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3.03.2003
1) Think Tanks. I listen to NPR on a pretty regular if not daily basis. And for being the bastion of liberal media that it is I get really sick and tired of hearing the parade of people that appear almost with nauseating frequency from such places like Heritage, American Enterprise, Cato, Club for Growth etc. Why is it that I can see Stephen Moore a hundred times before I see Chomsky once, if at all? Its like they stand outside the doors of the media outlets waiting for the producers to arrive. I don't know if its the laziness of the producers to go with the readily available experts that these think tanks have supplied in vast quantities or if its the deafening cries of bias that has opened the doors for their like. Its really sad to see that media outlets will pair up a celebrity like Janeane Garafalo with one of these polished, robot-like conservative mouthpieces. There is a vast untapped reservior of liberal thinkers that don't even get mentioned by major media outlets. The problem seems to be their nasty habit of pointing to the stinking mess that we all want to ignore: 2) Capitalism. Its telling that even in the so called liberal media, once people start to talk with any conviction about capitalism itself there is this wild "deer caught in headlights" look that journalists get on their faces. Instantly they think, don't ask that guy back. I listen to the Diane Rhem show and she cuts off anybody that starts to talk about capitalism in any negative light. It has happened on several occasions. We tend to treat people critical of capitalism or its current american manifestation as conspiracy nuts. Recently in a discussion about the creation of a new "liberal" talk radio network a caller described himself as being "so far left he'd fall of the edge of the Earth" but later offered to buy stock in the company. I don't consider that very left. In America we start off pretty far to the right ecomonically, at least as far as the rest of the world is concerned, and even as far as our own history is concerned. So I am not suprised when Europe thinks we are a bunch of right wing nuts and we don't see it. We don't even talk about left wing issues such as communism, socialism or anarchism. We can't even mention Marx in a public discourse despite some of the relevance it might have on understanding historical views. We start at the right and move even further in that direction. As part of our Cold War "syndrome" we take at face value that the slippery slope to oppression starts with leftist liberalism and goes from there, ignoring the vast potential that right wing mentalities have to produce oppresion as well. Hence the rather blase American approach to the train wreck that is the Bush presidency. They don't see that its a threat. Not like communism is a threat. Not like socialism is a threat. I think Europe has a better understanding of that than we do, and it shows in the response to current American leadership. The media understand that if they start to explore the depths of leftist opinion they will be open to a barrage of criticism established during the cold war that equates any questioning of the American economic system with wholesale anti-americanism. The debate on economic matters moved so far to the right during the 80's and 90's that we are just starting talk about it again. Its with a sense of dismay that I watch journalists day after day reporting on low teacher salaries, job insecurity, homelessness, discrimination, environmental degradation, growing drug use, booming prison populations, media consolidation, why things always break, why sitcoms suck, militarization of everything, greasy foods, obese children and the list goes on and on. All without any consideration of economic factors. They simply shrug their shoulders and think "hmm that's odd, maybe there needs to be more charities." Labor has no voice. They only get mentioned in the liberal media when they are refered to as "big labor". And they are always bossing around politicians that are powerless against them. But luckily we have the business lobbies there to protect us. All without mentioning the vast amounts that labor gets outspent year after year after year. Labor history is lost in our education system and nobody seems to care. Not the business class at least. "If it wasn't for those meddling teachers unions ...". ( ? ) We are so detached from the history of class struggle in this country that even people that lose their life savings on Wall Street, can't get insurance or health care, keep getting laid off, have watched their earning stagnate and have little or no job security will still maintain that its because of welfare mothers. We don't need minimum wage, we don't need labor laws, pensions, or vacations and we really don't need a hundred years worth of rights won by the working class. The so called liberal media don't seem to have a problem saying "labor flexibility". Not many of the so called liberals bring up the robber barons and the 1920's and the reason why we have a social safety net in the first place. Instead we have experts issuing forth from conservative think tanks that remind us that the real problem is all the government controls. Its mindblowing to watch the very support structures that keep capitalism viable being torn away at an alarming rate. Enron was no accident, but that won't stop the push for more power and money. It was a non-story in the so called liberal media. A slight blip on the radar. The so called liberal media wont touch the literature thats available that explains the predictable paths that non-regulated capitalists system will take. They don't bother to analyse the growing influence that the stock market has over all things american. Or the immense effects that international trade laws will have on our own rights. After all, even the so called liberals own stock. | |
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