journalism, dwarfed by the absolute deference the media shows towards everything the Bushies do. I once thought it would be enough to push, poke, and prod the media to do their jobs. But I think what needs to be done is to take a cue from the right and work strongly to create an alternate media universe. Righties can wrap themselves in Newsmax, Instapundit, Talk Radio and Fox News and get the news they want to get. On the left, our reliance has been focused on the media doing their jobs, with supplementation by blogs to provide context. We're going to have to ramp things up significantly. As I have begun listening to Air America (Randi Rhodes, Franken, and Majority Report - though I'm not a huge Garafolo fan) via podcast and especially Ed Schultz's show, I find an entire universe of news and information that the media just won't touch, either out of institutional bias or (more likely) the inability to cover anything more complex than kittens in a tree.
Tune out of their media, tune in to the real ting.
If you've read this whole damn rant and are not an idiot, I apologize. If you already get it. If you already know all of this. I'm sorry.
But, for those of you who don't, or think I'm just cranky at the end of this long inauguration day ... when are you going to get it? What's it going to take?