I am constantly bemused at the way the Right, vigorously attacks any form of humanitarian cause, as if it were the instrument of the collapse of all social networks. I was reading a column by Susan Smith Dale another of the Right Wing blonde bimbos who seem to know all the party lines and none of the facts. Why are they all blonde and why are they all unable to delineate between fact and fiction? Anyway, the non-notable Ms Dale spends a whole column trying unsuccessfully to explain why the Left is undergoing a spectacular collapse. I would have thought this would have been rather easy considering the states of international, especially European governments and our own congress but Ms Dale in true bimbo fashion titters around the factless edges of the problem and wanders off into a rather toothless attack on OWS accusing the demonstrators of soon to be violent actions. Soon to be? Based on what? Well, maybe she does have something. If the local mayors and police continue to act like graduates of the Gestapo, sooner or later there will, in fact, be violence. I am constantly amazed by the sense of discipline and control exhibited by the young demonstrators in the face of constant acts of violence perpetrated against them by the police in various cities. Maybe Ms Dale will get at least one thing right. Maybe some dumb cop, yes there are smart cops and they are in the majority, but maybe one of the dumb ones will do something so unquestionably idiotic that one of the demonstrators will retaliate and then we will have true chaos. Let’s just hope that the demonstrator who retaliates isn’t armed or there will be a lot of dead people in the streets. Our police have shown no ability to react to any kind of contention in a balanced manner.
But back to Ms Dale and her accusation that the Left is collapsing, despite the fact that, it is supported by the majority of western mainstream media. The first part of that statement is irrefutably false. I don’t know why, it should be true, it just isn’t. All you have to do is look at the chaos of the Republican presidential debates and you can see that they are more in danger of collapse than their oft non-functioning opponents.
It’s the other part of the statement that fascinates me. And it may be partly true, mainly because that media, which is not influenced by the Right leaning corporations that own it, and which still has the ability to think and editorialize for itself, does support, mostly Left leaning causes. Why, probably because they make the most sense and appear to be best for the country as a whole. There are, however, whole segments of the media, such as talk radio, News Corp TV, various Foxx TV channels, CNN and any number of newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and a whole raft of others where party line rather than facts dictates the editorial content. These cannot be ignored just because of a long running if totally false American tradition of impartial news. The fiction of impartial news was never true, but the myth, like most long running traditions has managed to remain clutched to our hopeful breasts.
We as a people still believe what we hear and see on the radio, TV and in print. We shouldn’t, but we do. It probably comes from our Constitution which has always guaranteed free speech and which, by doing so, has created a culture where because our media was free of government control, pretty much free to say what it wanted, we have always regarded as not only free to declaim, but truthful in its declamations.
This, of course, is far from true. No, the government does not limit what the media can say but the media is, at this point in history, being controlled by a far more insidious editor. Little by little, as our TV stations and newspapers are being taken over by huge conglomerates we find that their editorial policies are falling victim to the political and economic policies of the corporations that now own them. Yes the media is still free of government control but it is now falling under the control of a much more dangerous master, the small-minded leaders of big business. Right now, more than half the existing media in this country is controlled by people who bear, you, the citizens of the United States no good will. They are business leaders whose only objective is to grow greater and greater profits regardless of what that enterprise does to the United States as a whole and they will exercise more than enough influence on their employees to assure that they will write whatever opinionated half truths or lies that are needed to influence you, the reader, to make decisions that are in their best interests and not your own.
If this is what the inadequate Ms Dale considers a strong Left leaning influence in the media, then her information gathering resources are only half as pathetic as her understanding of the situation.