MSM Coverage of Republican Debates a Showcase Joke
anon@indymedia.org (Pamela Peace) | 14.01.2012 00:55 | London
One could almost feel sorry for poor, old, George F. Will, that is, as he trudges onward into more and more senility, trying still to worm his pretenses of sensible logic out of what is too often nonsense. His new found support for Rick Santorum is surprising but he looked manly in the photo op holding a high-powered shotgun while hunting in the cornfields of Iowa (no doubt another Dick Cheney kind of guy ready to play vice). Being more male-manly than that Walmart lawyer, Hillary Rodham Clinton, slamming down a whiskey sour or such wild turkey in dat thar Midwestirn, good-old-boy, tavern where hunters and hunter-wannabes hang? He's red-blooded.
MSM Coverage of Republican Debates a Showcase Joke.
By Pamela Peace
One could almost feel sorry for poor, old, George F. Will, that is, as he trudges onward into more and more senility, while trying still to worm pretenses of sensible logic out of what is too often nonsense. If it were true, as he writes, "republicans crave fun" (whereas to support Romney seems like a duty), then we can well conclude few republicans are reading this dour hack.
During the ongoing circus of GOP presidential debates the poor guy recently figured it worthy to advocate for Rick Santorum for President or at least Vice President (even while Will admittedly thinks republicans won't capture the White House this time around).
Hell, why not vote "Sanctorum" with an almost Latinate sir name bordering ‘sanctity'? Was this guy, how ever briefly coming out of Iowa, the new messiah since three Washington Post syndicated writers dubbed him a heavy-weight worthy (how coincidental?) even if, after the NH debates we already are getting other signals from some in the same writers group.
Rick Santorum looked determined-manly in that photo op where he's holding a high-powered shotgun while hunting in the cornfields of Iowa (no doubt another Dick Cheney kind of guy ready to play vice). Still one could argue he seems more male-manly than a Walmart lawyer like Hillary Rodham Clinton when she was slamming down a whiskey sour or such wild turkey shot glass, in dat thar Midwestirn, good-old-boy, tavern where hunters and hunter-wannabes hang?
Yeah he was red-blooded but now suddenly Romney's blue blood is getting the media blessing more and more. It seems punditry opinion shifts as fast as shifty politicians and Mitt seems ever so tactfully as able to tack his course however the winds blow-unlike so Santorum and Paul who seem immovable to certain principles.
Imagine though, however briefly, this overlooked candidate Santorum was suddenly the media's star and placed smack dab center stage in the Manchester New Hampshire debate Saturday. And he was asked the "second" lead question about, no-less-than, "Commander-and-Chief" duties. (Of course after ABC stooges lobbied a pussy-foot question about job increases in the economy firstly to the "undisputed" champ Mitt Romney (knowing ahead what he was likely to respond).
Funny how some candidates get certain kinds of questions to highlight certain kind of outcomes while others get questions to make them seem more questionable and divisive. But, hey, no bias-creation on the part of this News Empire with the typical apple-pie blonde-babe Diane Sawyer mediating. (You just know if a blonde female anchor is representing our tough concerns then it represents mainstream America-that is since blonde women represents damn near everything else about photogenic mediation.)
And in case you missed the after-debate Saturday night analysis-as if the type of questioning itself during the debate was not revealing enough of gross bias-they had a motley crew of "variegated" opinion rock stars-seven pillars of supposed wisdom-that gave us the immediate summation of the night which could be paraphrased with these words: "Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney, and Mitt Romney". (Did we forget anything? No-a foregone conclusion-don't you know.)
But hey such a news empire as ABC would never push any kind of bias to be sucked up by the American public? Not the mainstream media?
Granted Romney is good-looking, tall, smiles a lot, is family-orientated, has intelligence, is articulate, is very business orientated, and is American style rich. As an educated man he is not the worst of the lot-and he demonstrates he can be "groomed" to what the powers-that-be will want him to be (just like Obama became what some power manipulators wanted-as they put their Wall Street cronies and AIPAC appointees on the cabinet and staff ).
Nevertheless, we were assured by George Will Santorum is "not" a one-dimensional social conservative (polite euphemism for right-wing, religious fanatic). After all he was involved in decisive 1996 Welfare Reform cut-down on free-loaders like those European pinkos. So apparently that made him at least two-dimensional. (After all with enough professional debate coaching even the most one-dimensional can occasionally sound polysyllabic.)
So there was Rick in his red tie getting volcanic about the evils of the Iranian inner circle, while basically revealing he was personally involved in trying to motivate outsiders of Iran to overthrow their government. (Nothing illegal about that-why our country is constantly trying to manipulate the internal politics of other countries and helping steal elections as well-just like some here do in the United States.) After all that is the American way (especially when it comes to Iran that Israel does not approve). This is the real reason Santorum is considered hot-because he is demonizing Iran and pushing the Neocon-artist agenda of pushing for war. (It is not that he really knows that much truth.)
Nevertheless for the Republican attack dog pack it is damnable democrats like Obama who are so negligent, such as to not "care" about the Iranian people such as during "our" recently staged coup there (costing our tax payers millions of dollars). But there was no mention by the enlightening ABC debate facilitators of "our" past long term support of the torturing and murdering Shah we put in power there, or his SAVAK secret police that our and Israel's agents helped train?
Just so long as some oil companies were happy. Apparently our longer-term actual relationship in Iran is irrelevant when politicizing dogma to the short memory span of the American polity? ABC mediator George Stephanopoulos didn't seem to know about America's 1953 coup that took out Iran's democratically leader Mussedeq after his party nationalized oil back in the 1951? Why should our country's support of the Shah's repression and his secret police should bother ignorant Americans-because you pretty much have to be ignorant to take most of these politicians and media manipulators seriously. (Nevertheless according to candidates our motives to meddle in Iran with covert black operations is simply because we are the good guys.)
We are expected to also have quickly forgot that both Washington D.C. government (all three branches) and the mainstream media lied to us about weapons of mass destruction is Iraq. After all when that became apparent after the invasion they quickly started coming up with "other" reasons for the invasion. And now they claim Americans are ready to go to another war for similar reasons. Meanwhile none of the past offenders and deceivers were punished for anything.
What really matters now in these deliberately, deceptive, debates (themselves a form of American coup, by corporate and AIPAC manipulated mainstream media) is the continuous and calibrated talk that implies we should all know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Iran is engaged in a nuclear weapons program-which then allows for jingoistic candidates to splash patriotic dribble to the hilt.
Meanwhile many Americans don't even know where Iran is on the map-but they do know Iranians are dark, Muslim, hate Israel and us, and have control of "our" fricken oil (correction-western oil companies' oil-that is companies that use American tax payer dollars to create our military that makes it possible for them to steal oil deals for these oil companies-and then while these same oil companies pay very little in taxes themselves they still get government subsidies. This is to say they use tax revenues to get their investor class rich while they have our lower and middle class kids die in wars so their kids can avoid the military altogether and instead go to expensive schools. Later they will "inherent" more wealth with little tax. (So why would anyone even think to tax the rich-when we all know-and no doubt the MSM does as well-that the proper tax burden should be on the lower and middle classes? Isn't all so obvious?)
And how dare those Muslims defy Israel's and the United States' right to have nuclear weapons (that we never question) or us grumpy people who like to maintain our wasteful energy-rich lifestyles? So obviously we need outside enemies to blame for our frustrations-and not just democrats like Obama but other boogiemen as well.
And yet if George Fricken Will was really serious and sane about who, out of this lot, would make a good vice president he would have suggested Jon Huntsman. Instead we have a rash Santorum immediately sending troops back to Iraq, with literally no benchmark-unlike Romney who, at least, rhetorically, set real distance, when he said a benchmark had to be high.
But there is more to this staging of political battles for hearts and minds than simply supporting AIPAC-that is also making sure we don't hardly cut any of the Pentagon's budget. And this is where Romney really shines in his standing up to Obama. How dare anyone cut some of the Pentagon's hegemonic tax gluttony? You can't touch a budget that supports so much profiteering as corporate America and shady contractors. How could any true blooded American sacrifice even one dollar to stave off all the evil of the ubiquitous, Muslim, terrorism around the entire world-especially in this age in which communism is thought contained? It's not like we don't have something like 750 plus military bases outside the U.S.? (You just know corporate-owned media, General Electric, etc., is loving Mitt Romney. He's is like the ultimate patriot for the Military Industrial Complex.)
Romney would never suggest, unlike Ron Paul, that there is any corruption, pork barrel fat, or redundancy in our military and its complex (with banskster supporters and mainstream media hucksters equally on some kind of employ). Ain't no "moral hazard" hiding here? No it's those damn OWS kids, homeless, and struggling, such as college students that can't imagine how to pay their student loans, who represent moral hazard!
Still, if you can over-look the fact that "other" media pundits love Mitt, for a brief moment the push in republican faddism was a great Rick Santorum-at least by some factions. For example, if the mere name Charles Krauthammer makes you feel nauseous due to his sanctimoniousness (talk about baggage) then reading his recent discovery of how marvelous Santorum could almost make you gag. (Not that Rick Santorum is not a decent man, with intelligence, some integrity, or civil duty mindedness, which he seems to have-but rather the weasel kind of way pundits suddenly discovered him (as if he didn't exist before). Suddenly Rick was "...plausibly presidential: knowledgeable, articulate, experienced, of stable character and authentic ideology." Well what was he before Herman Cain?
But if you look behind the MSM flimflam it very well seems it is really about burying Ron Paul and Gingrich in the mud. Divide and conquer. Likely it is true Ron Paul really should have won in a truly fair process in Iowa. Rather it seems the results were purposely manipulated, by the megaphones, up until January the 3rd to make it look close. Then it could have been easily stolen. In fact right up to the previous day some were even admitting Paul was ahead.
But what all Americans should have been focusing on over these years is the election and polling and voting process itself. Stealing elections fell off the radar.
How valid is the Iowa process if the following is true: "Elron - Voxeo: The Israeli Defense Firm That Tallies the Iowa Caucus"? http://www.bollyn.com/elron-voxeo-the-israeli-defense-firm-t...
Whatever company's computers counts vote tallies should be of very considerable interest to people that care about fair elections. Often these procedures are done in secret with no transparency or accountability-and yet neither major political party has dealt with these kinds of undemocratic issues. Why? And the MSM and even much of the Internet alternative media has skirted this very critical issue???? (How often do you see four question marks).
It should especially be important to know if Israeli or Zionists interest are involved in anyway-especially given the "fact" that so much of the Iowa debates were about our supposed ally-Israel, and supposed fighting terrorists especially in the Middle East, and especially the constant pressure by Israel to get the United States to go to war with Iran. Or is that just anti-Semitism sentiment? No its not.
There are too many people in power who will sacrifice a bright and independent mind the right to be president, or be a political leader, for some naïve lackey who will do whatever Israeli right-wing and AIPAC demands. Plenty of social conservatives are brainwashed by Judeo-Christianity and will submit to the most insane consequences if that is what people like Netanyahu demand. They are not leaders willing to look out to what is truly of interest to those of us in the United States. They are pawns.
Why did we go to war with Iraq-because AIPAC and Neocons wanted it so (not to mention the investors merchants of death). Now they want a war with Iran. This is why we cannot trust the mainstream media and the two major parties to mediate the political process.
By vaunting Rick Santorum they have found the opposite to Ron Paul's extremism. The two are very opposite in some ways, and this way the Powers-Behind-the-Scene can kill any real chances Paul might have at being thought a real contender.
And granted Paul has some real ideological rigidities, but he still questions what all honest politicians should be challenging and are not-bankruptcy by "unnecessary" wars and a highly bloated military machine-not to mention the corruption that goes with it and the torture.
You could see how both Diane Sawyer and company was trying to put Paul on the defensive with question deliberately planned to make him look bad. The whole debate process is a sham. It is sophisticated pretense-Hollywood style. And it reflects how criminal this country really is.
But this is not to say there was no opportunity for showing one's colors. Despite was is a manipulated process people still seem to reveal much about themselves. For example, even though Paul was not given many questions in Iowa and that he didn't need a long time to answer questions he still managed to pull ahead.
Still imagine a slick Washington Post syndication punditry reduced to advocating Rick who basically espoused elimination of contraception (because it allows people to "do things" sexually they should not be doing otherwise-definitely not libertarian); and who claimed to worry gay soldiers might be problematic in war (not killing civilians or drug abuse or suicide rates); and who opposes abortion when the fact is war is equally murder which many right-wingers readily support (as well as the democratic party). But get this-Santorum is big to reduce food stamps (too many people are already overweight); and, given to statements like uninsured (for medical) Americans should spend less on cell phone bills? So much for our "compassionate conservative" Michael Gerson claims Santorum now is (or as he is now to paint himself to be).
Probably Rick Santorum has some compassion-but it is hardly a dominant attribute of the Republican Party today. Even the flintiness of some of Ron Paul's ideas seem too inclined to place principles over any and ever form of compassion. You'd think the doctor stepped out of some Nietzschean plot of an Ayn Rand novel and the only thing he can manifest is some excess of adoration to the school of Austrian economics and actually does need to examine some other books on economics. (But then who brought up some real issues about racism in America when he was asked about the bogus smear he was supposedly involved in 20 years ago-go figure.) You can't buy such a soul easily.
Still one could feel sorry for George Will if it were for what George F. is really about-hammering home certain pet themes no matter how convoluted they are styled or how airy they might sound. In his column praising Santorum (first week of January), he skipped around pell-mell to one of Romney's recent speeches that contrasted "merit-based" society to Obama's "entitlement society" as a "...fundamental corruption of the American spirit". (So much is about undeserved socialism.)
Assume for a minute there are those socialists on the left who do try to "weave a web of dependency" and "entangle" individuals and industries with governmental supervision. But ask if there was any mention anywhere that Romney himself is kind of silver-spooned kid-getting breaks and privileges most others didn't get-including attending Harvard.
Equally there is no mention of the enormity of "corporate welfare" or "dependency" of huge military industrial complex, or Pentagon bureaucracy in either Will's or Romney's harangues about big government and excess supervision (or our supposed prerogative of supervising and bossing around the entire world as corrupting the American spirit)?
You really need to read Tim Dickinson's "The Party of the Rich: How the Republicans' abandoned the poor and the middle class to pursue their relentless agendas of tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent" (Rolling Stone magazine November 24, 2011 pages 46-57) to really understand what Georgy Porgy is now left to protect in the republican party. Herein even diehard, traditional, republicans are documented to turn in their living graves as their Republican party has become extremely ideological and morally corrupt (not that democrats are saints). (This article is definitely worth reading for a more educated view of reality than what politicians and pundits play to the gallery.)
Also google this article on the Internet:
"30 Statistics That Show That The Middle Class Is Dying Right In Front Of Our Eyes As We Enter 2012". (Don't remember the name of the website.)
What is so noteworthy about a snide pundit like George Will is the seemingly-clever variety of ways he makes the same prejudicial points over and over again-year after year-when in fact they are really sophistic attempts, more like trying to be a modern artist sloshing various collages of pictures together irrespective of whether they well match to each other. This elitist throws in splendiferous sounding sentences around here and there to suggest erudite learning. He then adds a smattering of esoteric historical references to make it sound his thinking is well grounded in much knowledge. But in reality much of his style, when actually analyzed and compared with some of his other writings, is not at all that impressive-and often enough is contradictory.
Take his previous column (also from the first week of 2012) in which he rings in a "conservative" year. "Doctor", as so typical for him to smear progressives with various forms of attitudinal disease (no projection of course on his part). He conjures up this notion progressives "like" the idea of energy scarcity-so they can "boss" others around with industrial regulation.
Mr. Clarity thus thinks progresses fume at the idea an "abundance" of fossil fuels found close at hand causes "horror" in their progressives' hearts-referring to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
Without trying to make sense out of Will's grasping attempts to drool and foment together any kind of Democratic failure on all energy issues-we should nevertheless try to clarify a few things for George-who is not nearly as profound as he likes to assume. (High quality historians transcend the demagogic attempt to see the world of cartoon characters as either all good or bad so frequently found in political discourse.)
First off Mr. Will the word "conservative" is almost exactly related to the work "conservation". Why do you suppose that might be?
Or how can that be when people like George do not seem to care about conserving the environment? In fact there is no mention or insinuation of care about the environment in this tirade. The only issue according to this Washington Post genius is one of recalcitrant "liberals" and lesser countries of the United Nations bossing around the free and corrupt world.
In a more Huntsman like world we would read the likes of Earth (or listen to the audio version) and we might listen to the Teaching Company's "Earth's Changing Climates" lecture series to begin to realize the complexity of these issues and to begin to imagine the many ways information can be distorted about these issues that most naïve people would never consider. Metaphorically if the climate change issue were the equivalent of a picture puzzle of 2000 pieces most Americans have less than 100 of those pieces, and worst off some they do have been distorted, exaggerated, and enlarged to hide the other pieces or the facts many are missing from consideration.
Instead we get economic politics with extreme notions of laissez faire economics and neo-liberalism, that more or less argue "real" freedom exists when there are "no" (or damn few) limitations to what capitalists and corporations can and can not do. They treat economic activity as sacred dogma. Basically only profit and productivity matters and every other value takes a hike (no one-dimensionality here). In another words one can be as criminal or polluting as one wants if in the name of industrial activity.
And Mr. Mitt ain't no regulation guy. But according to the fanatics it is OK for companies to act like psychopaths just so long as the economy is churning and fossil fuels are flowing-and if there are serious consequences well too bad we will simply down play them or better yet not mention them.
If they were at least honest they would say we have to steel this oil and we have to have it or we have to pollute until we can change things-if that is what they believe. They have no belief other than corporations are all wise and powerful and free enterprise is self-correcting and all-wise. It is really scary to have leaders live with such simplistic slogans.
Omission, which is really a type of censorship, doesn't stop one from lecturing the new conservative "base" which George described as "...white voters without college education-economically anxious and culturally conservative" (like the ditto heads that listen to Rush Limbaugh).
But this is not to say some few, real intellectuals of the republican party, like George, don't like their heady neologisms from time to time. He wrote Frank Meyer, founding editor of William Buckley's National Review in 1955 "...postulated the possibility, and necessity, of ‘fusionism,' a union of social conservatism and those of a more libertarian free-market bent." How's that for politico-speak for the anxious white males without college? (The only thing they postulate is their posterior to the football game.) But check out that "fusionism" word to meld two strands-is that persnickety or what?
Economic issues are the real issues of this election-not religiosity. Pundits who have already declared Paul can never win-and given the racket it is likely true-and as they concede that he brings contrarian ideas to the debate-these pundits never follow up on any real exploration of his sentiments. Where is the follow up discussion about getting us out of Middle East wars or something more than sarcasm about the corrupt at the Fed? Such writers of syndicated opinion are not from men of principles but men of politicians. Newspapers are part of the bigger problem.
Meanwhile if Israel forces us to go to war with Iran we need to destroy Israel's military capacity.
anon@indymedia.org (Pamela Peace)
Original article on IMC London:
http://london.indymedia.org/articles/11449