The personal attacks on John Edwards have been increasing as he continues to talk about class stratification in this nation. Last Friday's New York Times front page hit piece was just the latest in the MSM's attempt to misdirect people from the real issues.
"Don't listen to John Edwards when he talks about economic fairness," they say. He's a fraud, they say, because he was successful as a trial lawyer representing people. Don't listen to his message. Anyone who talks about economic unfairness must be a phony. You need us, the MSM, to interpret reality for you.
John Edwards yesterday talked about what is really going on here:
"Does that mean I can't speak out for those who don't have a voice?" Edwards asked. "Every time you do that you're going to get attacked ... It's always been that way in America because people who have wealth and power, they don't want to hear this. They'd rather kill the messenger. They're not going to kill this voice."
Las Vegas Sun
Come around for more after the fold.
I was reading a movie review of Sicko on Friday in the New York Times and this comment by the reviewer about Michael Moore and the "conventional wisdom" jumped out at me:
Some of this is undoubtedly his fault, or at least a byproduct of his style. His regular-guy, happy-warrior personality plays a large part in the movies and in their publicity campaigns, and he has no use for neutrality, balance or objectivity. More than that, his polemical, left-populist manner seems calculated to drive guardians of conventional wisdom bananas. That is because conventional wisdom seems to hold, against much available evidence, that liberalism is an elite ideology, and that the authentic vox populi always comes from the right. Mr. Moore, therefore, must be an oxymoron or a hypocrite of some kind.
MOVIE REVIEW | 'SICKO'
Mr. Moore must be a "hypocrite." And isn't that exactly what they say about John Edwards?
Media Matters talked about this earlier this month:
think about the apparent rationale that leads journalists to conclude that Edwards is a phony: his policy proposals to fight poverty. He's rich and wants to fight poverty, so they say he's a phony hypocrite. As we have explained, that simply isn't what "hypocrite" means -- it isn't as if Edwards is running around saying everybody should be poor, then going home at night and swimming in gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. That would be hypocrisy -- and that isn't what Edwards advocates at all. He wants to combat poverty. Hypocrisy is generally considered one of the most damaging qualities a politician can exhibit. Political reporters certainly behave as though that is the case. And yet they demonstrate an absolutely stunning lack of understanding of what hypocrisy actually is.
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Now, Rudy Giuliani is a very wealthy man. His tax policy proposals -- extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, eliminating the estate tax, and reducing the capital gains tax -- would save himself money. Perhaps a great deal of money. Yet Giuliani's wealth wasn't mentioned in the AP article. He is proposing policies that would line his own pockets, and the pockets of very few other people. Yet the media make no effort to estimate how much he would personally profit from his proposals. Nor do they even mention the fact that, as a very wealthy man, he would profit at all.
Yet John Edwards proposes raising taxes on himself and very few others, and the media treat it as scandalous hypocrisy.
John Edwards talked about it in his Cooper Union Speech on Thursday night:
There are a lot of people, especially people in Washington, who don't want me to talk about the Two Americas. And if you think they don't want me to talk about middle class Americans, you can bet they don't want me to talk about the 37 million Americans who are living in poverty here in the wealthiest nation on earth.
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Today, the top 300,000 Americans now make more than the bottom 150 million put together.
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What does all this mean in real terms? It means that our system rewards wealth, not work.
Joe Trippi, in a recent fundraising email:
But while thousands of people are building up this campaign, the Washington establishment is trying to write us out of the race. And their reason? They say it's MONEY - they don't think we are raising an obscene enough amount. But the truth is, they don't want people to hear what John Edwards is saying, because it will mean the end of big money's stranglehold over our government.
So, yes, I expect these attacks to continue. Just as Franklin Delano Roosevelt was attacked as a traitor to his class, the MSM will attack John Edwards as a hypocrite, a phony, because he does not fit the conventional wisdom. You know, the "wisdom" of the topsy turvy world in which the rich like Bush are portrayed as "authentic men of the people," as they screw working people day after day.
"It's always been that way in America because people who have wealth and power, they don't want to hear this. They'd rather kill the messenger. They're not going to kill this voice."
I will leave you with the words of Robert F. Kennedy, another wealthy man who fought for those without and was similarly attacked by the right wing and their aiders and abetters:
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope... and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
http://www.quotatio.com/...
John Edwards is doing just that.
If you want to help, donate here to ActBlue: Bloggers for Edwards
They're not going to kill John Edwards' voice