The fact that Obama sat down with one of the least credible media personalities in the history of the presidential interview is the very picture of appeasement.
In fact, the Fox News shakedown of American media culture is both as simply executed and deeply traumatizing as any random street mugging, except on a national scale and with much more premeditation. The wholesale co-opting of social ideals and journalistic precepts to spread a gospel of fear is Fox's stock and trade, the very key to its profitability; casting caricatured archetypes in authoritative "news anchor" roles to spread its ingeniously framed disinformation is so brazen it shocks convention into stunned inaction and defensive gibbering.
Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes have done what every entrepreneur with an eye for exploitation has been doing for millennia, only with far greater rewards -- and greater consequences -- than any of their predecessors. I'm not sure any purposely sown divisions of the public fomented by antagonistic ad campaigns for Coke and Pepsi have yielded such enormous acrimony along with the profit. But division and acrimony are the perfect conditions for an organization like Fox News to thrive.
And the cultural extortion embodied by the media is by no means limited to pseudo-news outlets or continuously spewed brain-basting right wing talk-radio blather: The corporate shills and ditto-head apparatchiks have seeped their way into the political and judicial system where their intentions to bend history and law to their own ends is on clear display. From the absurd ravings of fringe personalities who now find themselves bloviating from the House floor to the ideologically-challenged judges who answer not to the U.S. Constitution but to a radical religious calling, the very institutions created to waylay such attacks upon sense and sensibility are under constant and brutal assault.
And as evidenced by the apparent need to placate the bullies who, so emboldened by their disquieting popularity, have extended their criminal reach beyond all sense of decency (a term which itself is currently being mangled at the hands of framers of right-wing doctrine), a democratically empowered president with a mandate to change the status quo is brought to heel in the sad reality that has become our democracy.
Bullies win. Pay up.
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And I thank you.
I've taken a bit of a sabbatical from HP, having found myself frustrated, angry and, well, stupefied by what an obscure author from the mid 60's termed, "The Organizational Society." From one ambivalent to another, if i may be so bold, the author's name is Robert Presthus and I do believe that you'd find the work both interesting and quite prescient.
Anyway, it's good to be back and enjoying your observations and humor.
And he is well paid for being a corporate shill and enemy of liberal ideology which created this country and made possible the rise of all shills on FNC.
Shouldn't we give Obama just a TAD more credit?
Please - Obama is the adult in this scenario; O'Reilly the pompous @ss, and FOX the conduit through which each spoke. Let's not make it out to be a fallacious comparison to pre-WW2 appeasement.
And Heaven forbid we force Obama to take a stand.
Hate speech is literally a drug, activating an adrenal/cortisol buzz. The metaphors of addiction, tolerance, and withdrawal all apply. Since much FOX News content is patent inconsistency, hypocrisy, mis-information and nonsense, it is most accurate to think of Fox commentors as drug dealers, and their fans as addicts. They aren't operating in a domain of reason. Perhaps that's a caution about indulging in hate speech.
"Bullies win"? Pots and kettles. Actually, the long historical trend is that bullies lose. The work is accelerating the trend. Their weakness is their blindness. We give away our advantage if we wear blinders ourselves.
Inspired by Obama, I've been sitting around and waiting for everyone to become nice. It's addictive (speaking of). It's almost like doing nothing.
The last thing we libs want to do is challenge the status quo when it's working out this splendidly for us.
If we define "appeasement" to mean the act of simply sitting down and TALKING so someone who disagrees with us, or does not share our particular values....
....democracy becomes IMPOSSIBLE....and it is a short slide down the slippery slope towards the kind of insanity that gripped the Balkans in the 1990s.
There's no point whatsoever in O. consenting to a Fixed-News interrogation, esp. when it means sitting and smiling through O'Reilly's macho-posturing rudeness. The GOP has pegged Obama as a wimp, and he's doing everything possible to conform to that expectation. Try thinking outside of the most extreme either/or's.
It is how this nation deals with its collective problems. Politics are just the forces which affect how our government operates.
Our system of government---especially when control is divided among the two parties---is SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to make it nearly impossible for one political faction to impose its will upon the other.
So it leaves you with two options. You can either seek to find common ground with your opponents and move forward in solving problems in those areas....
Or you can do what Mitch McConnell did from 2008-2010. Bring the WHOLE THING to a screeching halt...by deliberately sabotaging it...and the the country be d*amned.
I, for one, prefer a president who cares more about governing the country than he does about "beating the opposition"....and you can't find common ground if talking to those who disagree with you is seen as some sort of sign-of-weakness.
Keep that up, and we'll find ourselves in the same boat as the Egyptians. Where the only way to get anything done will be by rioting in the streets.
I again express my fascination with your talent to illuminate what lives and hides in the walls using just a few short paragraphs. You somehow make the hypocrites buying that perpetually 'spewed blather', ones that normally scurry away from light, so defensive and guilty and certain you're writing about them - they'll frequently fling fanatic froth of their own. Invariably quoting the exact arguments and parroting those 'absurd ravings', they validate an unquestioned acceptance of the very lack of 'sense and sensibilities' you mention. Many so buy every premise the purveyors of extortion are pimping, they're convinced the 'real world' must agree and anyone else is just one of 'those people'. Added to their delusion is the absolute surety these extortionists, and therefore the parroting of talking points, somehow speaks for 'most of America' - even when every poll shows them a fractional minority. It's a mental defect only achieved by hearing and seeing what you want to be true. You know, 'these are not the droids I'm looking for'.
So once again, nice 'light-saber' targeting Skywalker; you're the Jedi Maestro!
They don't have to co-opt the standards of decent journalism--they merely have to avoid them.
Most importantly: "What the HELL is a gossip girl?" A definitive line between reality and television psychosis. A reference to this has nothing to do with what I said, it's merely a distraction--typical.
I "bear such burden" based on the polls. Period.
Yes, cite your "alleged charities" with all of your might. Someone might actually believe this.
Art in public schools? Please, don't waste my time. Most kids can't read, let alone appreciate art....
Look, Steven, I truly appreciate your acting. I was wrong in being insensitive and attacking you personally. I apologize. I think you are a gifted actor. "The Shining and Single White Female," are a few of my most favs. Let's agree to disagree on politics. I truly think you are completely off base in your comments.--my opinion, which I am allowed.
I hope, in the future, you research all avenues before you forumulate an opinion, as will I. The best thing about this country is that we are able to have a healthy--amicable--debate. No Highball here...I prefer a Vodka with Diet Cherry-Up:-)
Best to You:-)