You can't fault the corporate-owned media for doing what comes naturally, which is to hammer the points which paint any perceived impediments to their revenue stream (like regulation, for instance) in a bad, bad light. It's certainly easier than convincing most people that what they actually stand for is good for the country; even the most easily swayed Tea Party bumpkin, who has already demonstrated his useful idiocy in spades, would spit out the bitter tasting crap the corporations try to pass off as milk.
But the good thing about being an arrogant, greedy, bully is that eventually it trips up and reveals its intentions in a pathetically clumsy blurt, lacking the essential humanizing ingredients of imagination and humility to come off looking entirely convincing.
The latest crew of cockeyed "conservative" con-artists are asserting that the EPA, of all things, should be abolished (along with my favorite -- the eradication of public education -- which they broadcast in a frequency that only dogs and swine can hear). They just love seeing Indians cry (I know, I know -- Keep America Beautiful, the organization which sponsored the iconic image of "Iron Eyes" Cody, the ersatz Native American, was a way for cigarette companies to deflect responsibility for their own polluting tendencies. But why step into the endlessly digressive Möbius loop of corporate malfeasance when I'm trying to be clever and get you to like me?). It feeds into their revenge fantasies against all those godless peoples who had the audacity to assert themselves against Whitey's Manifest Destiny-whips (Manifest Destiny Whip, by the way, goes great on a chocolate subjugation sundae. Try it!).
We have no choice but to watch and hear the bleating of corporate-pwned media talking heads regurgitating their sugar daddy's talking points, interviewing the latest political stars and starlets and letting them spew their codswallop with nary a follow-up question that doesn't further cement their lips to corporate America's zit-encrusted ass. It's the snake eating its own tail but it's a long tail and a big, roomy stomach. The hope that its self-consumption will complete will take some time, it seems.
And at this point, it's more about our own hope being strangled by those corporate influences than President Obama's. The rest of the media has pretty much fallen into lockstep behind Rupert Murdoch's manure-spreaders at Fox, who have proven once again that loudly and proudly goose-stepping into a neighborhood is the most assured means of getting that neighborhood's denizens to comply with everything the ministers of propaganda outline in their electronic leaflets and let the conquering army do whatever it bloody well wishes to the shivering curs.
So, with no other viable options to compete with them, we swallow what they give us. And the call to Hope and Change, which struck our national cords three years ago with such authenticity and exhilaration, has been located, bought up like so much real estate, renovated and re-sold to the tenants as a lie that has always been a lie, a sham that has never been anything but.
In fact, according to them we were all fools to believe that we ever needed hope or change. We just need their word, their promise that it's not President Obama or progressive legislation or the will of the majority of the people, but the word which keeps those corporations -- I'm sorry, Judge Scalia -- people -- profitable and thriving and unregulated and low-taxed. Anything else would be counterproductive.
Corporations really put the "Me" in their memes.
Follow Steven Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheStevenWeber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease
For home-grown pollution, there's always Love Canal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal
The rays of sunlight are starting to peek through. While it's disturbing what they reveal, it's also a hopeful sign that our grasp of reality is moving out of the darkness.
- Tom
Oh you Canadians with your truth-telling media and your universal health care, and your regulated financial industries.
All you mamby-pamby-types in all them foriegn countries always wantin' the truth. Demandin' the facts. Our media lies to us all the time, and we LIKE it!
They tell us there's no such thing as global warming, while our cats are bursting into flames in our front yards in May, and we LIKE it!
And you weak foreign-types always needin' to see a doctor, and expectin' it to be a right. I chopped my leg off cuttin' brush with a chainsaw last year and couldn't afford a doctor, so I just took an old rusty pipe, stuck it on the stub and I LIKED it!
I didn't need none of that sooocilized medicine that would hurt our wonderful insurance company CEO's bonuses.
And my stockbroker sold me a fund he claimed was tripple A. Turned out to be invested in a company that was trying to teach chipmunks to tap dance. Cost me my whole life savings, and I LIKED it!
'Cause that's how we ruggged US of A types like to live. Being lied to by our media as we watch our cats burst into flames, while walkin' around on rusty pipes for legs with all our life savings blown on schools for tap dancing chipmunks! It builds character, and we LIKE it! ;-)
You have to marvel at all this de-education of the masses. And the subsequent filling of the void then made available inside the suddenly roomy sloped skulls, with disinformation that would make Goebbels and the cold war-era Tass proud.
And Mr. Beck has proven to be incredibly prophetic! It seems that if you go on a TV and radio show everyday, and you fill your listeners with fear and misinformation. Turn them against their government (themselves), and encourage them to support the very, so-called, leaders who want to destroy the economy and all the safety nets needed because of that tireless march to economic destruction, your only remaing sponser (by GOLD!!!) will BOOM!!!
Yes, buy gold my friends. It's the Glenn Beck modern day gold rush. He told you it was coming. What a genius! How could he have KNOWN???
And for those of you, ahem, less fortunate, there's always your great grandmother's gold necklace she wore when she came to the "promised land" all those decades ago. Or your father's gold ring that he bequeathed to you to remember him by. Why wait? Get thee to a pawn shop! There will never be a better time to take advantage of the Glenn Beck "gold rush."
" Now I can cry until I laugh, and laugh until I cry
So cut the deck right in half, I'll play from either side" [ I'll Take My Chances--Mary Chapin Carpenter ]
The posters who respond here are also always interesting and informative too. Thanks.