Iraq Media Blackout at 2 Minutes Per Week

Max and the Marginalized are a band and a blog. They do a song every week on the Huffington Post, all 38 of which are available for download here. Add them on Facebook.

Earlier this week, the New York Times clocked the CBS evening news's total coverage of Iraq in 2008 at a total of 51 minutes. That's slightly less than 2 minutes per week. ABC World News clocked in at 55 minutes so far, edging them just over 2 minutes per week.

The war's proponents are claiming that the good news from Iraq isn't making it here -- its detractors (like me) claim the bad news isn't, and we're both right. Our song about the Iraq media blackout is pretty short, but once you get past the second chorus you will have spent more time listening to it than two of the major networks spent discussing the war this week.

Click the player below to hear "Waiting for the Blackout to End".

Waiting for the Blackout to End

It takes just a couple of minutes
It's just about that long
To boil a pot of water
Or to play a 4 chord song
So if you think that there's been improvement
Or it's a mess that spirals on
It takes more than a couple a minutes
To ascertain what's going on
When there's 150,000 bodies
And 300,000 boots
And a billion some odd dollars
Going to high-priced substitutes
It don't matter if they find it boring
Or if it makes your product flat
If you only do a couple of minutes
You owe much more than that

There's weather coming out on the ones and the traffic on the tens
Everything that falls in between well, that all depends
'Cause it don't hold no one's attention, like it used to do back then
That's why every week, we're down to a couple of minutes
While we're waiting for the blackout to end

When there isn't blood or fire
In the signals through the air
I'll just have to take your word for it
That there isn't over there
So you can say that the good news don't make it through
But it's tough to call
Cause when I only see a couple of minutes
I can't see that much at all

So dice it down into tiny pieces I, can comprehend
For a living room so sick and tired of "oh, not that again"
Point those eyeballs downward as the line on the graph descends
Until every week, we're down to a couple minutes
While we're waiting for the blackout to end

There's weather on the ones and traffic on the tens
But when it comes to bloodsher, no ain't no time to spend
'Cause it don't hold no ones attention, like it used to do back then
And that's why every week we're down to a couple of minutes
While we're waiting for the blackout to end

Comments

[Orlando]

Operation Mockingbird was a 28 year covert program in which domestic and international news outlets were paid with taxpayer's money to publish propaganda. This is an illegal act and direct violation of the legal function of the CIA, as they are meant to gather and interpret intelligence, not suppress or manufacture it. As some of the organizations that were being paid to print CIA propaganda include the Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, CBS, Time magazine, The Miami News, Life magazine, etc, etc, it is safe to say that this was a robust, successful operation. The contractual nature of this relationship changed when the newly appointed CIA director, George H. W. Bush, called for the end of entering into contracts for these services. He did however, state in his announcement, that the CIA would still welcome the voluntary unpaid cooperation of journalist. So the program did not end but was, "taken off of the books'.

When you weigh the loud cheerleading for war by major news outlets, against the thunderous silence of the consequences for these acts of aggression, critical thinking demands consideration that news outlets could still be under the influence of the CIA and lawless elements of this government.

When the major news outlets start singing in harmony some Pentagon apologist"s song about how this war was "well intentioned" but poorly managed requiring more troops, funding and equipment, you must decide if this is factual news or merely the chatter of Mockingbirds singing their haunting refrain.

[ApolloSpeaks]

REASON FOR OBAMA'S DELAYED TRIP TO IRAQ

At the same time if the security gains made in the war continue into the fall-which it looks like they do given the defeat of the Mahdi Army-it will be a huge blow to Obama who will then be forced to fulfill his pledge, visit Iraq and, to his embarrassment, report on the progress there. Obama is delaying his trip in the hope that by fall conditions on the ground deteriorate. This way the man who wrongly predicted that the surge would fail, that it would worsen violence, terror and death, will tell the voters on returning 'You see, I told you so.'

The surge is working in McCain's favor and that is all for the good. What McCain must now do is go on the attack and pound Obama with the Pentagon's "Harmony Documents" which prove that Saddam and al-Qaida had operational ties, that he funded, trained and armed almost every other Islamic terrorist group and that the invasion of Iraq was a war of necessity to remove an immensely dangerous man.

[TheEmptinessOfTruthiness]

If "the surge is working," and the "immensely dangerous man" is gone, then why not bring the troops home?

You would believe the Pentagon's neocons over the Phase II report that stated there were no links between al-Qaeda and Iraq and that there was no WMD program in Iraq?

Yes, of course you would.

[ApolloSpeaks]

The politicized Phase II Reports left out 600,000 translated Iraqi intell documents, the Harmony Docs, which corroberate Janet Reno's 1998 indictment of bin Ladin wherein she accuses Saddam and Al Qaida as having operational ties. One of the harmony memos has Zarahawi visiting Bagdad in 1998 to collect money from Saddam, for example. One other memo had Saddam hosting not one, not five, not ten but 13 terror conferences in Baghdad in 2002 with representives from all the major jihadist groups. As time went on Saddam was getting more deeply invovled with our jihadist enemies training, funding and arming them. Without question this man was a gathering menace and we were 1000% right in toppling him.

As for WMD the Phase II Report completely left out Kay and Dufflers discovery of a clandestine network of WMD labs in Iraq that were capable of producing bio & chem. weapons within weeks..

[Chillinout]

Excellent song!

[w&cheneysuck]

Excellent Max, as always! Thanks.