Oldie but goodie: Myth of liberal media

Posted on December 16, 2011 by oddmanout215

Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman and Justin Lewis discuss how elites use the big lie to disallow expressions of opinion that are outside what’s acceptable to the corporate media:

Herman: The mainstream media really represent elite interests, and they serve those elite interests in a way that can be described as carrying out a propaganda function.

Chomsky: If you assert the opposite [of what is true], that eliminates mountains of evidence demonstrating that what you’re saying is false. That’s what power means. And the way you assert the opposite is by just saying, “The media are liberal.” Now the question becomes “Are the media too liberal, or are they not too liberal?”

Lewis (on studies indicating liberal bias in the media):

Even if you take these studies at their face value, there are a number of flaws with them. Perhaps the most important one is that they assume that it’s the journalists rather than the owners, advertisers, the news shapers or the news makers who control the manufacture of news. That’s like saying that the workers on the factory floor decide what the car industry produces.

Footnote: Jonathan Turley commenting on the country’s apathetic reaction to Barack Obama breaking his promise to veto the National Defense Authorization Act: “While the Framers would have likely expected citizens in the streets defending their freedoms, this measure was greeted with a shrug and a yawn by most citizens and reporters. Instead, we are captivated by whether a $10,000 bet by Romney was real or pretend in the last debate.”

The story of Obama’s most recent broken promise will die quickly. The notion that we are being stripped of our civil liberties is outside of what’s considered acceptable opinion by the corporate media.

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Shine On Brightly

Posted on December 16, 2011 by oddmanout215

The chandelier in sinful swing
as gifts for me the three kings bring
of myrrh and frankincense, I’m told,
and fat old Buddhas carved in gold

Google the lyrics of the title song of Procol Harum’s second album, Shine On Brightly, and see how many sites have the second verse starting with “The chandelier is in full swing.” That is not what Gary Brooker is singing! The song is from the point of view of a decadent, half out of his mind, probably from over-indulging various appetites. The chandelier is in sinful swing. The narrator imagines himself as the Baby Jesus, being smiled on by the Magi. A blasphemous fellow.

OK, maybe it is “in full swing.” I’ll e-mail the lyricist, Keith Reid.

At any rate, many bands tried to fuse rock & roll with classical music, but Procol Harum’s joyously transcendent sound is unique and enduring. They were like a British version of the Band in that they distilled disparate influences into songs that were oddly soulful and somehow grand.

Question for fans: Why does this band usually sound so Christmas-y, even though hardly any of its songs mention Christmas? Yes, I know organist Matthew Fisher is a factor, that Brooker and Fisher borrowed heavily from Bach and other composers who wrote church music. But there’s more to it. Nostalgia, I guess.

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Barack Obama, the human cave-in

Posted on December 16, 2011 by oddmanout215

I’m stumped. What does Barack Obama believe in? Is there any promise he wouldn’t break, any anti-progressive stand he wouldn’t take if he thought it might gain him some political advantage?

Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth is convinced that Obama, if he signs the National Defense Authorization Act, “will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in U.S. law.” And Obama has signaled he will indeed sign after apparently caving to Congressional factions. Or maybe he simply believes in an imperial presidency.

As Robert Scheer wrote:

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney claimed “the most recent changes give the president additional discretion in determining how the law will be implemented, consistent with our values and the rule of law, which are at the heart of our country’s strength.”

What rubbish, coming from a president who taught constitutional law. The point is not to hock our civil liberty to the discretion of the president, but rather to guarantee our freedoms even if a Dick Cheney or Newt Gingrich should attain the highest office.

Sadly, this flagrant subversion of the constitutionally guaranteed right to due process of law was opposed in the Senate by only seven senators, including libertarian Republican Rand Paul and progressive Independent Bernie Sanders.

Arguably, this bill is the most recent bad consequence of 9/11. That calamity a decade ago didn’t begin the erosion of our civil liberties but it gave a tremendous boost to authoritarians — Dick Cheney and that gang — who were dead-set on stoking fear in order to subvert laws and traditions that date all the way back to the founding of the republic.

But who among us dreamed in 2007-2008 that Obama was in the gang? Who would have guessed he’d be just as eager to pump up the military and ditch due process as Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romnney and other Republicans? Obama and the Republicans, one of whom will be the other presidential nominee, would rather fuel the war machine than create jobs and fix the country’s decaying infrastructure. This is how low the American political system has sunk.

Posted in Congress, Great Recession, history, mainstream media, Obama, Politics, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Person of Year should be Pepper-Spray Cop

Posted on December 15, 2011 by oddmanout215

Here’s Time magazine’s argument — the writer was Kurt Andersen — for why 2011 was the Year of the Protester:

So 2011 was unlike any year since 1968 – but more consequential because more protesters have more skin in the game. Their protests weren’t part of a countercultural pageant, as in ’68, and rapidly morphed into full-fledged rebellions, bringing down regimes and immediately changing the course of history. It was, in other words, unlike anything in any of our lifetimes, probably unlike any year since 1848, when one street protest in Paris blossomed into a three-day revolution that turned a monarchy into a republican democracy and then – within weeks, thanks in part to new technologies… inspired an unstoppable cascade of protest and insurrection in Munich, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, Venice… as well as a huge peaceful demonstration of democratic solidarity in New York…

Whoa, Kurt. Street protests took place around the world on a larger scale than any year since 1989 — that much I’ll give you — and might have more lasting effects than the worldwide protests in 1968. However, it’s too early to declare that 2011 marked the beginning of changes as sweeping as those in 1848, a year of genuine revolution.

My choice for Person of the Year would have been Pepper-Spray Cop, meaning not only the cop who pepper-sprayed peaceful UC-Davis protesters at point-blank range, but also the thousands of other cops who share his mindset and engage in similar behavior. There’s nothing new about protesters, or police violence against protesters, but the systematically heavy-handed approach taken by cops in 2011 did seem ominously new, at least in the United States.

These cops used military tactics to disperse or disable people who were doing nothing more than expressing their rights of free speech and assembly. Yes, cops overreacted against protestors in other eras, but now they can do so using cartoonish body armor, military vehicles, and “sublethal” weapons such as sound cannon, flash grenades and pepper-spray. And of course, by using run-of-the-mill lethal weapons.

Arguably, police departments in major U.S. cities over the past few decades have morphed into private armies with hardware and surveillance technology formerly accessible only to the military, and the courts have made it easy for these police armies to treat protesters as terrorists, just as cops in supposedly less democratic countries do.

Posted in history, Occupy Wall Street, Politics, The New Depression, Uncategorized, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Onion exclusive: Tom Joad goes to Mars

Posted on December 14, 2011 by oddmanout215

I sometimes kid the Onion for taking a lame approach to political satire — for shooting at battleships with a BB gun. However, its social satire is often right on the money:

RUMSON, NJ—After more than a year of writing and recording, Bruce Springsteen released his 18th studio album Tuesday, a concept record titled Red Dust that explores the everyday lives and struggles of immigrant workers scraping by in the 23rd-century carbonate mines on Mars.

According to the 61-year-old songwriter, the new tracks depict rugged Martian colonists as they come to question what’s happened to their lives, finding themselves saddled with unpayable debts and hard-pressed to put food on the table for their embryonically harvested juvenile-clones…

“…I try to write about universal feelings and desires,” Springsteen continued. “There’s tragedy, grief, redemption. But there’s also nostalgia for one’s carefree younger days of racing souped-up hyper-thrust cruisers through the Valles Marineris canyon, and for nights spent chasing Martian girls along the rusting boardwalks of a crater-side spaceport.”

To which I can only add:

This interplanetary life for me is through
You ought to quit this scene, too..

Posted in arts, humor, pop music | Tagged | 1 Comment

Coddled senator: No minimum wage hike

Posted on December 14, 2011 by oddmanout215

“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime,” is the Anglicized version of a Balzac aphorism. I would add that behind most Republicans in Congress is a great unearned fortune and a defective sense of irony. Here’s an example from Wisconsin, a state with a long history of fighting between progressives and wealthy Republicans:

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Sunday defended voting against raising the minimum wage by suggesting that only bad workers earned minimum wage.

“Bottom line: when you’re a good worker you don’t stay at minimum wage for long,” he said. “Trust me on that. It’s not universal, but trust me as an employer, as an employer I certainly didn’t want to lose good employees. And so you actually have a better marketplace. And so if your employer is not paying you good wages and you’re a good worker, you go look for other places…”

… Democrats blasted the senator for his comment, noting that he married into millions.

“We know he doesn’t like workers and we’re not even sure if Ron Johnson supports a minimum wage, but the least he could do is keep his mouth shut on the subject when his fortune came not because of his hard work, but because of a fortunate marriage,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said Tuesday.

“Being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple has led Ron Johnson to dangerous ideas that would shred our social safety net and drive wages into the dirt all to appease a master class of people that sees fit to celebrate its riches while the rest of America suffers in rags…”

Footnote: At this point, I’ll bet there’s an army of suffering Wisconsin residents wishing they hadn’t voted out Sen. Russ Feingold.

Posted in economic collapse, Great Recession, humor, Politics, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Newt to Mitt: It takes one to know one

Posted on December 12, 2011 by oddmanout215

Does it take a thief to know a thief? If so, it’s no accident that the two most ruthlessly dishonest people vying for the Republican presidential nomination are accusing each other of corruption:

2012 GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has been taking a lot of heat for receiving $1.6 million from Freddie Mac, the government backed mortgage giant, and Mitt Romney has now piled on, calling on Gingrich to return the money. “He was on a debate saying that politicians who took money from Freddie and Fannie should go to jail,” Romney said.

Gingrich was asked about the remark today during an appearance in New Hampshire. He replied, “if Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain, then I would be glad to listen to him.”

This is worse than the pot calling the kettle black. This is two chimps in a cage throwing their own excrement at each other. Gingrich took money as a lobbyist, although he would never call what he did lobbying. Romney broke large companies then picked up the pieces and turned them into a personal fortune. While trying to steal the biggest prize of all — the presidency — the candidates are reminding anyone who’s listening that they’re both corrupt.

I think each man should call for the jailing of the other, repeatedly, until Barack Obama’s oddly apathetic Department of Justice is embarrassed into investigating how they made their money. Maybe neither man did anything technically illegal, but an investigation would raise a stink that might gag even “low-information” voters.

Posted in campaign finance reform, humor, liar, mainstream media, Mitt Romney, Politics, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

‘The Piano Has Been Drinking,’ not me

Posted on December 12, 2011 by oddmanout215

Tom Waits performs, then jokes with Martin Mull and Fred Willard on Fernwood Tonight. The mock-talk show ran for a few months in 1977, and was re-formatted and telecast as America 2-Night for a few months in 1978. I had to look up those dates.

In my mind, Fernwood is bound up with two other innovative shows from roughly the same era, SCTV and David Letterman. SCTV because of its “Great White North” skits, featuring two guys who behaved exactly like the two burnouts I shared an apartment with in the early 1980s. (My co-renters were both Waits fans.) Letterman because his TV show in the 1980s, when Waits appeared on it, seemed a cross between Fernwood and a “legitimate” Johnny Carson-type talk show.

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Happy Xmas — or is it Groundhog Day?

Posted on December 11, 2011 by oddmanout215

Grandma run over by eine reindeer? Ja. Es muss sein.

I run past Dan’s store on Passyunk Avenue, I see his Christmas trees for sale at curbside, breathe the scent of pine and hear “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” skipping from the speakers above his storefront. Each time this happens, I feel it has always happened, and always will; that I’m jogging around a large track that brings me past Dan’s Christmas shop at the same time each day, and what I do before and after this daily occurrence is more or less the same as what I’ve done on previous days.

Don’t be crazy, I tell myself. It only feels like last year’s Christmas season never ended. The couple in the Explorer who just asked me where Pat’s Steaks is — it only seems like they ask me this every day. John the shopping-bag salesman with his cart full of bags and his quadruple layer of overcoats — he’s not really on the market all the time, listening to the Eagles game on an ancient boom box. And Jack Bogus, the restaurant owner — when I turn the corner, he won’t be outside, painting those cellar doors the same color again.

But there he is, and there’s his brutal orange paint. WTF! Am I buying into the myth of “eternal return” that Nietzsche, for some reason, found so attractive? Have I seen Groundhog Day too many times? If I chase Jack Bogus and he’s back here tomorrow, painting again, should I surrender to fate, learn to love it?

Pointless questions. I should be researching Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD, isn’t that cute?), not eternal return. There’s nothing wrong with me that a new passport and a plane ticket wouldn’t fix. Or a frontal lobotomy. Or a bottle in front of me.

Posted in arts, fiction, humor, Philadelphia, pop music | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Correction, Paul — Mitt is a villain

Posted on December 10, 2011 by oddmanout215

He doesn't smoke and has no charisma, but he's just as greedy as Gordon Gekko.

I’m glad Paul Krugman took a moment Friday to link Oliver Stone’s 1987 movie Wall Street to Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy, but I’m wondering why the columnist pulled his punches rather than go for the KO. The record shows that the profoundly false Romney made a career of pillage and plunder while heading Bain Capital; that he became rich, as I stated in my Nov. 14 post, “at the expense of people who worked for companies that were bought and sold by his private equity firm.”

Krugman writes:

… According to the prediction market Intrade, there’s a 45 percent chance that a real-life Gordon Gekko will be the next Republican presidential nominee…

I am not, of course, the first person to notice the similarity between Mitt Romney’s business career and the fictional exploits of Oliver Stone’s antihero. In fact, the labor-backed group Americans United for Change is using “Romney-Gekko” as the basis for an ad campaign…

… Mr. Romney made his fortune in a business that is, on balance, about job destruction rather than job creation. And because job destruction hurts workers even as it increases profits and the incomes of top executives, leveraged buyout firms have contributed to the combination of stagnant wages and soaring incomes at the top that has characterized America since 1980…

But in the final paragraphs of the column, Krugman goes soft, as if adhering to some civility vow he made when he started writing for the ultra-polite but often ultra-hypocritical New York Times:

So what do we learn from this story? Not that Mitt Romney the businessman was a villain. Contrary to conservative claims, liberals aren’t out to demonize or punish the rich. But they do object to the attempts of the right to do the opposite, to canonize the wealthy and exempt them from the sacrifices everyone else is expected to make because of the wonderful things they supposedly do for the rest of us.

The truth is that what’s good for the 1 percent, or even better the 0.1 percent, isn’t necessarily good for the rest of America — and Mr. Romney’s career illustrates that point perfectly. There’s no need, and no reason, to hate Mr. Romney and others like him. We do, however, need to get such people paying more in taxes — and we shouldn’t let myths about “job creators” get in the way.

First of all, Romney is a villain, and it follows from everything Krugman wrote in the first half of his column that the rich — i.e., the rich who made their fortunes by exploiting those of modest means — should be sanctioned for restructuring companies so that the assets of thousands of working people would flow to a handful of executives. The luxury Romney lives in was made possible by schemes that impoverished people who were merely trying to make an honest living, and that wrong should be righted.

It’s not enough to simply make Romney and other would-be Gekkos pay their fair share of taxes. The laws should be changed to the point where these sociopaths aren’t in a position to profit by destroying jobs — and lives.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment