That's the punch line in todays Prickly City, a droll little comic strip that my local newspaper runs alongside Doonesbury. I can only suppose this misogynistic, right wing tripe is being printed alongside Doonesbury so that my paper can appear "fair and balanced."
To give both sides of a valid argument a chance to speak, that is fair and balanced. There is nothing neither fair nor balanced, however, in giving one side free reign to lie, insult, mislead or spread bigoted stereotypes.
Yet that is exactly what our national and sometimes local media have been doing that has allowed our nation to get into the mess it's in today. In fact, it's no longer "our" national media, it's Corporate Media. And today I want to point out some of the ways they control how Americans think.
We've all seen how the Main Stream Media is biased towards corporate interests and against liberalism. What some don't realize is the extent in which local media is complicit in the enabling of the extremist right wing agenda.
Take my newspaper, for example. While they're not the only paper to run Prickly City's reprehensible "Ain't Life a Nancy Pelosi?", they prove time and again that they're more than willing to give any issue a subtle right wing slant. And it's in ways that influence how people perceive things that aren't readily apparent if you haven't spent a lifetime learning how it works.
For instance, in Sunday's Nation & World section there's a photo of the Dems celebrating their election victory. The headline below asks "After gaining power, can the Democrats hang onto it?" A reasonable question, albeit a bit soon to be asking don't you think? Seems more like something to ask in 2008. Below that is where the subtle insinuations actually begin:
It's the question Democrats would rather not ask in their moment of revelry: Are their new majorities sustainable?
Note how the paper subtly insinuates to their readers that the Dem majority is not sustainable? They would deny they ever insinuated any such thing, of course, but then by implying that the Democrats would "rather not ask the question" they are insinuating exactly that.
Some would defend my newspaper by pointing out this is an AP article by Jim Khunhenn, not a local reporter, but it was the local newspaper which chose to run with the article on the front of their section. Seldom is any of the right wing tripe you're likely to find in your local papers actually written by that papers staff.
Try to find any of the liberal issues that scroll past these pages constantly, or that you can find on the Daily Kos by the dozens, in your local newspaper. Then look at the vast number of right wing talking points blatantly and subtly splashed across those newspapers daily and tell me it isn't a concious choice on their part to slant their coverage?
I flip over the pages and what do I see?
Dems Fat and Sassy in Victory; GOP Regroups
This only continues the subtle message to the public that while the Dems won today, the Republicans will regroup and retake congress.
Or how about the two editorial cartoons right on that same page? One shows a soldier reading the newspapers and the headline is Election Results. A worried little Iranian boy is tugging on his pants leg asking "Say you won't go Joe!" The other is even worse. It shows a yardworker saying "The election is over - you guys should help clean up some of the mud and garbage you threw around!" The donkey and elephant are pointing at each other saying "He did it!" The subtle insinuation being that BOTH parties are just as bad as one another. This, of course, is a blatant attempt to turn the populace off of the political discourse. And as we all know, the less citizens participate, the better for Republicans.
Nowhere has there been any reporting of the widespread voter suppression throughout the nation nor the fact that the vast majority of election shenanigans involved Republicans. THAT type of news coverage our local newspapers don't feel fit to run.
Even subtle attempts to alter the publics perception can be found in the smallest of newspapers. There was a ballot issue in Poulsbo to decide whether city hall should be built in the Downtown Historic District or up on 10th street. What did the small city newspaper do?
It wrote up two articles, one about those in favor of the 10th street site and one about those in favor of the downtown site. Sounds pretty fair doesn't it? Except that, as I've done above, the one in favor of 10th street had its headline and highlighted quotes in bold. Which one do you think better caught the casual readers eye? Do you think the way they wrote each article was any less slanted than the way they highlighted them? Who's arguments pro and con did they choose to use? How did they paint the pro-downtowners compared to the pro-10th streeters? If you guessed with 10th street slant, give yourself a cookie.
Minor story in the grand scheme of things, I know, but it fully illustrates the subtle methods our local media can employ to exert influence on the political process even while pretending to be "fair and balanced". BTW, in spite of their best efforts, downtown won overwhelmingly.
But back to more pressing national debates. Fridays paper headlined "More Troops Debated". Of course, only McCain is "debating" whether or not more troops are needed. The Sun, however, chose to run with the Washington Post article by Josh White that claims
The debate about how to proceed in Iraq, which in the past few months has focused on withdrawing U.S. troops, now includes serious discussion about surging more forces into the fight.
Note how the words of one Republican Senator is "serious discussion" but where was my local newspaper reporting "serious discussion" a few years ago when Russ Feingold was the lone voice in the wilderness? Oh, that's right, Feingold was "unpatriotic". Never mind that this time around a vast number of military officials and defense experts say that more troops would offer no discernible long-term benefits. Sure, the article says that military experts disagree. But it's how the article is posed that matters, not the content itself. The headline isn't "Military Refutes McCain" is it?
No, the media raises a ridiculous notion from a lone Senator to the level of "serious discussion" and national "Debate". It's called Enabling. This is how the Corporate media "enables" right wing talking points, which serve only a few special interests, to become legitimate issues of debate. This is how corporate media controls what the debate IS in America.
Another example is the headline right below this one: "Is More Pollution A Cure?" Another AP article my newspaper chose to run that claims a controversial method for keeping the Earth cool "is gaining traction among scientists in some quarters.
Tell me the last time your local newspaper wrote an article presenting the overwhelming evidence that proves global warming is manmade? Or blasting those in denial of global warming? I'll give that newspaper an A. But I don't recall any such article in mine. And here's my paper, headlining an article about global warming when they've never devoted any effort into showing global warming was a problem in the first place. Why? Because it offers a Cure for global warming. ie, we don't have to stop polluting our atmosphere, or driving our SUVs, or finding alternative energies, or joining the Kyoto Protocols or questioning the wisdom of letting corporations control the national debate because there's a cure out there. POLLUTE MORE!
It isn't until you flip to page 12 and read the last column of the article that you find out that
Philip Clapp, a veteran campaigner for emissions controls to curb warming, also sounded a nervous note, saying "We are already engaged in an uncontrolled experiment by injecting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere."
In past years scientists have scoffed at the idea of air pollution as a solution for global warming, saying that the kind of sulfate haze that would be needed is deadly to people.
Note that in the second paragraph they start of by saying "In past years". As if that is all past and now this is a NEW idea. Note that the article didn't write that paragraph like this, saying exactly the same thing but in plainer terms:
Using a sulfate haze to affect global warming is not a new idea, but has been rejected previously because it would be deadly to people.
Exact same thing, but the latter exposes this alternative more plainly that the one they chose to print. So why not write it plainly? Because THEN they'd have to admit that global warming is the worlds most serious issue, which would expose the fact that the media's been guilty of enabling global warmings detractors, ie of enabling global warming itself, all along. Global warming is, in fact, so dangerous that serious scientists like Paul J. Crutzen are proposing last ditch efforts that would themselves be dangerous to human beings.
You won't see THAT drilled home to the public in your local newspapers editorial.
This kind of subtle manipulation of the publics way of perceiving critical issues that confront us is why we need to break away from reading corporate controlled news sources. This is why blogging is so important today