The Hunting of the President/Blinded by the Right

[KarenAM]

I don't agree that reporters are "inherently corrupt" anymore than doctors or pharmacists or accountants are corrupt. The unregulated ownership of newspapers and broadcast media by conglomerates has created a system that is easier to monopolize with one viewpoint, though. Rupert Murdoch's, for one. Talk about corrupt.

Unfortunately, I know of no system or society where reality isn't manipulated, because there's always someone out there who benefits from having reality be what they want it to be and say it is rather than what is actually experienced. In an unfettered market economy you have the creation of ever-increasingly large media conglomerates who exist to make a profit, and lying sells. Under socialism, you have political parties and often ideologies who directly benefit by restricting knowledge. Lying means power there.

The only way to keep reporters honest is to make certain they are individually ethical and convince them that their audience is intelligent and capable of catching them when they lie. Unfortunately, as dictators the world over have discovered, most people either aren't that smart or have other things distracting them from checking up on reporters. Hence propaganda flourishes under the guise of journalistic objectivity.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The people in power tend to do whatever it takes to stay in power. Lies, deciet, cover ups, these are nothing new. Manipulating the media isn't either.

There is really no more reason to be paranoid now than when Nixon, LBJ, Ford, Reagan, Bush I or Clinton were president.

Not so. If you believe as I do that the decision to go to war against Iraq was 50% politically driven--an attempt to make Bush look good--then you are dealing with a level of deceit and cynicism orders of magnitude beyond anything we've seen since maybe the run-up to the Spanish-American war. Or maybe Nixon's scotching of the Viet Nam cease fire in order to improve his electability chances, and even Nixon had the temerity to do that on the QT.

The latest from the 9/11 commision now says that there was no link between Osama Bin Laden and Saddams' government, and that Iraq even refused to give Bin Laden aid or let him set up training camps in Iraq:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3812351.stm

Now someone tell me why we went to war again?

This administration is either deliberately lying or unbelievably incompetent. You want to lie about a blow job or even about whether your tax cut will help the middle class, that's one thing. But you misrepesent in such a way that it costs Americans their lives and puts the country in peril to further your political agenda and you're doing more than engaging in the usual political double-speak.

Nixon abused his powers to keep himself in the white house, but I don't recall any administration that frightened me so much, or one that has dedicated so much effort towards the willful misrepresentation of what they know to be true.

Remember the outing of the CIA agent, the one whose husband came out against the war? How's that investigation coming along? It had to be someone pretty damned high up to have access to that information and willfully leak it. Bush & Co. are really leaning on that one, aren't they?

---dr.M.

 

[Pure]

There are three new books out on the president's mind and morality. One is by the fine philosopher, P. Singer, _The President of Good and Evil._

Another is
"Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President,"
by Justin Frank

 

[Pure]

An important day:

Oliver James begins, ‘As the alcoholic George Bush approached his 40th birthday in 1986, he had achieved nothing he could call his own. He was all too aware that none of his educational and professional accomplishments would have occurred without his father. He felt so low that he did not care if he lived or died. Taking a friend out for a flight in a Cessna airplane, it only became apparent he had not flown one before when they nearly crashed on take-off. Narrowly avoiding stalling a few times, they crash-landed and the friend breathed a sigh of relief - only for Bush to rev up the engine and take off again.

'Not long afterwards, staring at his vomit-spattered face in the mirror, this dangerously self-destructive man fell to his knees and implored God to help him and became a teetotaling, fundamentalist Christian.

=====
THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF EMINENCE, SUCCESS, BEING WELL-KNOWN AND BEING A CELEBRITY

by Robert M. Young

http://human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/pap142h.html

 

[shereads]

I agree with Dr. M.

Nixon was an evil paranoid bastard, but there were some checks and balances in place. This is the first time I'm aware of, that all three branches of government have been in the grip of one political party, and that one factor has allowed Bush/Cheney to get away with one scandal after another.

If even one house of Congress had a Democratic majority, we'd be in the beginning stages of an impeachment right now. If the Iraq mess doesn't qualify as a high crime, I can't imagine what does.

Even the Supreme Court belongs to these guys. So many justices are appointees of Bush I and Reagan, there's little doubt that Cheney will win the right to keep his "energy policy task force" a secret. The transcripts of that meeting must be interesting indeed, if keeping them from the public eye is worth a Supreme Court case.


Edited to add: I also believe that the willingness to send hundreds of your own people to their deaths, without doing them the honor of letting them know what they're really dying for, is extraordinary. There is no evidence that Clinton, JFK, Reagan or Ford had that little respect for American lives. Reagan didn't mind selling arms to Saddam Hussien to kill Iranians, but at least he did seem to value the lives of Americans.

Cheney has no conscience. That isn't typical, not even of politicians. Bush is just the boy Cheney needed to achieve this level of power - a not-too-bright man with a brand name and a likeable personality who had proven he wasn't shy about ethical lapses.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I agree with Dr. M.

Nixon was an evil paranoid bastard, but there were some checks and balances in place. This is the first time I'm aware of, that all three branches of government have been in the grip of one political party, and that one factor has allowed Bush/Cheney to get away with one scandal after another.

If even one house of Congress had a Democratic majority, we'd be in the beginning stages of an impeachment right now. If the Iraq mess doesn't qualify as a high crime, I can't imagine what does.

Even the Supreme Court belongs to these guys. So many justices are appointees of Bush I and Reagan, there's little doubt that Cheney will win the right to keep his "energy policy task force" a secret. The transcripts of that meeting must be interesting indeed, if keeping them from the public eye is worth a Supreme Court case.


Edited to add: I also believe that the willingness to send hundreds of your own people to their deaths, without doing them the honor of letting them know what they're really dying for, is extraordinary. There is no evidence that Clinton, JFK, Reagan or Ford had that little respect for American lives. Reagan didn't mind selling arms to Saddam Hussien to kill Iranians, but at least he did seem to value the lives of Americans.

Cheney has no conscience. That isn't typical, not even of politicians. Bush is just the boy Cheney needed to achieve this level of power - a not-too-bright man with a brand name and a likeable personality who had proven he wasn't shy about ethical lapses.

I believe in the system of checks and balances. Congress is usually jealous of its perogatives as is the judiciary. It does seem that those jealousies are taking a back seat to partisan politics right now.

Yet the question must be asked of how one party has come to dominate the house, senate, most state govenorships. Holds the presidency and is now within a supreme or two of dominating the courts as well.

Someone, somewhere in the Democratic party leadership needs to take a very hard look and ask why the party can poll enough people to win the popular vote, but can't get enough votes to control even one chamber of congress or win enough electoral votes to capture the presidency.

The party has definetly seen an errosion of support with middle america that can not be explained by gerrymandering alone. There are a lot of factors to consider, Baby boomers getting older, a seeming indifference among the country's youth, the waning power of unions to deliver mass blocks of votes, etc.

I am begining to form the opinion that the Dem's major problem is that the GOP has become so adept at winning the spin war. The GOP has laid cliam to patriotism, family values, and representing the common man. And the Dems have just let it happen. The "Liberal" media is still populated mostly by liberals, but at the top of the major media outlets sit staunch republicans. The top down pressure put on editors to squash unfavorable press coverage seems to be immense.

With just 2 issues, the GOP has very effectly siphoned off a large portion of the support Democrats traditionally depend upon. Gay marriage and abortion have handed the GOP a monopoly on religious voters. The last figures I saw were so absurd I question their veracity, but something like 70% of regular church goers supported Bush. The Protestants were not a surprise, but that includes Catholics too. The Dems have traditionally counted on the support of the working class & working poor, but these two demographics are also, proportionally more likely to regualrly attend Mass or sunday services.

I have seen it postulated that the Dems may actually lose a large percentage of the black vote over gay marraige. I can't see blacks voting Republican in mass, the party simply doesn't represent their concerns in any meaningful way. Among regular church goers however, the only demographic group that defied the trend mentioned earlier were blacks. The two articles I saw this postulated in both noted that black ministers are strongly oppsed to gay marriage. Neither article predicted blacks voting for the GOP based on this issue alone, but both raised the possibility that many may not vote at all, rather than support a party that has been spun as the champion of gay marraige. Another noted that the GOP might even try to bring a vote on the proposed amendment to the consititution, barring gay marriage, to the floor during the Dem's convention.

Religion is a powerful influence in the lives of a lot of people and the GOP has managed to gather both Catholics and Protestants under one banner.

I stated in another thread that the Dem's were anti military and several jumped my case. I'm not a GOP party hack, I'm not an uneducated or uninformed rube, I'm not a neo-con, nor particualrly religious, but that's my perception. Wheter you like my perception or not, it should raise a pretty searing question. If your party isn't anti-military, then why in the name of God have they allowed themselves to be spun that way so successfully that I firmly believe they are? I read both liberal & conservative rags, as well as more main stream news services, I even read articles from other countries occasionally. I am not a small town hick or uneducated rube, taking in the fox news hour as gospel. If this perception is false, then someone in the PR department for the democratic party needs to be hung in effigy, cause he dropped the ball.

It seems to me, that the Dems are getting their asses handed to them in the PR wars. The original title of this thread included blinded by the right. It seems appropo.

-Colly

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The Dems certainly have lost the PR war for the hearts and minds of America, and their leadership had been truly dismal.

But I also think that the GOP has taken the art of verisimilitude and distortion to new and unprecedented lows. Why doesn't the left have any political entertainers like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh on the air? Al Franken tried, but I don't even know if he's on anymore. But these people have no compunction about lying and propagandizing on the air, and people eat it up, just like they eat up The Weekly World News ("Gay Aliens Found in Crashed UFO!")

I really doubt that the Dems are more ethical than the GOP. But it is hard for any sort of moderate to make the kind of splash extremists can, and that's their problem.

---Zoot

 

[Colleen Thomas]

The Dems certainly have lost the PR war for the hearts and minds of America, and their leadership had been truly dismal.

But I also think that the GOP has taken the art of verisimilitude and distortion to new and unprecedented lows. Why doesn't the left have any political entertainers like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh on the air? Al Franken tried, but I don't even know if he's on anymore. But these people have no compunction about lying and propagandizing on the air, and people eat it up, just like they eat up The Weekly World News ("Gay Aliens Found in Crashed UFO!")

I really doubt that the Dems are more ethical than the GOP. But it is hard for any sort of moderate to make the kind of splash extremists can, and that's their problem.

---Zoot

I don't know Doc. I used to spend a lot of time listening to Rush. I still read Ann. I think you hit the right word, they are entertaining. Everything from the left seems...almost whiney. I think Ann & Rush are so successful because they are always on the attack. Ann has an acid wit and she uses it to good effect in her columns.

If the left has realized the value of entertainment in their political commentary, I haven't seen them find anyone who does it right yet.

-Colly

 

[dr_mabeuse]

That bipartisan committee of ex-diplomats and national security proefessionals calling for regime change in America has held their press conference.

Here's a link:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040616/pl_nm/iraq_usa_critics_dc_3

---dr.M.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I don't know Doc. I used to spend a lot of time listening to Rush. I still read Ann. I think you hit the right word, they are entertaining. Everything from the left seems...almost whiney. I think Ann & Rush are so successful because they are always on the attack. Ann has an acid wit and she uses it to good effect in her columns.

If the left has realized the value of entertainment in their political commentary, I haven't seen them find anyone who does it right yet.

-Colly

Of course they're entertaining, and they never let the facts get in the way of a good, entertaining show or column. Hitler was entertaining too. So was Father Coughlin. And Joe McCarthy, and Bozo the Clown.

But given the choice between being entertaining and being accurate, which do you want? I think it's pretty obvious by now what most people prefer.

---dr.M.

 

[Pure]

The exdiplomats story was featured fairly prominently in the paper, along with a Bush statement that most are previoulsy known Kerry enthusiasts.

So much for the conspiracy to suppress.

The credentials of the people are impressive.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Of course they're entertaining, and they never let the facts get in the way of a good, entertaining show or column. Hitler was entertaining too. So was Father Coughlin. And Joe McCarthy, and Bozo the Clown.

But given the choice between being entertaining and being accurate, which do you want? I think it's pretty obvious by now what most people prefer.

---dr.M.

I don't expect accuracy from Ann or Rush. I expect to be entertained. Quite often I am. I don't read or listen to either with the intention of being informed.

Yet the fact remains that they do get into the heads of a lot of folks. For good or ill, thier brand reactionary far right politics has wide appeal. I can distinguish between entertainment & accuracy, but many can't or more honestly, don't.

-Colly

 

[KarenAM]

I think the real sucess of the GOP is that it has mastered lying and propaganda to an amazing extent, and this is because they have correctly tapped into a deep, underlying fear that most Americans have: the realization that the USA is in real and genuine decline relative to the rest of the world.

I was chatting with a friend about Clinton recently, and it occurred to me that Clinton was probably smart enough to realize that the American empire is nearing its end, and so sought to set up a soft landing by encouraging multilateralism and globalization; that way when the USA was no longer able to simply take what it wants (as it has done, generally speaking, since the end of WW II), it would still be an important part of a vibrant world economy. The trouble is, a lot of people in empires don't want to give them up, so he had to be careful and not say this publically.

But he didn't anticipate the response, particularly from the GOP, who have been slipping into a very dark place since Reagan's time with their embracing of social conservatism and the accompanying religious ideology that came with it. Even as the Democrats became more cosmopolitan, the GOP became more isolationist in response, taking on a sense of divine mission, because they felt and still feel that America is "God's country" and that America has a divinely ordained destiny to save the world whether the world wants it or not.

This fits in, I think, with what Colly said about the way religious Americans tend to support the GOP. It isn't Christianity per se, but a national cult focused on the flag and "traditional values", even though these are not traditional and fly in the face of traditional conservatism. This has been accompanied by an amazingly effective use of the mass media to sculpt culture and brand those outside the movement as traitors, regardless of their personal contributions to the country.

Unfortunately, this neo-con effort at restoring the American empire will have the opposite effect. The USA is simply not powerful enough to conquer and control the whole world, and in their effort to do so the GOP has not only isolated the country from the sympathies and support of the rest of the world, (which will in the long run create alliances against us that could destroy us), but it has polarized the population of America itself. To achieve their dreams of world domination, the GOP has adoped fiscal policies that will probably lead to another Great Depression in time, which would trigger a global depression, which in turn could lead to a worldwide calamity of regional wars (some of them using WMDs), famine, ecological degredation, pandemic disease outbreaks, etc.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have contented themselves with playing silly political games aimed at short-term, local success, and have let the GOP lay claim to patriotism, family, and God. If the nightmare scenario I've outlined above does come to pass they will benefit, but the country they'll inherit from the discredited GOP will be only a sad shadow if its former self.

Please, now, someone tell me I'm totally wrong. Please.

 

[shereads]

I don't know Doc. I used to spend a lot of time listening to Rush. I still read Ann. I think you hit the right word, they are entertaining. Everything from the left seems...almost whiney. I think Ann & Rush are so successful because they are always on the attack. Ann has an acid wit and she uses it to good effect in her columns.

If the left has realized the value of entertainment in their political commentary, I haven't seen them find anyone who does it right yet.

-Colly

Does it right?

I could take you through a case-by-case history of statements by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh that have been refuted with documentation, if you want. It will take a few hours to put together - or you could just read Al Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," which, while funny in a sad way, consists almost entirely of taking apart, lie by lie, dozens of Coulter lies, dozens of Rush lies and O'Reilly lies, and so on and so on, until it becomes clear - with the help of the 16 journalism students who provided research and documentation - that no lie is too bizarre or hurtful for the right-wing to embrace. Acid wit? The truth is a component of wit. Coulter's not witty, she's just acid.

With the help of his research staff, Franken traces the creation of the Clinton-as-serial rapist-murderer stories and the Vince Foster murder story, from their beginnings in the bowels of journalism where the American Spectator and Jerry Falwell live, to their repetition and evolution up through the ranks of Rush and Ann Coulter until they make it into the right-mainstream media - Peggy Noonan and the editorial page of the Wall street Journal - and eventually appear in some form in the "liberal media," becoming part of the accepted fabric of American beliefs.

Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are famous not because of their extraordinary wit or intellect, but because they pander to their audience with total disregard for what is true. They don't just twist the truth; they often invent brand new truths; Franken's journalism students were able to refute most of the facts in Coulter's book, "Treason," by using newspaper archives or google - and in several cases, by reading Coulter's own endnotes!

Yes, her own endnotes contradict some of the more outrageous statements in her book. She's a shrewd enough marketer to know that nobody reads endnotes, but everybody finds them reassuring.

Coulter has the conscience of shark. Rush Limbaugh is a hypocrite with no sense of humor at all. Bill O'Reilly has even invented a blue-collar background for himself which Al Franken refuted by going to the source: O'Reilly's mother, who told him which upper-middle-class neighborhood she raised her son in, and gave him the names of the private schools O'Reilly attended. After that, it was easy to document the fact that he didn't pull himself up by his shoelaces, but led a rather privileged life. What's impossible to document is why he felt compelled to lie about his background - and why nobody in his audience of millions has ever called him on it.

Even the Wall Street Journal knows better when it prints some of its editorial pieces. Franken cites a Journal editorial early in the Bush presidency about John Ashcroft's success in reducing gun crime. The source they use is referred to as "the most recent Justice Department figures." Franken does some digging, and learns that the "most recent" figures were published in 2001, just as the Clinton administration was leaving office.

Perpaps liberals, by virtue of our nature ("bleeding hearts," as my dad used to say) have just a bit too much reluctance to celebrate blatant lies that destroy people's careers. We are not, after all, the party who felt compelled to make "compassionate" part of a campaign slogan, in case people thought the opposite.

Here's my theory about why right-wing "spin-doctoring" has been so successful in winning over so many people:

Roone Arledge.

Roone Arledge was head of the sports division at ABC in the late seventies/early eighties. He successfully turned a ratings loser into ABC's most profitable division. To the dismay of journalists and serious news buffs, Arledge was put in charge of the news division. He made their news broadcast subject to the same rules as the entertainment divisions: it would have to do whatever it took to achieve ratings respectable enough to raise its ad revenues.

Until Arledge, the TV networks had considered news programming a public service rather than a profit center. Now the only thing left that isn't at the mercy of investors and advertisers is PBS. Everything else is along the CNN Headline News model - a minute or less to "cover" a story. And the only stories worth covering thoroughly are the ones that entertain.

Given a choice, most people would rather be entertained than informed. Rush and O'Reilly et al give the illusion of informing while they entertain. It's a guilt-free way for people who don't want information that challenges their prejudices or makes them uncomfortable, to feel well informed.

When O'Reilly gets a caller who challenges him, he hangs up. He's a major news source for a lot of people, who have no interest in what that person on the line was about to say. It's less confusing that way.

People are getting stupider on purpose.

In the end, the failure of the left to fight lies with lies may destroy liberalism in America altogether. I'd rather go down with the ship, though, than have my views championed by people with as little integrity as Ann Coulter and Limbaugh. We wouldn't be liberals anymore. We'd be "compassionate conservatives." I'll give it a pass.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I think the real sucess of the GOP is that it has mastered lying and propaganda to an amazing extent, and this is because they have correctly tapped into a deep, underlying fear that most Americans have: the realization that the USA is in real and genuine decline relative to the rest of the world.

I was chatting with a friend about Clinton recently, and it occurred to me that Clinton was probably smart enough to realize that the American empire is nearing its end, and so sought to set up a soft landing by encouraging multilateralism and globalization; that way when the USA was no longer able to simply take what it wants (as it has done, generally speaking, since the end of WW II), it would still be an important part of a vibrant world economy. The trouble is, a lot of people in empires don't want to give them up, so he had to be careful and not say this publically.

But he didn't anticipate the response, particularly from the GOP, who have been slipping into a very dark place since Reagan's time with their embracing of social conservatism and the accompanying religious ideology that came with it. Even as the Democrats became more cosmopolitan, the GOP became more isolationist in response, taking on a sense of divine mission, because they felt and still feel that America is "God's country" and that America has a divinely ordained destiny to save the world whether the world wants it or not.

This fits in, I think, with what Colly said about the way religious Americans tend to support the GOP. It isn't Christianity per se, but a national cult focused on the flag and "traditional values", even though these are not traditional and fly in the face of traditional conservatism. This has been accompanied by an amazingly effective use of the mass media to sculpt culture and brand those outside the movement as traitors, regardless of their personal contributions to the country.

Unfortunately, this neo-con effort at restoring the American empire will have the opposite effect. The USA is simply not powerful enough to conquer and control the whole world, and in their effort to do so the GOP has not only isolated the country from the sympathies and support of the rest of the world, (which will in the long run create alliances against us that could destroy us), but it has polarized the population of America itself. To achieve their dreams of world domination, the GOP has adoped fiscal policies that will probably lead to another Great Depression in time, which would trigger a global depression, which in turn could lead to a worldwide calamity of regional wars (some of them using WMDs), famine, ecological degredation, pandemic disease outbreaks, etc.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have contented themselves with playing silly political games aimed at short-term, local success, and have let the GOP lay claim to patriotism, family, and God. If the nightmare scenario I've outlined above does come to pass they will benefit, but the country they'll inherit from the discredited GOP will be only a sad shadow if its former self.

Please, now, someone tell me I'm totally wrong. Please.

You are totally wrong. Not really, but I think off base in a lot of things.

This contry isn't in decline, not yet. It has reached a crisis point, but the crisis isn't a lack of power, it's too much. We can impose our will on the world. We have the capability to go just about anywhere and do just about anything. If we were on a full war time military footing, we could probably impose dominion anywhere. Could we hold it? Probably not. People don't like being subjects to an outside ruler and even age old internecine squabbles are usually put aside when a foerign invader arrives on the scene.

Therein lies the ultimate danger, the big red candy-like button from Ren & Stimpy or the one ring from Tolkien's world. To resort to military force anytime you are thwarted or feel threatened. Since Reagan, through Bush I, Clinton and now Bush II, our diplomacy has become more and more often gunboat diplomacy. We ratle the sabre or use a carrot & stick type of economic dominion to get people to do what we want them to. Statecraft has become very much a lost art among our politicians.

The temptation to go the military route has become the overriding lure to our presidents since the fall of the U.S.S.R. This particular administration has gone the farthest down the path of Ceasar or Naplolean. Diplomacy has been ignored, or ridiculed, while the forces are deployed. The only caveat on using it is making sure the folks here at home don't get upset with it. Thus, patriotism has been shanghied and fear has been institutionalized. When people are afraid or national security is in doubt, people trend to squak less.

The approach of the Neo-cons, as distasteful as it is to me is almost obscenely pragmatic. They have a job to do and no consideration, ethical, moral or practical is going to stand in their way. In that, they are closely tied to the perception of the fundamentalist far right, basically secular religious fanatics, with our american century replacing God. Crafty though, linking God to their agenda. Not sacrilige of the highest magnitude now, but a crusade to which the moral weight of God's will has been tied.

Are the democrats any better? Who can say. John Kerry or G.W. Bush, Ralph Nader, Doc M., you or I, no matter who sits in the oval office, the power is there. Whispering to him, promising the results he wants without the frustration of haggling, diplomacy & compromise. It's a very insidious siren's call.

Once you use it, it becomes addictive I think. Making it even harder to use diplomacy to settle things, as diplomacy rarely gives you just what you want. It's also something of a positive feedback mechanism, creating its own demand once you have engaged it. First afghanistan, then Iraq, Maybe Syria next or Iran, then Chad, then Brazil, next Canada, where next?

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. That is perhaps the lesson we should all remember. The only thing standing between GWB & absolute power is us. We have the ability, some would say the obligation to kick him out of that office & remove from him that temptation. granted you are putting that temptation in another man's hands, but sometimes that answer beats leaving it there for a man already throughly intoxicated with it.

-Colly

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Does it right?

I could take you through a case-by-case history of statements by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh that have been refuted with documentation, if you want. It will take a few hours to put together - or you could just read Al Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," which, while funny in a sad way, consists almost entirely of taking apart, lie by lie, dozens of Coulter lies, dozens of Rush lies and O'Reilly lies, and so on and so on, until it becomes clear - with the help of the 16 journalism students who provided research and documentation - that no lie is too bizarre or hurtful for the right-wing to embrace. Acid wit? The truth is a component of wit. Coulter's not witty, she's just acid.

With the help of his research staff, Franken traces the creation of the Clinton-as-serial rapist-murderer stories and the Vince Foster murder story, from their beginnings in the bowels of journalism where the American Spectator and Jerry Falwell live, to their repetition and evolution up through the ranks of Rush and Ann Coulter until they make it into the right-mainstream media - Peggy Noonan and the editorial page of the Wall street Journal - and eventually appear in some form in the "liberal media," becoming part of the accepted fabric of American beliefs.

Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are famous not because of their extraordinary wit or intellect, but because they pander to their audience with total disregard for what is true. They don't just twist the truth; they often invent brand new truths; Franken's journalism students were able to refute most of the facts in Coulter's book, "Treason," by using newspaper archives or google - and in several cases, by reading Coulter's own endnotes!

Yes, her own endnotes contradict some of the more outrageous statements in her book. She's a shrewd enough marketer to know that nobody reads endnotes, but everybody finds them reassuring.

Coulter has the conscience of shark. Rush Limbaugh is a hypocrite with no sense of humor at all. Bill O'Reilly has even invented a blue-collar background for himself which Al Franken refuted by going to the source: O'Reilly's mother, who told him which upper-middle-class neighborhood she raised her son in, and gave him the names of the private schools O'Reilly attended. After that, it was easy to document the fact that he didn't pull himself up by his shoelaces, but led a rather privileged life. What's impossible to document is why he felt compelled to lie about his background - and why nobody in his audience of millions has ever called him on it.

Even the Wall Street Journal knows better when it prints some of its editorial pieces. Franken cites a Journal editorial early in the Bush presidency about John Ashcroft's success in reducing gun crime. The source they use is referred to as "the most recent Justice Department figures." Franken does some digging, and learns that the "most recent" figures were published in 2001, just as the Clinton administration was leaving office.

Perpaps liberals, by virtue of our nature ("bleeding hearts," as my dad used to say) have just a bit too much reluctance to celebrate blatant lies that destroy people's careers. We are not, after all, the party who felt compelled to make "compassionate" part of a campaign slogan, in case people thought the opposite.

Here's my theory about why right-wing "spin-doctoring" has been so successful in winning over so many people:

Roone Arledge.

Roone Arledge was head of the sports division at ABC in the late seventies/early eighties. He successfully turned a ratings loser into ABC's most profitable division. To the dismay of journalists and serious news buffs, Arledge was put in charge of the news division. He made their news broadcast subject to the same rules as the entertainment divisions: it would have to do whatever it took to achieve ratings respectable enough to raise its ad revenues.

Until Arledge, the TV networks had considered news programming a public service rather than a profit center. Now the only thing left that isn't at the mercy of investors and advertisers is PBS. Everything else is along the CNN Headline News model - a minute or less to "cover" a story. And the only stories worth covering thoroughly are the ones that entertain.

Given a choice, most people would rather be entertained than informed. Rush and O'Reilly et al give the illusion of informing while they entertain. It's a guilt-free way for people who don't want information that challenges their prejudices or makes them uncomfortable, to feel well informed.

When O'Reilly gets a caller who challenges him, he hangs up. He's a major news source for a lot of people, who have no interest in what that person on the line was about to say. It's less confusing that way.

People are getting stupider on purpose.

In the end, the failure of the left to fight lies with lies may destroy liberalism in America altogether. I'd rather go down with the ship, though, than have my views championed by people with as little integrity as Ann Coulter and Limbaugh. We wouldn't be liberals anymore. We'd be "compassionate conservatives." I'll give it a pass.

By does it right Sher I was refering not to accuracy, but to providing entertainment disguised as political commentary. I can't think of a far left columnist or personality who has tapped into whatever formula Ann & Rush have found to make political commentary entertaining.

You don't see much compassion in Bush's brand of compassionate conservatism. I don't see much conservative in it. Yet neither of us is able to decry it in a way that can have millions of readers or listeners coming back on a dialy or weekly basis to hear us again. Neither of us is an entertainer in that sense. You are too passionate. I am perhaps not passionate enough. Somewhere in there is a blend of passion, pandering, political acumen, mob psychology, and shameless self promotion that will make you a star. You haven't found it. I don't think you are looking. I haven't found it, I'm certainly not looking.

I'm not sure who O'rielly is, but at least Ann & Rush have found it. That's two far right voices who have found the promised land, between politician & streetwalker. Paid good money to run their mouths about subjects they have no formal training in. It just sems odd that no voice from the left has found that same promised land.

-Colly

 

[shereads]

The approach of the Neo-cons, as distasteful as it is to me is almost obscenely pragmatic. They have a job to do and no consideration, ethical, moral or practical is going to stand in their way. In that, they are closely tied to the perception of the fundamentalist far right, basically secular religious fanatics, with our american century replacing God. Crafty though, linking God to their agenda. Not sacrilige of the highest magnitude now, but a crusade to which the moral weight of God's will has been tied.

Amen. So to speak. That's exactly the dynamic that seems to be at work in the relationship between Bush and Cheney. I don't know how the VP selection was made, but it seems to me that Cheney was the person being put into power and Bush II was the means to get him there. Bush II is a classic type: the black sheep who embraces Christianity either on the surface, to buy respectability; or in reality, to buy his way back into God's good graces. Probably a bit of both. He's not a Christian of the type who embraces lepers and scorns wealth and asks himself, "What Would Jesus Do?" He's a pragmatist who wears Christianity like a suit, to be taken off when he finds it too restrictive.

Which made him the ideal running mate for Dick Cheney. Cheney has the charisma of Stalin, and has somehow managed to keep his life so far out of the public eye that even the religious right doesn't seem to care that his wife wrote a porn novel. Cheney and his mysterious consortium of backers ("energy policy task force") have done a masterful job of using the Christian right to accomplish their goals.

Can't you just picture the wood-paneled den, smelling of expensive tobacco and furniture wax, as Cheney and Wolfowitz and a few power brokers share a bottle of very old single-malt scotch and crack jokes about Dubya and Ashcroft and the Jesus folk?

In Newsweek there's a photo feature covering a now-routine tragedy in Iraq: the journalist went on-call with some medics and MPs, to the scene of a suicide-bombed truck full of american soldiers. One of the survivors is sitting with his face in his hands, sobbing like a child over the deaths of his brothers in arms. I look at pictures like that, and I can't help wondering whether Dick Cheney ever looks, and if he does, does he make the connection? Does he think, "I did this" or does he simply think of these young people as pawns on his personal chessboard?

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. That is perhaps the lesson we should all remember. The only thing standing between GWB & absolute power is us. We have the ability, some would say the obligation to kick him out of that office & remove from him that temptation. granted you are putting that temptation in another man's hands, but sometimes that answer beats leaving it there for a man already throughly intoxicated with it.

You've decided to vote for the opponent who has a chance to win, haven't you. I had a feeling you would. For someone like you to waste a vote at a time like this would be entirely out of character.

Remember last year, when I joined the Sorry/Political/Asses thread and joked that you sounded like a Democrat-in-the-making?

Welcome to the losing team, Colly! Take no prisoners!

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Nopers, I'll still be voting for a third party. On a very personal level, if I wish to be able to look at myself in the mirror and not cringe, I can't vote for John Kerry.

That does not mean, however, that I will not encourage others to vote for him. Or more precisely, to vote against GWB. For the first time in my life I am apolitical, in that I see the failings and corruption and agendas of both parites, rather than just the Democrats.

If I did not feel it an obligation as well as a priveledge to vote, I would skip this election entierly. No matter who wins I will be sickened. Sad but true.

-Colly

p.s. I am NOT a democrat, damnit!

 

[shereads]

p.s. I am NOT a democrat, damnit!

It's not an easy thing to admit, but it's happened to some really nice people, and their lives weren't entirely ruined. You have to face this weakness before you can overcome it.

Edited to add: Read Franken's book. If you're not a Democrat by the time you finish it, I'll put a Bush/Cheney bumpersticker on my car until November.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

It's not an easy thing to admit, but it's happened to some really nice people, and their lives weren't entirely ruined. You have to face this weakness before you can overcome it.

Edited to add: Read Franken's book. If you're not a Democrat by the time you finish it, I'll put a Bush/Cheney bumpersticker on my car until November.

LOL,

One from Landover, toostupidtobepresident or Georgewbush.com I would hope

Edited to add, I bet you loved the one, don't abandon your horsemen during an apocalypse with Bush, Cheney, Asscroft & Coni on it

I have little money to spend on books, if I do manage to scrape up book money I'll get something other than Franken. Gonna show my history nerdness now, but I have my eye on a book on great military disasters at the local bookstore Just spent my month's free money on a book on egyptology that was on sale for 4 bucks at Walden cause some so & so ripped out the pages with the pictures of Tutenkaumen's trasures. Hate people like that, but in this case it put a book I wanted that was out of my reach (50 dollars regularly) in my library

-Colly

 

[KarenAM]

Thanks, Colly. I think.

Unfortunately, in the long run, I think we are in our imperial decline. We can conquer many countries (but not all), but we've shown that we cannot control them. Our internal stability and infrastructure are in decline because we are borrowing money for wars that help only our elites, not our citizens, and we are now contributing to worldwide instability rather than reducing it.

Which makes the appeal of extremists like Limbaugh and Coulter all the more understandable, I think. No one likes to be told ugly truths. No one likes to be told that their children may well stand in lines for small slices of government cheese because they insisted on driving a Hummer. So those in power, corrupt as they are, tell lies to the populaton, telling them that everything is fine, that their son or daughter died in Iraq for the cause of freedom and for America, when in fact they only died so those in power can continue to drive Hummers. And people, fearing the truth that lurks just on the edge of their awareness, buy into the lies and call those who tell the truth traitors.

Until it all comes crashing down and America joins every other empire in world history on the trash heap. Only now the world is interconnected, and what the angry folks in the rest of the world don't always realize is that if America falls, they will fall even harder.

In 1918 the flu mutated and killed more people than WW I did. Had the death rate in the United States continued to climb at the rate it was rising in October of 1918, the USA would have ceased to exist as a functioning society by Spring of 1919 (fortunately the death rate leveled out). That world was far less interconnected than ours is today, and far less crowded. If, say, Ebola mutated and became airborne, you could have death counts on the billions in a short period of time, and a complete collapse of human civilization, and our government has been shown in wargame scenarios based on just this eventuality to be totally unprepared. This is just one example of how things can go very wrong very fast in the world of today, and that example doesn't even require a malevolent human agency.

And our "leaders" are doing nothing about these sorts of dangers except to use the Coulters and Limbaughs of the world to convince us to follow blindly as they lead us to hell.

Hopefully I'm just a crazy chicken, squacking about nothing, but that's how I see it.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I don't expect the US to end with a bang. I just expect the power of the US government to be eclipsed by the power of multi-national corporations. People will start owing their alliegence to the company they work for, and that's where the real power will reside. We're already well on the way towards that, and this fighting the Iraq war with hired mercenary companies will only accelerate the shift of power.

I expect that in the not too distant future politicians will be bought and paid for by corporations, and it won't be a dirty little secret anymore, but a point of pride, like wearing brand names on your clothes.

---Zoot

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Thanks, Colly. I think.

Unfortunately, in the long run, I think we are in our imperial decline. We can conquer many countries (but not all), but we've shown that we cannot control them. Our internal stability and infrastructure are in decline because we are borrowing money for wars that help only our elites, not our citizens, and we are now contributing to worldwide instability rather than reducing it.

Which makes the appeal of extremists like Limbaugh and Coulter all the more understandable, I think. No one likes to be told ugly truths. No one likes to be told that their children may well stand in lines for small slices of government cheese because they insisted on driving a Hummer. So those in power, corrupt as they are, tell lies to the populaton, telling them that everything is fine, that their son or daughter died in Iraq for the cause of freedom and for America, when in fact they only died so those in power can continue to drive Hummers. And people, fearing the truth that lurks just on the edge of their awareness, buy into the lies and call those who tell the truth traitors.

Until it all comes crashing down and America joins every other empire in world history on the trash heap. Only now the world is interconnected, and what the angry folks in the rest of the world don't always realize is that if America falls, they will fall even harder.

In 1918 the flu mutated and killed more people than WW I did. Had the death rate in the United States continued to climb at the rate it was rising in October of 1918, the USA would have ceased to exist as a functioning society by Spring of 1919 (fortunately the death rate leveled out). That world was far less interconnected than ours is today, and far less crowded. If, say, Ebola mutated and became airborne, you could have death counts on the billions in a short period of time, and a complete collapse of human civilization, and our government has been shown in wargame scenarios based on just this eventuality to be totally unprepared. This is just one example of how things can go very wrong very fast in the world of today, and that example doesn't even require a malevolent human agency.

And our "leaders" are doing nothing about these sorts of dangers except to use the Coulters and Limbaughs of the world to convince us to follow blindly as they lead us to hell.

Hopefully I'm just a crazy chicken, squacking about nothing, but that's how I see it.

All conventional empires have declined. That is true. The U.S. isn't a conventional empire. We hold no tributary states, have no colonies, most importantly, we are not tied to the natural resources coming in from tributary states.

The inherent weakness of any empire is in it's colonial possessions. Most of the wars fought by the european powers prior to WWI were fought in thier colonies or on the high seas as much if not more so than on the contienetal battlefields. We don't have the need to protect colonies, nor are we dependant on them for resources. If, we did have them, we currently have the strongest navy in the world and are allied with about the only power on the world stage who could even give us a close to fair fight, the U.K.

Decay from within, is a much stronger possibility, but that too is difficult in the U.S. as the group who represents being in power changes so regularly.

I wouldn't look at empires in comparison so much as I would look at republics & democracies, historically. Prior to their fall, almost all gave in to dictatorship or some form of totalitarian rule, usually to face a severe crisis. It is very possible that the U.S. weathered its most severe test when we made it through the Great Depression without caving in and going with another governmental form. Without a change to a less dynamic form of governement, I don't see us falling off the world stage in my lifetime.

I don't like the neo-cons. In fact I have more reason to dislike them than most people here as they have robbed me of a political party as well as doing all the things they have done wrong to everyone. I'm Cynical. I'm sometimes nastily detached & objective while others being too emotionally involved for my own good. I'm extremely analytical and am able to enter into phylosophical debates and hold my own.

The best answer I have for your fears is that I am a pessimist by nature and I don't forsee any of the doomsday predictions as realistic. Golbal warming or some similar cataclysimic happening on a global scale is probably the only way I can forsee the U.S. falling in a short span of years. Even with the GOP's assault on our personal liberties I don't forsee an oligarchy or facist state as a near reality.

I don't trust GWB to be able to find his butt with both hands & a map. I think Kerry might be able to with both hands and a good map

The most likely scenario, if you are concerned with it, would come with Bush being reelected. It just takes one or two of the current supremes kicking the bucket or retiring and you could find a judicail system that is stacked with right leaning and even reactionary justices. That would remove the final barrier in the far right's assault on America, giving them control of the three branches of governemnt and removing the judiciary as the current champion of liberty and freedoms.

Strangely, as a conservative, this is what I fear most. I've spent a good portion of my life liberal bashing, but that ceased to be fun when they were no longer in control of things. No one is helped when a single viewpoint dominates all three brances of our governement. No one wins when there is no strident voice of opposition.

That scenario is where I see our most clear and present danger. A collusion of people with the same view point that will supercede the system of checks & balances that protect us all from a hegemony on ideas. From that comes your police state, theocracy or facism. And from there, decline and fall are usually swift and sure.

-Colly

 

[rgraham666]

I don't expect the US to end with a bang. I just expect the power of the US government to be eclipsed by the power of multi-national corporations. People will start owing their alliegence to the company they work for, and that's where the real power will reside. We're already well on the way towards that, and this fighting the Iraq war with hired mercenary companies will only accelerate the shift of power.

I expect that in the not too distant future politicians will be bought and paid for by corporations, and it won't be a dirty little secret anymore, but a point of pride, like wearing brand names on your clothes.

---Zoot

I created a cyberpunk role playing game a few years ago based on exactly that scenario.

The problem is that the corps are prepared to conquer, but not to rule. You can't run a society like a corporation. The corps didn't realise this.

So, in my future, there are maybe 2 billion people on our planet. And it wasn't War that got the missing ones, but the other two Horsemen, Pestilence and Famine.

It was a great place for a game, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Unfortunately, I think it's going to come about.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

By does it right Sher I was refering not to accuracy, but to providing entertainment disguised as political commentary. I can't think of a far left columnist or personality who has tapped into whatever formula Ann & Rush have found to make political commentary entertaining. -Colly

Colly,

One reason you won’t find even a pseudo-democrat in that particular Promised Land, is due to the fact that they must have some relationship with the truth, or they will be ignored.

For the right, truth doesn’t seem to matter as much as snideness.

Have you watched John Stewart on The Daily Show recently?

Most times he is not only on the money for humor, but also in a not-too-outrageous position on the facts. Always far closer to the reality of a situation than the people upon whom he is reporting. In fact, that is his schtick!

Formerly, Bill Maher was another good voice from a “libertarian” point-of-view, until he got put off the air for making one simple comment.

He said that people who strap dynamite about themself and blow themselves up to take out their opponent cannot accurately be called a ‘coward.’ When pressed, he added that dropping bombs from a mile up, on a city filled with women and children, was probably closer to that epitaph than were the suicide bombers.

Clear-eyed, right-wing patriots practically went nuts in their fury to have him removed from the air.

It’s not the humor, Colly, it’s the truth that the right can’t stand.

(Maher – formerly on ABC – is back on HBO, if you can get it.)

I have not read much Coulter or O'Reilly. What little I have read convinces me I would be dicing with insanity were I to make them a habit.

For a brief time it fitted my schedule to listen to Limbaugh.

His format appears to be composed of an oily, supercilious manner, mean spirited sarcasm, and a completely amoral disregard for facts.

What I like about Stewart’s humor, is that it comes out of the discrepancy between statements (often clips of the Bush Administration) and an alternate reality (often the Bush Administration with a different story).

Under most condition, I don’t think this format could work often enough to make the show successful, except, as we all know, the Bush Administration lies ... a lot!