Richard J. Eskow at Alternet writes
Huge Media Companies Are Selling Corporate Ideology as the 'New American Center':
To examine the Esquire/NBC News “New American Center” is to enter a Beltway consultants’ dreamscape, a perceptual interspace where real Americans’ opinions dissolve and are replaced by a chimerical creature whose secret language is only understood by certain insider politicians, corporations and consultants.
That creature’s name is “The Center.”
The survey commissioned by these two news organizations tells us very little about American public opinion. But it tells us a great deal about the insular worlds in which certain journalists and consultants reside.
I tried to review the poll’s methodology with an open mind. But we’re not told how the study identified the “American Center,” and its architects at the Benenson Strategy Group failed to respond to requests for information.
Although there were some interesting nuggets of data in the study, overall it was an ill-conceived venture whose main purpose seemed to be reinforcing a prevailing article of faith inside the Beltway: that there is an undiscovered “center” to American politics, and that finding it will spell success for savvy corporations, candidates and consultants. […]
Esquireand NBC News don’t report this study so much as hype it. Disturbingly, these journalists use the same marketing language employed by the consultants who wrote the report. Esquire tells its readers that the “New American Center” is “passionate, persuadable, and very real.” NBC News informs visitors to its website that “the center is real, passionate and persuadable.” (The NBC News piece carries the byline of a “senior staff writer.” The Esquire piece is credited to “The Editors.”) […]
The editors sneer at what they call the “hoary conventional wisdom” that “we as a people are now hopelessly polarized in our culture, our values, and our politics”—an odd stance when promoting a study which slices the public into separate (and rather clichéd) social divisions.
That, too, comes straight from the corporate-centrism playbook: before idealizing your mythical “center,” you must first compartmentalize and trivialize people of both the left and the right. Esquire even offers a “Warren/Cruz scale,” as if popular Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whose opinions on banking regulation and economic justice poll well with the general public, were somehow comparable to the far-right senator from Texas whose government shutdown crusade has caused a disastrous plunge in his party’s popularity. That isn’t social science or journalism, it’s propaganda. […]
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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2012—Mitt Romney maintains self-imposed gag order until the bitter end:
| Romney hasn't taken a question from his traveling press pool since late September and unless you count his sit-down with Chris Berman on Monday Night Football as an interview, he hasn't done an interview with any independent media outlet since Oct. 12. And that interview was with Newsmax.
As desperate as Romney is to reach voters, you'd think he'd be accepting every interview invitation he could possibly get. The only problem is that if he did that, he'd have to defend his deceptive television ads and dishonest debate performances. If Mitt Romney thought he could handle the interviews, there's no doubt he'd be out there as close to 24x7 as possible. And the fact that he's not doing that is a pretty good indication that he understands his campaign is a fraud.
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Tweet of the Day:
Chris Christie used a natural disaster to launch his 2016 presidential campaign yet keeps the relief funds from those victims who need them.
— @MattMurph24
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show, we were back on the air, with our first show for We Act Radio, 1480 AM in Washington, DC, and
weactradio.com! We rounded up the election results & read tea leaves with
Greg Dworkin.
Joan McCarter reported on key but lower profile election results, the Senate's Obamacare hearings, the President's red state road show, and the continuing debunking of the horror stories. Also: another filibuster fight looms, increased scrutiny on coal barons' black lung cover-up (and Mike Stark getting sued by one, too), and a special GunFAIL story from out of Waco.
High Impact Posts. Top Comments. Overnight News Digest.
