I don't watch a lot of television. So I missed until the last two days the full extent of what's been going on. And what is going on is another full scale assault by the media (mostly television) on one of our Democratic candidates.
It's really simple. The media needed some way to take down Barack Obama, and since they didn't have anything on him (by all accounts he appears to have conducted his life with honor and integrity - something that makes him dangerous in Washington), they went after his preacher. And so we find ourselves in a situation where a presidential candidate is being attacked not for what he did, but for what someone else did.
If I had been watching television, something I occasionally do just to see what shit they're peddling, I would have written this a week ago - I'm sorry this is somewhat late to the game. And it appears the netroots have lost focus of what is really going on here. It is simply unacceptable to hold a candidate responsible for the actions of someone else who is not under their employ. I can't believe people are falling for it.
The blogosphere has been all a frenzy with arguments over whether Wright was right, Wright was left, and any other cheap play on words they can think of. And the unprincipled "progressives" like the deplorable, Jerome Armstrong are salivating over the spectacle.
But make no mistake, and don't ever forget: this is not a real controversy. It is an illusion created by the media. Guilt by association is not entirely new. Bill Clinton's brother, Hillary Clinton's brother, Jimmy Carter's brother - all cases of the same theme. But going after someone's preacher is new as far as I can tell.
And repeatedly playing video, in a continuous loop, is nothing less than another Swiftboat attack which, if you will recall, was as much an attack by the television media as it was by a small band of raving lunatics. As David Gergen pointed out, these liars spent 500k on an ad buy and got 30m in airtime.
This is how the media manipulates American democracy. Gotta always keep the races tied. And always keep the topic of conversation on anything but what matters. Have you ever wondered what the probability is, or I should say, impossibility is of the country being so evenly 50/50 divided for so long? How is that possible to have election after election where the vote is withing 3% points. It's called divide and conquer.
Remember the Dean scream? That was called eliminate the threat. Just in case there's still a few people who don't know how that worked, the news networks distorted reality by taking a mic feed and soloing it up. There's a tape floating around where someone did that to Linda McCartney. It wasn't good.
By playing this dramitcally altered version of reality over and over on their networks, the "news" media sabotaged the Dean campaign. It was entirely manipulative. Here's what Dean really sounded like:
Now, the average public may not understand the technical difference between a vocal mic and a room mic. And so they may not understand how manipulated the infamous "Dean Scream" really was. But I can assure you with 100% certainty that the people at CNN, NBC, and Fox knew exactly what they were doing.
And they know exactly what they are trying to do to Barack Obama.
Whether it's to drag this race out for increased advertising revenue (political campaigns are big bucks) or to eliminate a threat, this spectacle is nothing less than the media manufacturing "controversy" to manipulate American democracy.
I just wanted to set the record straight.